The tears of children

The measure of a great teacher is not in the test grades of his students, or the supposed "learning" which accumulates like so much cotton-wool between the synapses of their brains, or even in the future achievements or happiness of your students. The measure of a great teacher is in how many students cry on the last day.

Or cry in general, really. I am not going to be so picky as to just limit it to the last day. I try to begin prepping my students to cry early on in the year, letting them know that far from being unacceptable to cry in class, it gives me great joy when they do so, and sometimes is the only proper response to my behaviour as a teacher. I ask them periodically if they would like to cry, and if the response is negative I will sometimes go further and ask what I might be able to do to change that. Furthermore, I tell them, that the tears of children are precious. So if they are going to cry, please let me know right before, and I will give them a glass jar to catch the tears in. Voodoo doesn't just require dolls, you know. And virgin's tears go for extra!

Unfortunately, I feel as though I have failed in one of my classes, and egregiously so. Throughout the whole year they have manifested a stubborn and rebellious cheeriness that just rankles me to no end. Despite the fact that I refer to them alternately as "children" and "evil children" they refuse to acknowledge being insulted. Though I use their names in the example sentences, and place them in the most embarrassing of "hypothetical situations" involving Michael Jackson and his monkey, I have not had a single complaint registered with the head of the school. I have even stooped to shooting them with a rubber dart pistol in hopes of inducing feelings of victimhood, and still have not generated the necessary angst and broken hopelessness one would expect from a group of teenagers subjected to a relentless barrage of withering criticism and absurdly petty demands from an arbitrary dictator of a teacher.

In their defense, though, it would appear that my methods were, perhaps, ill-advised. The reactions to being shot with the rubber suction-cup darts, for example, was often to smile sweetly, and place the dart in their pocket. Such passive-aggressivity should have indicated to me earlier that a change of method was called for. Not that all the responses were passive-aggressive. One student stole the pistol and in a fair feat of marksmanship, shot me in the back of the head while I was writing at the board. I have also been on the receiving end of at least one thrown pencil, (why do they think things thrown at them in rage need to be thrown back?) which left a mark on my shirt, and, I need not say, a spurt of dark joy in my heart.

If this violence had been the rule, I think I would have been able to successfully adapt my methods and break their wills sooner. But the outbursts of violence were rare, and the intervening period would see gifts of, for example, chocolate, or a box of cookies on teacher's day. Sometimes when a student went to the ice cream shop before class, they would pick up an extra goody for me. All of this had the end result of confusing my strategy, as it made it difficult to judge the effect my teaching was having on them. Contrary to exhibiting signs of weakness and depression, they seemed to draw strength from the class.

It is not as though I didn't try to change my methods - I did. Partway through the second semester, I realized that other teachers had already calloused these students by taking ostensibly useful and interesting information and presenting it in the most mind-numbingly boring and useless ways, ruthlesssly stamping out any possible spark of interest or applicability to their lives by focusing in on the most pointless and trifling detail while ignoring the larger conceptual picture. These teachers had really outdone themselves by utilizing the most outdated, soul-crushing and joyless methods of teaching. Moreover, the students were independently boosting their endurance by subjecting themselves to long hours of study at home, independently, as well as arising early in the morning, taking extra classes of language, dance, or subject specific tutoring on the side, and staying up late at night to do their homework.

Once I realised this, I knew that if I were going to leave a dent on these children's souls, I would have to make it past the good-humored armor, the patience and endurance they had developed over the years. I would need to get them to let down their guard, and then, when they were unsuspecting, I could savagely destroy whatever personal confidence or joy was left cowering in some obscure, darkened corner of their frail little hearts.

The idea was actually suggested to my by suggestopedia, and one of my student's journals. If you have never read about the language learning method known as suggestopedia, and would like to take a nostalgic trip down the weirdness that was the 60's and 70's, I cannot recommend highly enough doing some research on suggestopedia. Any language-learning method whose founder begins his webpage with "Suggestopedia is a science for developing . . . non-hypnotic methods for teaching / learning languages" ranks pretty high in my book. Furthermore, if you are going to be a lingual-psycho-learning guru, Lozanov is a GREAT name to go with this hairstyle. (Note picture.)

The student's (obviously selfishly-motivated) suggestion was that the only way this class could be improved was to bring cookies to the class, and give them to the students. As suggestopedia, (a NON-hypnotic method of teaching, it should be noted,) recommends creating a pleasant atmosphere for the students, by utilizing art, music, (this I had been doing since much earlier in the year,) soft colors and generally a warm and fuzzy demeanor in the classroom in order to lower their affective barriers, I recognized that my best hope for getting these children to break down crying by the end of the year was to soften them with treats, thus lowering their barriers, and then hit them with the abuse.

Thus began the campaign of random cookies. It had to occur at random intervals, because tests on chickens have revealed that positive reinforcement at random intervals had a greater effect on behavior than a consistent, predictable reinforcement. As I try to conduct my classes with an eye toward scientific method, I randomized not only the days on which cookie-reinforcement would be used, but also the stage in the class at which the cookies would be produced. Furthermore, the role the cookies played would also be varied. Sometimes the cookies were freely distributed to all. Other times they were given to students whose answers were particularly good. Once, when the students had not done their homework, I simply stood in front of them and ate "their" cookies for them. On an unrelated topic, it should be noted that the students showed a preference for jelly-filled cookies over simple butter ones. Chocolate, sadly, cannot be accounted for as a factor, since it was present to a greater or lesser degree in all the cookies.

As a corollary to my strategy of random cookies, I would also periodically buy a small cup of hot-chocolate for a student who appeared to be depressed. The hope was that buy buoying their spirits at their most vulnerable moments, they might be less prepared for the neglect and cold-hearted criticism that would ensue, and thus I could more easily bring them to tears when I turned on them.

Yet somehow, as the end of the year looms over us, all my careful preparations have been for naught. It would seem that the treats and the music have been effective in lowering their barriers, but have also instilled the children with a persistent belief that, contrary to all evidence and my outright assurances to the contrary, that I am fond of them. Of course, being the shallow little bastards that they are, this somehow translates into greater feelings of self-worth (ie- the "teacher likes me, ergo, I am likeable" fallacy, which totally disregards the supremely reasonable and rather self-evident possibility that A. that it is all a malicious plot to cause you pain and suffering in the end, or, B that IF the teacher did like you, the teacher's judgment is quite likely unsound to begin with.)

And thus it is that once again, yet another year draws to its conclusion, and a nagging sense of failure tugs at my heart as I bid goodbye to a still resilient, cheerful, hard-working and intelligent bunch of students. I will not forget them ever, even if every time I think of them it is with some regret over tears left un-shed.