Apparently, the three "R"s aren't getting it done in school anymore, or so says one local middle school teacher.
Students at Bill Clifford, Jr. Middle School staged a protest in light of comments made by 6th grade science teacher Johnathon Longfellow, and community reaction that has followed has been equally heated.
"This is the most heinous things I've ever heard out of a teacher in my life," claims Martha Newberry, mother of 6th grade student Newt Newberry. "Mr. Longfellow needs to be removed from the classroom immediately!"
"I mean, we were just sittin' there talkin' and stuff, and all of the sudden, Mr. Longfellow goes off and says that horrible stuff," added Newt, in tears. "I mean, we're doin' nothin' wrong. He thinks school is all serious and stuff".
A group of about 40 parents and 80 students gathered near the flagpole of Clifford Middle School Monday to demonstrate their disdain for Longfellow and the methodology he applies to his classroom. Some parents plan to attend the Wednesday evening School Board Meeting to demand his dismissal.
"Honestly, you'd think I hit one of the kids by the way they're acting. Apparently, it's much worse to try to challenge them than to beat them," said a calm Longfellow as he was placing his personal effects into the trunk of his car. "In all my years of teaching, I've seen some bizarre things, but this event rests firmly upon the apex above them all".
Longfellow, a 24 year teaching veteran of the small southern school district, has seen the days of classroom education change in many ways, but the events of Monday morning, according to the educator, is indicative of the direction in which education is slowly sliding.
"I was attempting to lead the class in a critical thinking activity about global warming, based on information we had - strike that, I mean, I had - gathered off of the internet for them. As we were arriving at some conclusions, I challenged them to look at the information and to try to arrive at a decision on the causes of global warming, you know, whether it was being accelerated by man or if it were caused by inevitable forces of nature," claims Longfellow.
"After taking another 20 minutes to explain what 'inevitable' and 'accelerated' and 'nature' and 'man' all meant, I realized that most were not paying attention to the information and were simply repeating things they'd heard on TV, which are largely based on misinformation or, what's worse, politicians".
"Yeah, he was talkin all faggoty and stuff, usin' big words like 'indivisible' and stuff," said Raine Porter, a student of Longfellow's. "I mean, who he think he is, Dr. Doolittle or somethin? He just a teacher."
Continues Longfellow, "so, I told them to actually read the information for a change, working in groups (Longfellow claims that half of his students cannot read on a second grade level), and to come back to me in 20 minutes with a scientifically rational answer. Of course, I spent the next ten minutes explaining 'rational' to the group".
It was then that this little school turned heads across the nation. With one bold statement, Longfellow may have brought his teaching career to an end.
"So, ten minutes go by and we get back together. When asked for better responses, they simply stated the same thing they had twenty minutes before, except this time they claimed that they had the facts to back it up. When I asked them for the facts, they could not find any, and cited the television again. I pointed out that two of the articles - one about the "Little Ice Age" that ended in the mid 1800s and the fall line across Georgia that indicated that half of the state was once underwater - provided evidence that icecaps have melted once before and that it was more a force of nature than of man. I told them - and this is the apparent source of grievance - that 'if they took a minute to actually think for a minute, much of this would not be so hard'".
The powderkeg lit, students exploded into a frenzy.
"I started textin my friend, like "lol, he so crzy" and she texted me back with "nfw, o no he dint, he tel us 2 think?" Yeah, we were callin' our mommas right then and there," stated Porter.
"Apparently, they all had cell phones and they had all been very active during class with them. A parent actually showed up to my classroom door five minutes later. It's funny, I've tried to get that parent in here at least three dozen times throughout the school year, and she finally showed up today" said Longfellow, obviously disturbed. "I never knew that asking so mundane a thing would result in such fervor".
It's no surprise that a call for intelligent action in the classroom has created such a disruption at the Middle School. For example:
- In the Fall of 1999, parents directed a rally on school grounds against an administrative decision to implement a 30-minute-per-weeknight math homework policy to try to boost the school's math scores by practicing basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Parents complained on the basis that they couldn't help their children with the homework, despite its simplicity. When the former principal retorted by telling the parents that "if your kids paid attention in school, there'd be no need to help them". The comment resulted in the immediate dismissal of the principal and an abandonment of the policy.
- In 2002, the literacy program at Clifford Middle attempted to implement a writing policy program that encouraged thirty minutes of creative writing skills in class per day. After two months of the program, students rejected the efforts, claiming it intruded on valuable "talkin' time". Parents argued in favor of the student.
- In 2004, a Resource Office for the school was fired after giving an anti-drug speech called "Drugs are Bad - Pushers Are Worse". Parents of the students attending the speech successfully sued the School Board in a class action defamation suit, claiming that the R.O. was telling kids that their own parents were, indeed, worse than drugs.
Since 1992, tests scores at Clifford Middle have dropped from a one-time high of 98% success rates to an abyssmal 5% "barely meets" rate on CRCT testing. In the same span of time, free and reduded lunch applications rose from 2% in 1992 to 100% for the 2006-2007 school year. These numbers are surprising given that the communities that attend Clifford Middle have the highest per capita cell phone usage in the state and contain fifteen Mercedes Benz and Hummer businesses that enjoy the highest lease percentages amongst nationwide dealers.
"I guess it's a sign of the times," sighed Longfellow as he placed his articles in the trunk of his 1983 Honda Accord. "I shouldn't have said it in such simple English. If I had said something like 'provided that you fired off neurons that ran the course of your medulla oblongata and generated electricity in the gray matter of your cranium, you'd find it all elementary'. They wouldn't have understood three words of that...fact of the matter is, 99% of your readers wouldn't either".
When asked what he might do next for a profession, Longfellow remained pensive. "Perhaps I'll choose something more rewarding, working with things of greater intelligence and common sense".
Where and with whom that will be?
"Maybe in Antarctica, working with jellyfish" replied Longfellow.
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