The Culture of Incompetence: The Mind-Set That Destroys Inner-City Schools - Softcover

Cartaina, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1440164134 ISBN 13: 9781440164132

Verlag: iUniverse, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

THE CULTURE OF INCOMPETENCE is a passionate, practical exposé of the problems and solutions facing inner-city schools today. Intimate memoirs of the author's experiences working in an inner-city district for thirty-two years bring the issues to life in a personal, poignant picture of frustration and hope. This book is written for those people who see teaching as a mission to improve the lives of children who, through no fault of their own, do not receive the quality education that other children receive. It is for those concerned parents who drag themselves to school to visit a teacher after working the second or third shift in a factory. It is for those people who see education as a human and civil right whose quality should not be based on socioeconomic status or geographic location. It is for those teachers and administrators who bang their heads against the bureaucratic wall with occasional success. New teachers and those teachers who want to make a difference should read this book.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JOHN CARTAINA is an adjunct professor at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. He was a teacher, administrator, and district supervisor for the Paterson Public Schools in Paterson, New Jersey for thirty-two years. He resides in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina with his wife, Gloria. They have two children and two grandchildren.

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The Culture of Incompetence

The Mind-Set That Destroys Inner-City SchoolsBy John Cartaina

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 John Cartaina
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-6413-2

Contents

Preface..........................................ixThe Culture of Incompetence......................1The Teacher as a Person..........................13Teacher-Student Rapport:.........................24The Twinkle in the Eye...........................33The Living School................................43Classroom Instruction............................55Messages to the Stakeholders.....................69Epilogue.........................................95

Chapter One

The Culture of Incompetence

Oh Well, That's an Inner-city School

Incompetence is accepted as the norm in poorly-run, inner-city schools. "Oh well, that's Paterson, Chicago, or New York" is a common expression used by teachers and administrators throughout the cities of America. Expectations for success are low due to a history of failure. Failure breeds more and more failure. It feeds upon itself. We assume failure and never expect success.

Visualize an inner-city school with a majority of students from low socioeconomic and sometimes broken families. Some of the students are African-American, and others do not speak English at home. Is your vision similar to one of the Hollywood movies about schools in the inner city? Why is the Lean on Me movie our image rather than an image of students working productively? Some schools are blackboard jungles, but when we accept that image as the norm, we perpetuate the problem and produce more incompetent schools.

Low expectations are compounded by our culture's historic confusion about race and poverty. Are poor people lazy, and do they really want to be poor? Can black children really learn as well as white children? Those questions have haunted our history, and they lay among the muck and silt of any river of change. Try to initiate change, and those sometimes dormant sediments rise from the bottom and cloud the chances of success.

If any initiative is introduced to improve the quality of education, some people simply say, "Be patient, this too shall pass." They are veterans of the inner-city wars, and they know the history of previous efforts. The effort to change is stymied by a failure to recognize the complexity and scope of the problem, which is centuries old and intertwined like a spider's web.

All problems must be attacked simultaneously. Sure, we need new school buildings, but if we don't improve the quality of teachers and administrators, what good will the new science lab be? Yes, we need smaller class sizes, but how much more successful will we be with twenty children from dysfunctional families instead of thirty? If a child is up all night because of an abusive mother and an absent father, will she learn more because there are fewer children in the classroom? Money alone will not solve the problem. Smaller class sizes alone will not solve the problem. Higher pay for teachers alone will not solve the problem. To break the cycle of unequal educational opportunity for inner-city children, we must break the backs of many problems simultaneously. We must attack racism among and between whites, blacks, and Hispanics. We must unchain the grip of sleazy politics from the halls of boards of education. If only one aspect of the problem is addressed, the winds of change are destroyed by the remaining overwhelming problems. Only then can we change the culture of failure and incompetence. Willy-nilly stopgap measures will always fail. The problems of inner-city schooling have historic implications, and there is no magic pill. If we attempt one solution without considering its impact on the other problems, the ignored weeds will strangle the seeds of change. Racism, incompetence, politics, and money must be addressed at the same time.

The core of the struggle to break the cycle of incompetence must include a belief system that all children can learn. Community leaders, administrators, teachers, students, and responsible government agencies must believe in the value and ability of poor children to learn, leave their egos at the entrances of the cities, and concentrate all their energies to redeem this national disgrace. All stakeholders are responsible for the quality of education in inner-city schools and therefore must make choices. Those choices can be responsible, or they could be to bury one's head in the sand and blame someone else for the problems. Let's be responsible for the future generations of American citizens.

The culture of incompetence incestuously breeds itself. It gives grossly inefficient teachers an excuse to continue working the same way. Why? Initiatives for change are either ill conceived or inadequately implemented or funded. So when they fail, incompetent teachers can smugly say, "I told you so." They continue to teach poorly, give everyone a passing grade for substandard work, and the community has a new pool of illiterate adults who help perpetuate a culture of crime in the city-"It's not me, it's the system"; "It's downtown's fault."

I witnessed so many new literacy programs and testing strategies that were heralded as the latest panacea. They were to be the best inventions since sliced bread. Most failed because they were poorly funded, were not supported by the staff or the community, or were devoured by other problems. The incompetent teacher simply bided his time, waiting for the program to fail. His incompetence was rewarded and perpetuated.

Every faculty room has a "Donut Dan" who sits in the corner and complains about parents, students, administrators, and the board of education. His constant complaining masks his incompetence. Every time incompetence is rewarded, Donut Dan wins and teaches another day. Every time we fail, we provide Dan with more ammo for his negativity. When an uncertified, incompetent administrator is appointed, Dan simply throws up his hands and says "it" is the new administrator's fault. When we accept inferior teaching as the norm, we make Dan look like a prophet. The acceptance of the culture of incompetence validates his existence. We justify his sitting in the corner and getting another donut stain on his tie. He is the mascot for the culture of incompetence. When we slay the dragon of incompetence, we will eliminate the necessity for his existence.

Dedicated teachers and administrators fight the pervasive culture of incompetence every day. Instead of rewarding those dedicated teachers, we give them more work: "Please be on an extra curriculum committee"; "Please take this extra troubled child"; "You're the one who can do this report well." How many years can we expect our excellent teachers to bang their heads against the wall? Thousands of young, quality teachers leave the poorer systems, disenchanted and disgusted. They are the people we should nurture and support not the winners in the system of incompetence. The future success of any school system lies in the hands of new, young, energetic teachers. We can't afford to lose them.

I lost an outstanding, young teacher who was not supported or appreciated at a large, comprehensive, inner-city high school. According to an administrator in the school, she wasn't very good. She was intelligent, bold, and displayed initiative to make changes. She was exactly what that administrator didn't want. He wanted someone who would say "Let's keep quiet, maintain the status quo, and just get to 3:00 pm." She moved on to an excellent...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: iUniverse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1440164134
• ISBN 13: 9781440164132
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 116
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland