Are We Preparing Students for Careers or Prison?

A wise man once said, "It is better to laugh than to cry." This man was obviously talking about the teaching profession.

Though it is early in the school year a question has been bouncing around in my head since the earliest of summer meetings, and has remained with me as I have struggled through what has seemed like endless meetings and mountains of new paperwork created in the name of "teacher accountability". The question...are we (teachers) preparing our students for careers or prison? The reason I ask is simply because I have noticed how our schools are increasingly becoming more like prisons than places of learning.

Here are some examples for your thoughts and amusement:

1. Of course the students are the inmates.
2. The teaching staff are the correctional officers.
3. The principal is the warden.
4. The students have yard time, but it is called P.E.
5. Good behavior of the inmates/students is encouraged through different programs...in prison the  
    inmates get time off for good behavior...at school the students get rewards.
6. Both students and inmates are required to wear uniforms.
7. Both students and inmates are herded from place to place by the teachers/correctional officers.
8. Both students and inmates are served unsavory meals.
9. Both students and inmates have rules and procedures that must be followed. If not, prisoners are put
    into isolation. At school, the students are isolated in 'Chill-Out'.
10. Students bring weapons to school. Prisoners make weapons.
11. Both students and prisoners are constantly creating new ways to get around and/or bend the
      institutional rules.
12. Both students and prisoners are sexually harrassed by one another.
13. Like in prisons, the correctional officers have as little power as teachers do in the school system.
      Anyone who has spent any amount of time in either a school or prison know that the
      students/prisoners really run the facility.

I am sure there are more you could add to this list, but I want to get to the one I chose not to list because for me it is the most troubling and therefore deserves more discussion than those listed above. Once people are processed through the prison system, they are each assigned a number. From the government's viewpoint the prisoner's identity has been all but stripped and replaced by a number. Well guess what? The same exact thing is occurring in our school systems, but no one seems to notice or care. As school systems focus increasingly on the results of high stakes testing and teacher accountability, the students are being stripped of their identity and are being replaced by a number. The students no longer have names, unique identities and situations, but instead they are all referred to as whatever their predictor EOG score is or if they are a 1, 2, 3, or 4. Very often throughout the school year the teachers/correctional officers hear the principal/warden discuss ways to improve the scores of the 1's, 2's, and low 3's.

What we do not hear is that each of our students are unique individuals with unique, and often, horrifying circumstances resulting from living in poverty, being constantly bullied, being sexually, physically, and verbally abused on a daily basis. Why don't we hear about things such as this?

THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In North Carolina's effort to 'race to the top' the very ones we are trying to help (the students) are the ones that are suffering the most. Sure, I would love to receive better pay for what I do...I think all teachers would, but I also know that teachers did not get into this profession to get rich. We became educators to change student's lives, and we are increasingly NOT being allowed to do that.

When do we cut the crap and get back to what really matters?