American Greatness By Mark Judge
It takes both a village and good parents to raise a child.
When thinking about the crisis in American education, a crisis of falling enrollment and teacher burnout, I often think back to when I studied to become a teacher. Something that happened on the very first day of class has never left me.
I was sitting in a classroom at a community college in Maryland with students who were half my age and mostly female when we got our first homework assignment. It was an essay, “Metaphors of Hope,” from our class textbook, Teachers, Schools, and Society. “Metaphors of Hope” is an account—supposedly—of what is right about American education. The essay’s author, Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld, began teaching in 1956 and is the author of several books on pedagogy. The metaphors of hope that Chenfeld writes about are the indications of hope amidst the collapse in every category of the American educational system.
My professor—I’ll call her Karen—was a nice, attractive woman around 40. She is a terrific teacher, kind, funny, and knowledgeable. She has years of experience. Yet on the first day, something felt off. A few of the students purchased the wrong book; instead of Teachers, Schools, and Society, they had with them a book that was sitting right next to it called Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America. When somebody pointed out the mistake, Karen looked pained and a little disgusted. It was the face you’d make if you went to an expensive Italian restaurant and were presented with a plate of pasta with hair on top of it. “You can return that book,” she said. Not: you can read it if you want, see what you think. You can—the tone was more like you should—return that book.
