The Real World

I didn’t plan on ripping teachers another new one this week, but, well ... goddamnit, it’s just so easy, and so many of them are just begging for it.

Put yourself back in high school. You’re sitting in class half listening to a sexless 50-something expound upon some topic you wouldn’t need to know about even if you lived three lifetimes. She’s sporting a fresh beehive hairdo, stockings with a two-foot run up the back and a plain plaid dress that couldn’t induce a boner in a Sing-Sing lifer on Viagra. As you do your best to ignore the droning coming from behind the podium, she briefly – oh, so very briefly – catches your attention with the phrase, "... some day when you’re out there in the REAL WORLD ..."

As a high school kid, this phrase always jolted you out of your daydreams, right? You knew you’d never really need to know how to find the value of X, or even Y for that matter, but you figured there just might be something important to learn about this mystical "real world" that teachers love to scare kids with. These pillars of mediocrity refer to it as if it were some unnavigable labyrinth that can only be made understandable through the great wisdom they impart with chalk and dittoes.

What a crock of horseshit.

How dare any teacher try to compare anything about high school to the "real world!" We work in goddamn Oz, if you want the truth. It all goes back to the double standard thing I whined (or gloated) about a few weeks ago. We’re seldom held accountable, it’s damn near impossible to fire us and you can earn a decent pension for 30 years of incompetence and general meanness.

We have a lot of teachers who draw a hard line when it comes to accepting late work. They’ll say, "Some day when you’re out in the real world, you boss won’t tolerate late work!" That is, unless you’re a teacher, then you can get away with it all the time. We are always being asked to produce things by a certain date, yet we can get away with ignoring due dates like George Bush ignores facts.

It’s only December, but I can tell you right now the exact dates and times when we have to have our grades turned in for each of the next three marking periods. Yet every quarter, after the 7:30 a.m. deadline on those days, our beleaguered data clerk has to run around the school with a list of at least 20 teachers who just couldn’t get this task done on time. The punishment for those teachers? Ain’t none! Because we work in La-La Land, where there aren’t any real consequences and we can get around to doing shit whenever we feel like it.

But let a kid pull the same stunt, and you can bet your lamest excuse that the kid isn’t going to get a bit of slack. They gotta get that kid ready for the real world, damn it!

Teachers also like to tell kids that in the real world, they won’t get second chances. In what fucking universe do they not allow second and even third chances? If a teacher gets observed by her principal and her lesson turns into a Chernobyl-level disaster, does she get her sorry ass fired? No. She gets one of those non-existent second chances. If she fucks up the second time? Then she gets ... another chance. But will she play by the same rules with the slugs in her 7th period who just can’t seem to get that extremely important five-page typed report on Francis Bacon turned in on time? Fat chance.

Teachers also love to tell kids that they can’t be late once they’re out working in the real world. Now, here’s one lesson with which I am in one hundred percent agreement. Teaching kids to show up on time for things is one of the most important things we can teach them. I’m always telling them, "When you do start working, show up when you’re scheduled to work and show up on time, and it will be almost impossible to get fired." But it seems this lesson applies only to kids and not to teachers. Let me explain.

We have a strict tardy policy for the kids, and most teachers follow this religiously, which is great. Unfortunately, there is no punitive system for teachers who are late to school, which is the case with a huge chunk of the staff. Our principal has had to resort to putting letters of reprimand in the permanent files of perpetually late-arriving teachers. (Yes, there really are permanent files!) Yet some of these teachers, these Sentries to the Entrance of the Harsh, Cold, Unforgiving Real World, still can’t drag their asses through the front door by 7:00 a.m. What happens to them at this point? Nothing. They keep their job, the don’t get docked and they keep getting more chances. I guess that means we’re not in the real world, because at most jobs their asses would be toast.

Then there are the kids who get the real world lecture about using foul language, and how you won’t get very far "with a mouth like that!" That’s right, Teach, you tell 'em. You don’t hear the president using gutter language like "He’s a major league asshole," nor do you hear the vice-president stooping so low as to telling someone "Go fuck yourself" while on the the Senate floor. Okay, bad example.

I’d like to give you more examples, but I just don’t have the time right now. I’m a full-fledged teacher slugging it out in the daily jungle that is public education, and responsibility calls. I have to get to Blockbuster to pick up tomorrow’s video. I’m going to kick back for a week while the kids watch season one of MTV’s The Real World.

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.