Taylor the Teacher

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I’m not even going to bother linking to anyone else on this because I don’t have time. I’m busy so many hours a day trying to work with teenagers and fulfill all the paperwork requirements put on me by this politicized school system just to enable me to continue to work with these young adults that I really don’t have time to research blogosphere opinion on this one.

The gist of the Miss South Carolina Teen story is this: a teenager worked very hard in a very demanding society and became one of the top fifty in the nation at something that the adults in her short life have deemed valuable for years and years, in multiple venues, in every medium she’s been acquainted with since birth. We, the “adults” of the United States, in order to form a more aesthetically pleasing “union” of lovely, smart, rich people with perfect breasts and wrinkle-free Dockers…. do ordain and establish that those who look good will prosper.” She played the game we taught her to play. And she is one of the best at it.

Then she was put on television in front of the whole nation, in a contest that’s known to be mainly about how good she looks in a sequined dress, and asked a reasonably difficult question that she flubbed on. Maybe this is just my liberal “progressive” teacher education talking, but I’m pretty sure that endlessly mocking a child that’s trying her best is no way to teach. Maybe my education has led me far astray. We’ll have to defer to King George about that. Maybe we should give her a standardized test so we can know for sure. But only if it takes up class time and makes her stay up at night with hives. (After all, stopping a menace like me is worth it.)

Besides, even if she is a “bimbo,” does she deserve all this?

Now, before the shell-shocked veterans of the pageant system tell me how hard it is being them and how most of those girls are bitches, let me reply. Miss Teen South Carolina might be a bitch behind closed doors who plays the game but is really cold-hearted. Even if that’s true, she’s hardly our biggest societal problem. A girl who wants to please, tries her best, and falls short can hardly be a threat to our society. Nor would she be unusual if she took out her frustrations on the backstage sequins around her.

But, I wholeheartedly believe she doesn’t. She is a sweet, well-mannered girl, or she wouldn’t have made it this far – we don’t put up with shit around here in these fascist states of America. The ones who are really a threat to our society couldn’t make it five minutes in that sequined show-n-tell.

She might be a bitch, but I seriously doubt it. Most teenagers are good-hearted. And I’m on the “front lines” that people are so fond of talking about. I work with middle class American teenagers every day. I don’t know this girl. But I know that most of the teenagers I meet are decidedly NOT criminals, or even rude. They are well-mannered. They are good people. A might better than most adults in that school. Really.

But they are young.

They are young.

They are young!

When you’re talking about an American teenager in 2007, you’re talking about someone who was born, for the most part, between 1990 and 1993. Only the oldest ones were even alive when the Berlin Wall came down. They weren’t around when Reagan was president. They don’t remember the L.A. Riots or the First Gulf War.

They only just figured out their own menstrual cycles and wet dreams. They really do have enough on their plate. Plus most of them have jobs, pay their own car insurance, and have checking accounts. Some of them have babies. Too many of them have infantile parents.

If the behavior, styles, tastes, values, or educational achievement of these CHILDREN doesn’t meet our expectations, it doesn’t seem logical to me to blame the ones that can’t remember the OKC bombing, who were only 12 on September 11. It seems more logical to me to blame the adults. But which adults?

They are CHILDREN doing the best they can to grow up in this “right criminal world we’ve created.” (A loose quote from one of my favorite books “A Clockwork Orange,” which I can’t look at to double check , and get lost in fantastic uses of language, because I taught it last school year and my book is still in the classroom. )

Alex and his droogs aside, these teenagers are CHILDREN. Whatever they are, they are OUR responsibility. The only way to make things better is to stop denying and blaming our own problems on the school system and the kids, and deal with the real problems. The problems the adults have created here. But which adults?

If it makes everybody feel better, I’ll take the blame. Fine. It’s the teachers’ fault the kids are screwed up. It’s our fault the adults are screwed up because our vocational ancestors screwed up their parents. I strenuously deny this obsessive teacher-blame is valid, but even so. There far are more parents than teachers in the world, so I guess I’ll take the heat.

So, now that the issue of blame is settled, as the adults, what can we do? Let’s fix this. Now.

Miss South Carolina Teen is a CHILD. Leave her alone.