Orland Evangelical Free Church | New York Times Readers and Middle Schools

On Saturday, March 17^th, the Times published an article about how teachers survive middle school. The survival of students is no longer in doubt: they own the place. Elissa Gootman's piece, "For Teachers, Middle School Is Test of Wills", remained on the Times most e-mailed list through Wednesday.

Social problems test the power of mainstream ethics. Can our society stamp out the use of meth? (No, nor even cut it.) Do we have the ability to prevent child abuse? (Less and less.) Do we have the cultural power to pass on literacy? (Unevenly at best.)

Gootman's piece is about anger - the anger of young teens in urban middle schools. The question is whether mainstream ethics offer ways to resolve the dysfunctions.

Teachers acquire "survival skills" or they leave. "How to snuff out brewing fistfights before the first punch is thrown, how to coax adolescents crippled by low self-esteem into raising their hands, how to turn every curveball, even the biting insult, into a teachable moment."

One teacher quoted in the story left middle school for high school after four years. "There was a lot more anger and outbursts. Twice as much time was spent on putting out fires; twice as much time was spent getting the class quiet. Twice as much time was spent defusing anger in the kids."

His exasperation is palpable even after four years: "Twice as much time was spent . . ." In New York City, middle school teacher retention rates are in the basement.

How do mainstream ethics handle this problem of anger in the young?

To begin with, we must retain aspirations for middle schoolers rather than giving up on them. JoAnn Rintel Abreu, an English and social studies teacher for sixteen years, "takes great satisfaction in trying to figure out how to reach adolescents." She says, "Middle school is like Scotch. At first you try to get it down. Then you get used to it. Then it's all you order."

At another school, Principal Jason Levy does not do "ability-based tracking" because he believes it leads to "a dumping-ground mentality."

So we're not going to dump any kid.

But this does not address the problem itself, only the resolution of those who have to deal with it.

In addition, then, we must recruit the most passionate people we can find for this work. Levy relies "heavily on Teach for America. Twenty-one of his teachers, nearly a third, are part of the program, which recruits recent college graduates." Passionate teachers will get through.

But, again, this ethic of leadership only seeks to maintain a reserve of strength against the onslaught of anger. The anger eventually exhausts even the passionate: "many leave after their two-year commitments."

Another ethic is to defuse anger in real situations and earn respect. One student calls a teacher fat. Instead of retaliating she counters, "Voluptuous," and proceeds to define the term. Another teacher brings cake from her birthday party to class. Still another plays basketball with students.

These tactics are often successful in defusing situations, but do not even constitute an attempt to resolve the anger itself.

Our last card is the one we never play as decisively as we'd like: training. When there's a problem, an ethical leader provides tools. So Gootman spends a fair amount of space analyzing the lack of specialized training for middle school teachers in "young adolescent psychology", among other fields.

Fair enough. All well and good. But one senses an evasion of the problem in the standard responses. The article doesn't deal with any of the reasons young teens might be so angry in the first place.

A clue emerges in a success story. Ms. Abreu, the one who likes some middle school with her Scotch, savors small victories: "The rewards come with breakthrough moments, like when a sullen eighth grader who rarely does his homework handed in a bitterly descriptive, beautifully written memoir about his father's new girlfriend, ‘the witch.'"

There was a glimpse at the problem of the angry young. But mainstream ethics flowed right past it.