No Child Left Behind in American Society

I am currently tutoring a 5th grade student, who is the elder daughter of my landlord.  This child will be referred as M in the rest of this post.

I’ve been always praised for my teaching skills.  That is exactly why I rarely teach anyone, including my younger siblings.  I take education very seriously.  When I train someone, I give more than my 100%. Therefore, I would like to instruct only those who could respond to my dedication in equal measure.

However, M is the girl who has compelled me to break my prerequisite 2 years ago.  I ended up tutoring her for 4 months then.

It was her mother, a recent immigrant from Korea a year before, who began to ask me to translate unfamiliar English terms into our native language for her daughter’s homework.  It was easy to do so with Math. With the English assignment, the process was much more involved.  There was no way my landlord could handle it without fluent English and cultural knowledge about American society.

So, I reviewed how M completed her reading log on one day.  She read a book.  Then, she recorded the time spent on it.  M copied the entire story for the summary.  Finally, M got her mother to sign off on the assignment.  M had done her English homework in this manner over a year.

I asked M whether her teachers ever taught how to complete the reading log.  The answer was No.  I then inquired M whether they ever examined the contents of this assignment.  Again, the answer was No.

She was meeting a tutor, a college student, regularly at the local library.  I asked whether this person helped M with her reading log.  The tutor prodded this little pupil to continue the way she had done all along.

Based on M’s replies, I realized that the school assignments were expected to be completed with the parents’ aid to begin with.  And, teachers presumed that parents knew what the school expected out of them without spelling out the details.  Even if parents sought help from paid tutors, the latter, who had grown up in this kind of neighborhood without the proper instruction themselves, weren’t equipped to compensate for the deficiency from school.

Right away, I realized that this educational paradigm, at its elementary level of public school, was still stuck in the 1950s.  That was the era when most women stayed home.  This factor forced most of the informed ones to live their lives in the middle class.  They certainly played a great role in nurturing their children’s minds at home.

Today’s middle class doesn’t have these women.  They have long migrated to the upper middle class by having pursued higher education and professional careers since the 1960s.  These women may not have time to help their children’s assignments.  However, they have the disposable income to make the alternative arrangements to meet the school’s expectation.

The consequence for the middle class communities was the loss of leadership by these women.  My landlord had acquaintances through M’s school and extracurricular activities.  However, she hadn’t received any advice from other mothers at all.  As most of them handed off the full responsibility of education to their children’s schools, these parents were largely clueless as to what they were expected to do at home with respect to academics.

The ripple effect was also with children.  If there were students who knew how to complete their assignments properly, others could follow the example.  Without such peers, it was a blind leading the blind in this kind of community.

In effect, today’s middle class is no different from the African-American communities that have worsened after the civil rights movements.  Both have lost their educated elites largely to the upper middle class neighborhoods.  American society has merely exchanged gender and racial segregation with the economic one.

It meant that the public has erroneously blamed the schools and teachers for the decline of our educational system.  They have been doing exactly the same as before.  What has changed is the composition of our communities, especially in the middle class.  It no longer has those who can shepherd and serve as role models for younger generations.

These factors were what I’d gathered upon reviewing M’s quality of English homework.

Without ever having been instructed, M basically glanced at each book.  Out of this prolonged habit, she had developed nothing but pretension, the educational cancer in American culture.

I could see what kind of future was ahead of M if she didn’t correct her habit at that juncture.  She might get by all the way to college.  However, she possessed a great chance to be marginalized in reality all because her parents didn’t know the rules of the society.  From a child’s perspective, that was a profound injustice that would shape one’s life forever.

I was certain there were many other children who were headed to the same direction as M, starting with my community.  However, as a delinquent elite, I could only do what was possible within my realm.  Very grudgingly, I volunteered to tutor M.

For her to complete her reading log correctly, she needed to find out the meanings of the words in each new book she picked up.  M had to train herself to summarize what she read.  She should learn to deduct the lesson of a story.  Without these disciplines, M had no way to measure up to her potential of reading comprehension and writing skills.

M had never met any authority figure with such a rigorous standard. She didn’t take me seriously initially. That was countered with no help whatsoever with her homework.  She had difficulty coping with a rejection by an adult figure for the first time in her life.  Just to be able to complete her other assignments, M began to follow my lead.

She once asked me why I insisted on over-preparation for her school work.  Then, I showed her the map of the United States and explained how many elementary schools were within the country.  She could sense the scale of her town against the nation.  I explained how her school’s standard was one of the lowest in American society.  If M were accustomed to this yardstick, she wasn’t going to be able to handle the greater expectation as she advanced to the higher grades.

The other deficiency in M’s English was her lack of social manner, a critical purpose of the verbal language.  It was just as important to learn how to communicate one’s thoughts as what.  Therefore, M was better off learning the social etiquette of the highest echelon.  If she were equipped with such, she could always lower it, when it was appropriate.  However, it was virtually impossible to make the adjustment in the opposite direction in the mirroring case.

That was the lesson from my English teacher in Korea during my childhood.  And, I’ve witnessed how true it was with one of my subordinates at the Wall Street firm where I had worked.  She was a top graduate from a highly regarded state university.  However, she had difficulty working with our support staff.  I didn’t have the problem when I approached them.  The difference between us was the verbal courtesy.

I instructed M to say, would you or could you please, when she asked me something.  Since I wasn’t her peers, I informed her how inappropriate it was to say, can you, to an adult.  However, this habit was difficult to break.  Whenever she used the expression of my ability to me, she was met with indifference. Over time, she learned to correct herself or to take time to employ the phrase of my willingness.

The biggest challenge with M was to get her out of the ESL (English as a Second Language) class.  This program might have a good intention.  The reality was quite the contrary.  Children do feel less pressure in this class.  However, while they are placed in such, their overall progress aren’t well observed by their teachers.

My younger sister couldn’t shake her low self-esteem off for quite a while, regardless of what anyone said to her.  On one day, she searched for her past report cards, as far as from her public elementary school in New York City.  Then, she stared at the one from her first grade while she was in the ESL class.  All her grades were satisfactory’s.

As an adult, she realized that her teacher gave those grades for not knowing my sister well.  However, as a child, she had internalized all the marks as the stamps of her mediocrity in everything.  Throughout her entire educational period, she resisted to break out of this stigma.

Having seen this consequence to my own family member, I set my goal to get M out of her ESL class as fast as possible.  I had 4 months to accomplish this task. So,  I reviewed her homework throughout the week.  On each Saturday, she was tested for each week’s volume with respect to new words she had learned.

On her first 8 tests I had devised, M received Fs.  With each delinquent grade, I showed her where she had improved, and how steady the progress was.  As an instructor, however, it was completely demoralizing. I proposed to M a weekend review before the exam.  After one try, her grade jumped to C.  At that point, M suddenly began to believe in herself.  She was shooting for an A herself from then on.

For me, it was a lesson that an ordinary child needed to be lifted first to a certain level to recognize a possibility for excellence.  Then, he or she could motivate himself or herself toward that goal.

M looked forward to the weekend review more than the test.  It took another 4 weeks for her to move up to Bs.  Then, in another 4 weeks, she finally received an A, with a very comfortable margin.

I made each weekly exam just a little more difficult than that of the previous week.  M had to learn to listen to my instructions more carefully as time went on.  She embraced the range of definitions of each word, as she grew to learn the broader application of abstract definitions than literal ones.  Using each vocabulary with the proper grammar was found to be just as important as the meaning of the word.  M had to heighten her awareness of the reality to compose sentences of her own with the new vocabularies she learned.  The grade A meant progress in all of these areas.

It filtered into her school work as well.  M improved her marks by two levels in all subjects during the quarter I tutored her.  She also performed well enough in the state’s standardized tests to be placed out of the ESL class.

After 4 months, however, it was me who was completely burned out.  I had to repeat the same instruction at least 10 times for M to absorb anything new.  On each Saturday, I spent 8 hours straight for the weekly review and the test.  There was no way a school teacher could be entirely responsible for a child like M.  And, I was convinced that parents couldn’t attempt home-schooling their children unless they were academically gifted.

Once placed out of the ESL class, my landlord also shifted her focus for M against my advice. The mother spent the next two years enrolling M to various music competitions.  M’s academic work took a back seat.  M was regularly tutored during her 4th grade.  However, her instructor didn’t teach what she wasn’t very good at, which were reading comprehension and writing.

So, my landlord has circled back to me with a sobering lesson under her belt.  She learned that reading comprehension and writing were critical ingredients of the academic foundation.  And, these two didn’t come overnight.  Most of all,  they had to be taught by competent instructors, which were scarce in our community.  This time, she was willing to pay me, $5 more than to the previous tutor.

M also recognized that the base she had built with me sustained her until this point.  As she wanted to move to the honors class, she realized that she needed to return to the drill.

Their belated revelation was welcoming.  Yet I resisted tutoring M as long as possible, as I knew what I would be dealing with.   In the end, I’ve decided to complete my duty with her that I hadn’t quite finished 2 years ago.

However, I soon came to realize that my definition of no child left behind turned out to be different from that of M and her mother.

M wanted to have our tutoring sessions at the local public library.  I didn’t understand why, as a child with difficulty focusing against even small noises at her home.  And, I couldn’t comprehend why she wanted to exhibit to others that she needed help with her academic work.

I soon realized that a tutor was a sign of economic wealth she wanted to show off in public.  In effect, I was her adult servant.  Joining the honors class was a status symbol, instead of academic accomplishment.

That wasn’t just her own mind at work.  Her mentality spoke of what she had consistently soaked up from others, both adults and children, in the last 2 years.  Just about all mothers tried their best to make each of their children to fit in at any cost.  If some had tutors but others didn’t, that inequality became the subject of entitlement.  M turned out not to be a child left behind in American society any more.  She was already conforming to its value system quite well.

Sadly, it happens to be a warped sense of equality that dismisses individuality and the process for achievement.  This misguided notion is more off-putting in the middle class community like mine.  Reasons have no role to play.  Only the crowd mentality is what rules here.

Those who suffer the most out of this phenomenon are the children.

Why? No one wants to feel impotence while trying to enlighten those who are less or poorly informed.

Middle class is no longer the realm where people settle in.  It has turned into a phase that they desperately want to exit from, as soon as possible.  Therefore, those who serve in the middle class communities are disrespected by their members the most.

Under this atmosphere, it is difficult to retain good teachers.  It is even more so to attract new ones to replace them.  The problem isn’t just the school system.  Those who are poorly taught in school have the obstacle finding quality tutors as well.  It can be overwhelming to compensate for the institutional negligence a child bears.  Besides, he or she may be motivated by the wrong purpose.

Can the middle class save itself?

The mainstream media is banking on it to do so since the middle class has suffered the most out of the latest economic crisis.  That wishful thinking must be based on the fact that the civil rights movements originated from those who had been in the middle class.

That perspective is thoroughly erroneous since the media elites are ignorant about American history.  The civil rights movements were initiated by the educated elites who were economically repressed in the middle class.  Our founding fathers were the educated elites from their native country as well.

The United States, in effect, is a country formed and maintained by the marginalized elites of their times.

Here are the consistent factors of the political movements initiated by this constituent.  They know how to frame a justification for the revolt against the system.  Our forefathers defined equality as the sanctity of mankind, which was denied by the British sovereign.  Civil rights activists demonstrated how a society founded on the idea of equality couldn’t endorse preference based on arbitrary standards against citizens.

Both of these rebellions rendered historic changes in the United States.  However, it has suffered so much longer afterward because they were initiated by the marginalized elites.

Why?  Both founding fathers and civil rights activists focused on their self-interests.  The former are always praised for having created a political system with checks and balances among three branches. Unfortunately, this complex is all for maintaining a plutocracy, a society that exists for the wealthy’s benefits.  The United States, as a country, isn’t designed to demand any accountability from plutocrats.

Being able to retain one’s property as an elite was something that an aristocracy didn’t grant.  This very uncertainty was what made aristocracy functional.  Our forefathers eliminated this critical element in the country of their own.  As they gave birth to a nation from the elites’ perspective instead of the ruler, they ended up leaving a system with blooded history to follow for centuries.

Civil rights activists didn’t question the system that was designed to maximize one’s self-interest at any cost.  They fought for the equal access to conform to this very societal rule that had exploited them.  In turn, plutocracy became available beyond white men.  Few minorities who reached the American dream, however, must have realized how perilous it was to maintain their social status as they were expected to spend far much more than what they earned.  Civil rights movements, in the end, transformed the activists and minority elites to comprehend why exploitation of the underprivileged was necessary.  The newly privileged had to be glad not to be the societal prey any more and be conscious of retaining their hard-earned status.  All in all, civil rights movements ended up perpetuating our dysfunctional system with more pronounced class divisions.

In short, marginalized elites are more poorly educated than the privileged.  It leaves the former with limited capability.  The pattern of a progress and prolonged decline, marked by the past marginalized elites, is the subject that confronts American society now.

Since the latest financial crisis in 2008, American society has accumulated a school of marginalized elites yet again, who are largely from the middle class and have been economically repressed. Their predicament, so far, is much worse than that of their predecessors.

The Occupy Movement was a parade of those who passed through our educational system just like M without ever having been properly instructed.  What they demanded was immediate equality, at any cost. Although their motivation was self-interest, permitted by our law, it wasn’t compelling enough as a rationale to gain the public’s support.  Although the movement fizzled, that didn’t mean that those who had participated understood the reason for the failure.

American society is in dilemma in the future no matter what happens, with respect to the current crop of marginalized elites.

Even if our economy recovers enough to recoup them, it is destined to suffer in the near future as they will push our system to even a higher degree than before to compensate for their lost economic opportunities of the last 6 years.  These people have no recognition of what has driven our system to its downfall.  They are desperate to maximize their self-interests at any cost.

If they find another opportunity to rebel against our system and succeed, they will turn our system into a tyranny of the majority.  That may be even worse than living under a communist regime.

How to address this grave issue?  That is the subject of another long post.

Meanwhile, I continue to tutor M knowing the grave consequence of abandoning the middle class.

 

Posted by Sydnee Lee on October 30, 2014

https://delinquentelite.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/no-child-left-behind-in-american-society/