Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher

It is a show which lives up to its name, embodying nearly every form of America's idolatry.  Yet, we scoop it up by the handful - the thirst for fame, the worship of celebrity, the cult of stardom, the sex, the lights, the music, the commercialism and the Coca-Cola.  We listen to the sage advice of the three great high priest, one of whom I seriously think might be on drugs half the time.  Still, I tune into it every Tuesday night.  It's more out of a desire to see my twenty-two month (at what point do I switch from months to years?) old do a silly dance than anything else.

When Assessment Turns Ugly

So, I tune into it in an early episode and it begins to resemble an old-fashioned freak show.  I'm supposed to laugh, but instead I feel sad.  It's like watching a person kick a puppy.  A man walks up and he is socially awkward, perhaps even mentally handicapped and Simon calls him a monkey.  I want to cry for him.  Yet, there is a sick part of me that continues to watch.  What is it in humanity that compels us to stop when we see an accident? 

My mind wanders to a scene from earlier that day:  Students flock to the fight like vultures, attempting to pull apart bits and pieces of the carnage of lost friendships and the debris of explosive anger.  It is a mob mentality, not unlike a riot.  Yet, it reveals the very human obsession with darkness.  It is not unlike the cars which slow down in order to catch a glimpse of a car accident or the viewers who, though they verbally berate his attitude, silently revel in the sarcastic comments of Simon on American Idol. It’s the crusades, the laughter in genocide, the celebration on the streets of Iran when terrorists knocked down the Twin Towers. There is something enjoyable in the act of destruction.  We hate to admit it, but it’s there.  It’s dark.  And when tempers flare, it explodes. 

I start to think about assessment, about the way that we place kids into tidy little boxes and categories.  Though it's more scientific than calling them a monkey-face, it never feels good to be in the Falls Far Below category.  There is something almost as dark as the school yard fight when we jump into an urban school and call the population stupid and then place them on AYP for missing the mark. The system seems to grind students down into data, like ones and zeros on a spreadsheet, so that a school can boast an "Exceeds" label on a marquee sign at the edge of the street.  Then there's the informal assessment, when teachers make a comment that can either inspire a student or destroy hope.  I wonder how many insensitive comments I make and all of a sudden, the role of the teacher becomes almost terrifying.   

Two Extremes

I tune the show out for a few weeks and tune back in when they quick with the barrage of insults.  I notice how Simon seems to blast every singer.  Even the compliments are coupled with a sneer.  There's a part of me that enjoys the honesty, but it's a little over the top.  Paula, on the other hand, seems to think that every contestant is a natural star.  It's easy, as a teacher to fall into the Simon or Paula trap.  There are times that I make a comment and it's meant to help a student improve academically, but I watch as it crushes a child's motivation.  Other times, like Paula, I avoid saying anything wrong out of a desire to be nice and it backfires when the student doesn't meet his potential. 

Choosing the Least

I guess there is a new development this year, where people are voting for the worst candidate.  They chose Sanjaya, a seventeen year old kid who tries his best.  It's meant to be a slam on the show, a mocking parade like The Idiot, but I wonder if there is some redemption there.  I wonder if maybe, in assessing students, I have acted too much like an American Idol judge.  In other words, I have focussed on the best, the brightest, the flashiest contestants who seem to compete for my attention.  Maybe the solution is to spend time with "the least," the dorkiest, the socially awkward, the slowest learners - the kids who still watch cartoons and play Yugi-Oh cards in the seventh grade. 

This afternoon, my daily lunch group meets to create our weekly newscast.  The group began with misfits, not unlike Sanjaya or the man who Simon called monkey-boy.  They were mostly kids who were bullied and found room five to be a safe refuge.  Yet, surprisingly, the group has grown.  The "coolest" kids still avoid it, but now there is a real community of about twenty kids who work hard each day researching stories, writing the script, taping it and editing it.  It's the opposite of American Idol in so many ways - cooperative rather than competitive, inclusive rather than inclusive and no one recieves a grade.  Yet, it it become one of my favorite times of the day.