Taylor the Teacher

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I hate the law.

I hate the law for the same reason I hate rubrics. Rubrics delineate the upper limits of academic work for the sake of those who want the lower limits clearly spelled out so they can slide by. The law takes moral decision making down to the lowest level, where the only concern is getting caught. I’m long overdue for Quote Ice Cube day, but I’m going to do it anyway (since that’s what Cube would do.)

“The cops wanna catch tha nigga that won’t fetch.”

The cops in Ice Cube’s song don’t technically care if you’re doing anything wrong (as wrong is commonly defined among humans, outside of governments.) What matters is that you won’t fetch. Because matters of right and wrong are up to THEM.

All the better to catch you with, my pretty.

I would rather live in a world where more was expected of people. I think ordinary humans would do better than we’re currently doing. Not perfect, but better. Academically, society would be better off without rubrics or standards of any kind as long as we still offered learning to everyone who would take it. All the boats would float higher, as they like to say. Education should be free, available, and voluntary. Throughout life. For every single human.

Nobody should show up with a gun at your door and say you have to go to school, no matter how young you are. The day they started doing that, they fucked it up. For all of us.

It doesn’t matter that we “seemed,” at some nebulous point in the past, to be okay, or how long that bullshit situation happens to hobble along. No matter what the manner of death, the autopsy report will show that that moment (you know, the one where a guy with a gun showed up at the door?) was the cause of death.

Learning died the moment it became mandatory. So did morality.