The Most Important Child in the World
A few months ago I passed a billboard on the highway and I can’t get it out of my mind. The ad was for the Steward School, a very expensive private school in Richmond where I live. It reads “For the Most Important Child in the World…Yours”. The tagline might not make you angry, in fact you might nod your head in agreement. But I teach in an underfunded, grossly ignored public school and I couldn’t help clenching my teeth as I drove by the sign.
I am a mother of 2 delightful teenagers. I love them more than anyone else on the earth. I look at them when they are talking excitingly about something and think: “I would go to the ends of the earth for these amazing humans.” If you have children, you probably think the same thing. I do not, however, think that my 2 girls are the most important children in the world. I have spent a lot of parenting energy teaching them that outside of my house, they are no more important than any other person. Its the center of my parenting philosophy because I am a public school teacher and to me, thinking that everyone is equally as important, is the foundation on which our public school system rests. I know that my vision for public education is not what actually occurs. There are many children who do not have their people at home who love them more than anyone else in the world. Unfunded budgets, violence, concentrated poverty, mismanagement, narcissism, and systems of racism and oppression create a very unequal public school structure in most cities in America.
As General Romeo Dallaire asked in 2005, “Are all humans human or are some humans more human than others?” General Dallaire, was the leader of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda during the Genocide that occurred in 1994. He received information about the impending plans by the Hutus to begin elimination of the Tutsis in January, 3 months before the attacks began and begged UN commanders to let him take action to stop it. He was denied help and he watched the Tutsi people being slaughtered.
His question again: “Are all humans human or are some humans more human than others?”
What I know to be true, is that all human children deserve to be educated. The smart kids, the well-behaved kids, the talented kids, the clean and well-taken-care-of kids all deserve to be educated. The kids who come to school hungry and who have unstable housing, the kids with disabilities, the kids that don’t speak English, the kids that experience trauma or poverty…all deserve to be educated. The kid that has made mistakes and bad decisions? That child deserves to be educated. The one who throws things and pushes people and eats glue? that kid too.
Every child deserves an education and multiple opportunities for them to become the best versions of themselves. Why do parents think that education should be competitive rather than restorative?
Clearly the billboard that I saw does not ask people to think of every child. And the laws being passed in many states certainly do not address the needs of every child. There is a general feeling in our country that we need to fight for OUR children alone. If our kids are getting a substandard education, we should send them to private school or charter schools that single our kids out for success. If our kids are straight, we should prevent them from learning about queer people. If our kids are white, we shouldn’t introduce them to Black heroes. There is no thought of what every kid deserves, and to me, this is disastrous to the health of our republic.
By teaching your children that they are the most important children in the world, You are teaching them that other people don’t matter as much. They are learning that they deserve more than anyone else. They learn that to be successful, they must be the best, grabbing opportunity from their peers instead of acting as stewards of a collective future. When families leave the public school system because the schools are falling down or the resources are poor, they are leaving every other child to their fate. You are teaching your kids that with enough money, they can get anything they want…and you are teaching them to avert their eyes so they don’t feel bad when they surpass kids that do not have enough money to thrive. This culture of superiority is being taught to children who are already completely saturated with themselves.
During my 22 years of teaching, I have never experienced students who are so individually as self-absorbed as mine are now. They spend hours on their phones that have been programmed to show them content that appeals only to them. Every decision that they make is shared on social media, from what they think about their body, to their location. This self-absorption is not always something that kids seek out. It is being forced upon them. If they make a mistake, their mistake is completely public. It is exhausting to know that instead of a kid, they are constantly content creators for other people. The self-absorption is harmful for mental health and it is harmful to their sense of empathy and belonging. I see kids ignoring teachers and rules that “don’t apply to them”. During classroom activities, more than half of my students put their heads down and watch their phone, completely tuning out the learning experiences happening around them. My kids interrupt me mid-sentence to talk to another students across the classroom. I hear kids threatening fellow students when they accidentally bump into them in the hallways. Students play music from their phones while teachers are teaching in front of the class. Sometimes they are watching TV in class and sometimes they are face-timing with a parent…parents who know that their children are suppose to be learning in class. I watch kids walking out of class when they want to and destroying things in my classroom because they feel like they have no responsibility to our community.
Each year during the first week of school, I introduce my students to the Iroquois and Cherokee system of farming called “The Three Sisters”. Corn, beans, and squash are planted together so that each plant contributes to the health of the entire crop. Corn is strong and tall, creating stability. Beans produce nitrogen, which keeps all three plants healthy, and squash grows low to the ground, keeping away weeds and the soil moist. The three plants as a symbiotic trio, grow far healthier than each individual. This story serves as an allegory for what I wish for my classes. We are far stronger if we use our strengths to help each other. COMMUNITY over the individual. This is what I wish for their learning environment.
Kids believe that they do not have to follow communal guidelines or work to nurture the community in which they exist. This is being taught to them…by parents, in school environments, and this individualism shows up everywhere; from never learning each other’s names, to never cleaning up their trash or the mess that they made in the classroom. And taking care of each other at school? They have been taught by their parents that they are responsible for only themselves. They rarely help each other without being asked. All teachers are feeling this selfishness from their students. It is not one type of kid…it is most of them.
I work in a school that’s structure is being held up by several wooden beams that are wedged between the bricks. My school is falling apart. My kids constantly see the lack of care and responsibility that our wider community feels towards them. When they get on their phones, they are tuning out the lack of elective classes, the freezing cold or boiling hot classrooms, the broken tiles and roaches that crisscross the floor no matter how hard our custodial team cleans. They are tuning out the teachers that don’t believe that their students will amount to much. And the kids who have the means to leave, go to private schools…like Steward or move to better school districts. Families abandon the schools without a second thought because their children are the most important children in the world. Instead of pitching in, advocating for funding, and creating mutual support systems, public schools are being abandoned. Teachers are crowd-funding for copy paper in public schools, while private schools have innovation labs and Olympic-sized swimming pools. Charter schools only make the disparity worse.
All humans are human and no one is any less human than any other human. Teach this to your children. Send your kids to public school. They will not have the best physical environments, but they will understand that they are responsible for everyone in our community and that the community is responsible for them. Send your kids to public school and work to gain resources for everyone, not just for your own kids. The immense problems that we all face cannot be solved by individuals. Be part of the village and stop letting your kids be assholes. Humanity (especially teachers) will thank you.
