The Purpose of Public Education

When I first entered the classroom at the age of eighteen—as a substitute, a space, a place to fill a room; I was like that the employeeI was like that he told—I carried with me all new and powerful and very annoying memories of being a student at the same school. Among them, I remembered my method of separation hunger I heard, I never remember seeing a teacher eating lunch with me, either with me, or obviouslynot behind a closed hand; something to be hidden, an error in their teaching. Indeed, when I entered the cafeteria for the first time, I realized that most of my students, who were in sixth grade at the time, had never seen a teacher eat before, certainly not among them, not at a table in the corner of the cafeteria watching casually to monitor behavior.

I made it a point to eat only my lunch with walking around the restaurant, chatting with them while food. Very quickly, they began to ask me, day after day, what I had for lunch, and I would ask them the same, I would answer, and, at that time, food became a social act between me and the students, not an aspect of the human condition that satisfied us with complaints; not our thing it should to do, but something to look at forward to me, to the teachers, and to the students. Or, speaking more accurately and honestly in our own language, was something we should all look forward to people.

The current system of public education operates on the level of which iron hooks are often thought of as the goal of teachers, although, in equal measure, it is also the goal of students, both of which make up all American education. As a student in the public school system, I was struck by the intensity of my classmates—and myself, at times, despite often interacting with my teachers—and despairingly—ignoring the humanity of our teachers. Teachers, not as human beings, but as these mythical vessels of illumination; or, to be more precise in the current system of public education, achievement vessels graded on a series of tests and measurements. However, when I entered schools as a teacher, I was struck by the extent to which my fellow teachers ignored our humanity. students. Students, not as people, but as testers, as statistics, and as a reflection of their perceived success in the classroom.

What I noticed, however, was that teachers who were often seen as inhumane to their students were not only being seen as humane, but they were getting less engagement from their students. Schools are not only in the space of educational methods. It should go without saying that schools are a major source of social and emotional support, and the fulfillment of these needs, in the lives of many of our students—in addition, schools are a source of great social and emotional fulfillment in the lives of teachers, too. Too often, it seems that the personalities of teachers and students are overlooked in favor of mathematical success; in the post-millennial educational environment, it is the main desire of teachers and the public school system not to stimulate, strengthen, and stimulate the intellectual needs of students throughout the country, but to prepare children, adequately as possible, to work at level x to better adapt to work environment y. Students can’t tell when they’re being treated like test scores—if they can’t say it, or make sense of it, to hear they can’t anyway.

Education as a humanizing practice involves, as most teaching naturally must, a process of unlearning; re-examining our approach to learning as teachers. For example, the beginning of a new semester is often accompanied by several common obstacles from teachers, especially experienced teachers (and those new teachers who quickly change the nihilistic atavism of the school as a workplace), and one that sticks to me a lot-it stuck to me, in fact, as a student, too: respect. Students don’t just do it respect their teachers, the respect these teachers have—perhaps not unfairly, or more than that understandably— to the debtors.

However, this idea is prevalent in education for the reasons of two ideas: that children are instilled with a deep interest in the vague challenges and the work required by public education (they don’t), and that children don’t see people, certainly not in the same way that I, the teacher, (they are). I i am with the idea that students owe teachers respect; However, students do not owe teachers respect because they are teachers, or because they are older, or because they have a college degree, they owe teachers respect because they are people with them. Indeed, the lack of respect that students have for teachers is a direct result of the failure of teachers to properly model respect (of course, I admit the part that the home team plays here, and, although we, as teachers, do not have control over family structures, and being angry about this fact does not help us anywhere; redirect that frustration to praxis). Most of the teachers I have both taught and worked with do not fit into the classroom on the basis of respect—the original respect, as one would do to another adult—their students, students feel this. In our failure to treat students as fellow human beings, we create a cycle of contradiction: if students are treated only as students, not as fellow human beings, they will create that difference in their heads—not that teachers are fellow human beings, but only teachers, and nothing else.

Despite the movement made by public education in the irrational imitation of the essentials of pure intelligence, a place for communication between minds only to reach a limited goal, there is no measure of separation from the class that the teacher can do to prevent their role in the life of the child as an adult, a constructive figure, as a father, and a vessel to fulfill their needs; any suggestion otherwise, that it is not the responsibility of teachers to do so, stems from a profound misunderstanding and failure to grasp the purpose of public education at the K-12 level. Consider the body in the classroom.

When it was when was the last time your students saw you or another teacher eat a whole meal—not a granola bar or prepackaged charcuterie—in front of them? When was the last time your students saw you taking care of your body’s needs? What do you model when it comes to body image and self-care? Are you drinking enough water? Are you eating whole and nutritious foods? Do you visit the bathroom when needed? (and, if there is not enough coverage from your team or management to do so, have you confronted and discussed this difference?) When it comes to topics like sex or reproductive health, do you hold back and shut up and redirect? What might you be teaching or modeling for students in this response, or modeling? To what extent do teachers play in guiding and motivating young people to shame and blame when it comes to their bodies? What messages are we conveying to them in our failure to consider them ourselves as people?

Indeed, that is at the heart of the objection to public education; not only that teachers respect students, and that students respect teachers, but that both groups are implicitly taught to understand themselves.

Indeed, that is at the heart of the objection to public education; not only that teachers respect students, and that students respect teachers, but that both groups are implicitly taught to understand themselves. Since feminism has been a popular and mainstream discipline across American culture for the past half century, it’s shocking that discussions about dress codes are still as awkward as they are, a system that clearly encourages girls to be assertive and teaches boys to be defiant. This behavior is not trivial. The “distractions” that are invoked to justify the way young boys dress are, as others have pointed out, not entirely credible; no, it seems that “disruption” is part of the teachers and, in applying the dress code, we teach young men and boys not only to oppose the girls around them, but to show themselves as objects and channels of desire. Similarly, there is the problem of the bathroom—yes, although behavior problems can be acknowledged and should be addressed by school administrators, we encourage students to neglect their physical needs in our banning of bathroom use, and our failure to model healthy bathroom habits ourselves. Returning, again, to food: by failing to imitate healthy eating habits (not “healthy” as in restricting, not “healthy” as in conforming to the food culture, not “healthy” as in encouraging junk food, but healthy as eating regular, consistent, filling, pleasant, and making the body feel good), teachers play a major role in disrupting encouraging eating; something that once planted, spreads quickly among the youth.

This it is the greatest tragedy in public education—in the midst of so much turmoil, in the midst of the increasing political order approaching education and the great strongholds of American culture, the recognition of the individuality of our students and our teachers will be of great help to us as educators going forward. Most of our students don’t feel heard, they don’t feel connected, and, if performance is the only thing you care about, this affects performance, too. I think, however, that consensus in mind, is part of the problem we face: what are teachers really? Of course, contributing to an informed and enlightened society is at the forefront of our desire. However, more than anything—at least, as I see it, in an increasingly dehumanizing age where students are constantly abused by algorithms, and their humanity will be completely disregarded by increasingly hostile and self-serving staff as they age—it should be the desire of teachers not only to be important, caring, and love statistics in the lives of our students, but you gave an example, you gave evidence not only of adults who can and should strive to be themselves, but adults that they can and should be surrounded by going forward.

If we want students to be responsive, if we want students to be present in the classroom, we must recognize their humanity, too it should let’s take care of ourselves. Although the context is used, a thesis in terms of making education human, I hope this can be taken as a lens through which one can approach, or re-approach education. An act of mindfulness in a time of chaos and crisis.