When I left the no-excuses charter school that I wrote about, I promised myself that I would never again work in a school setting where the students are referred to as “scholars”. Sure enough, in the district I work at, it’s all “scholar this” and “scholar that” all day long. I’ve heard some mention that people from my district visited with my heinous ex-employer to learn the secrets behind their success but I’m not 100% certain. I would guess that the success was *not* attributed to cherry-picking, being able to afford multiple teachers in a single classroom, or the discrimination against children with special needs that result in great test scores. Perhaps the folks from my district were told that referring to kids as “scholars” was a reason for exemplary test scores.
Besides the fact that it sounds pretentious as hell, when you use the word “scholar” it becomes easier to forget that you are working with a fragile child. Here are some of the things that were done to “scholars” at my last school:
-School work blown up to poster size in the hallway that was marked with the words “Unacceptable Work!”
-Locking bathroom doors during times of the day when it was deemed that there were too many kids in need of relief.
-Putting pressure on families of children with special needs to leave the school after years of being taught by unqualified teachers who lacked the ability to help them.
-Making kids so uptight that they wet their pants. (Yes, this happens at all schools but not to the extent that I witnessed in five years.)
When you think that someone did these things (and more) to a child, it’s hard not to be angered or saddened. It seems easier to some to perpetrate these acts upon some vague concept of a learned academic.