Hypersensitivity harms entire education system

It really is a shame that the education system in our country is slowly changing to cater to whining, lazy students and oversensitive, litigious parents.

Between parents suing teachers for disciplining students, mandatory sensitivity training and watered-down classroom content, the education system is failing to provide students with anything more than a chaotic, feel-good use of their day, with sports and clubs afterward.

This nonsense creates a stressful situation for teachers and does a huge disservice to students, who will only realize how ill-prepared they are for the real world once it is too late.

Here at UConn, many students are excited for the prospect of joining Teach for America to help inner-city students. Hopefully their time in the schools will be better than that of Joshua Kaplowitz.

Kaplowitz graduated from Yale with a degree in political science. After graduation, he turned down a high paying job with a consulting firm and left his job with Al Gore's presidential campaign to join Teach for America (TFA) as a 5th-grade teacher in a low-income section of Washington, D.C.

Before potential teachers can enter classrooms as TFA instructors, they have to go through what is sometimes referred to as "teacher boot camp." When Kaplowitz arrived, he was annoyed to find that so much of the training he received was focused on sensitivity and not on actual classroom management or effective teaching techniques.'

In an article for City Journal, Kaplowitz describes spending hours on an activity where everyone stood in a line and "took steps forward or backwards based on whether [they] were the oppressors or the oppressed in categories of race, income and religion."

Kaplowitz later said he was "completely ill-equipped" for what was to come.

At Emery Elementary School, Kaplowitz was faced with a small number of disruptive students who were empowered - through D.C. public school regulations - to turn the entire school upside down at whim. After physically breaking up several fights between students, both in the classroom and on the playground, Kaplowitz was called into the principal's office and told that private investigators hired by D.C. Public Schools would be investigating him for allegations of corporal punishment.

Later in the year, Kaplowitz guided a disruptive student out into the hall with his hand on the student's back. This incident would be his undoing; the 8-year-old's mother was in the school, meeting with the principal to discuss putting her son in a school for emotionally disturbed children, when the young student told his mother that he had just been violently assaulted by his teacher, who had injured his head and back.

An emergency room visit revealed no injuries, but that didn't stop the mother from suing Kaplowitz and the school district for $20 million. D.C. public schools settled out of court for $75,000, but Kaplowitz took the case to court, where the judge promptly dismissed it and cleared Kaplowitz of the charges. Discouraged, Kaplowitz quit teaching. Unfortunately, he isn't alone in his experience. Pennsylvania and New Jersey surveys have shown a 30 percent increase in violence in elementary schools since 1999. The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article detailing violence against teachers, who are left with no recourse.

Besides the problem of lawsuit-happy parents, education systems are also causing trouble for teachers. Connecticut is now considering a law that would require all prospective teachers in this state to take extra courses about dealing with "atypical" students in the classroom (e.g. English language learners, the mentally retarded) on top of the requirement already in place for every teacher to take courses in special education.

If there's anything teachers don't need, it's more hoops to jump through. Students would be better served by teachers who spent more time learning about their subject area than those whose time was wasted learning to deal with students who should be in separate classes.

Everyone is not equal. As politically incorrect as that statement is, it's the truth. People learn at different rates and in different ways. Teachers cannot be expected to teach effectively to a classroom composed of students who can't speak English, students who are at a low level of reading proficiency, students who perform at an average rate and students who learn at an excelled rate. Rather, students should to be taught in separate classrooms that reflect their learning ability so that everyone can receive the best education possible and teachers can tailor their classes to effectively teach a specific group of students.

Basically, the solution is for everyone to accept the following ideas - students are not entitled to A's and B's; they must earn them. Teachers are in charge of classrooms and ought to have the power to enforce the rules. Everyone isn't equal, and everyone learns at different rates and in different ways. Once the education system starts to base itself on these ideas, schools will run more efficiently and students will be able to reach their full potential. Until then, schools will continue to sink deeper into the morass of politically-correct backpatting and sensitivity.