Yeah, you heard me.
Rarely a week goes by that I don’t hear about a teacher or principal kissing a pig, shaving their head or being taped to a wall. These stunts, which not only keep community journalists employed, are designed to give students that extra nudge needed to achieve a specific goal.
For example, if all the kids score proficient or advanced on the CSAP exam, then the principal will be lowered from a 100-foot crane into a vat of boiling lava. Or, if the kids read 100 books or more in the month of February, then their favorite teacher will eat three jars of possibly salmonella-tainted peanut butter. The kids are clearly excited at the prospect of humiliating adults because, after all, what group of kindergartners hasn’t yearned since their days of infancy to stick it to the man?
The kids inevitably meet the goal. Then we have an assembly where the local media are invited, despite public flogging technically being outlawed since the days of the Roman Empire, and the principal says “Well kids I didn’t think you could do it but nobody spilled their milk in the lunchroom for 30 days, so I’m going to wrestle this 280-pound chimpanzee.”
The kids are winners. Snap a picture. Everybody’s happy.
But I don’t know.
Schools might be giving kids just the tool they need to survive in today’s avaricious business world. Because what have we learned in light of the recent economic downturn? We have learned that success means you can do anything you want.
If you’re a bank executive, you can play fast and loose with money, give people mortgages they can’t afford and still scrape by with your private jet. In fact, the federal government might even give you some extra money for all your trouble. You can drain your employees’ 401K and dump your stock when you see the company tanking because you’re a CEO. I bet Joe Nacchio’s teachers were all bald. We can even apply it to sports. You’re rich, you’re successful Alex Rodriguez. Why can’t you use steroids?
Why does success mean humiliation? Why, to encourage students to be successful, it has to come at the expense of others?
I like students having incentives to succeed. One immediately springs to mind. Teachers used to rely on this intricate set of letters to determine whether a student had succeeded or not. My memory is foggy but I think there was an A, a B, maybe even an F.
But, if I remember right, those became far too political. Students who weren’t getting the right letters felt bad. It was just easier to bean a teacher with a pie in the face.
Better yet, why don’t we extol the virtues of students getting high school and college diplomas and getting good jobs as incentives?
Nah, lame idea.
Bring on the pig.
