Why do the teachers and students in high schools seek approval so much? It’s a perfect setting. Actually, everybody in high schools from the kids to the district supervisors up to the superintendent are in it for the approval. It’s an approval fair, a mutual admiration society.
Are we not seeking approval? You may not be, but I am. Still. I think many of us spend at least part of our days in a kind of quiet awareness that we are being watched by Brother forces that are perceived by many in an odd way to be superior to us.
It’s the Din of Being Watched, and it infuses and informs what we do all the time. It’s a close personal friend of what Jennifer in NJ and I call the Fear. The Din of Being Watched is real and at work in our society. It is increasing. The status of the teacher has been infected by a groveling gene, and teachers are not what they used to be.
Seeking approval in school buildings has become more important than reaching kids – otherwise why would we be destroying our nation’s youth right now? And make no mistake, our youth are being destroyed, systematically.
Why? Because laboriously over years a system has been set up based on data gathering (i.e. approval or not) that lets the average kids and stupid kids out of the equation, so that we have “good” and “bad” teachers, and stars and losers.
Of course, the kids are not stupid but they were made to be so perceived until we came along with CI, because everybody can learn a language and teaching can be fun and real and effortless.
So the arrival of comprehensible input on the scene, which brings to classrooms professional integrity because it brings human respect back into schools, bringing back the human element that has been missing, has been massively resisted by the Brother forces. Massively resisted.
We need approval. So what if it comes at the expense of children? As long as it doesn’t come at the expense of the College Board, right? They and their fellow corporations have a nation to run, and who else to run it, right? I mean, what role could teachers play in all of what is happening in our country right now?
Why depend on teachers, who, not unlike serfs, need to be watched and checked on constantly lest they not do their work properly, when there is a much more naturally superior segment of society, the College Boards and Arne Duncans of society, who can do the job much better. Why consult Krashen when you can consult Arne Duncan, right?