The Scourge of Stupidity

As someone who knows too much about the public school system, I dedicate today's column to the unsung geniuses of the K-12 sector: students and vendors. Whether for good or evil, these two groups represent the creme de la creme of our public education system. Kudos to our former and current governors, as well as our heroic legislature, for keeping the system up to snuff. In the meantime, Texas school districts are being penalized for our "leaders'" inability to solve problems to the tune of billions of dollars and a late start to the education of students.

Hello, Nurse!
A woman calls and, without giving her name, proceeds to tell me how hard it is to remember four passwords to access all the systems she needs for work. "My husband," she confides, assuming anonymity, "is a computer person, and he thinks it's silly that you have so many. I just can't get them all straight!" Click. The caller, it turns out, is a nurse. That would be the person parents entrust their children, to provide both wellness services as well as emergency first aid. Four passwords... remember medications. Four passwords... first aid protocols. I am worried that she will not be able to do her job if she can't remember four passwords without a complaint. I'm more worried that she'll do a pelvic exam on someone needing a Heimlich! HIPAA be damned, and forget FERPA. So what if a student who sees the sticky note on my monitor can then read all students grades? It's her precious memory that's being wasted. Idiot. I think I'll have her passwords reset weekly to random sixteen-character combinations.

P.S. She called from a school telephone -- from her desk, it turns out. So now she gets a reprimand from me and her supervisor. Even a child could think not to use a phone that could be traced.

Help Who?
Our school system has a help desk that takes all technology calls from the campuses. They are an intrepid and innovative bunch of folks who have to deal with all manner of questions. The telephone number for this group is emblazoned on all telephones in the school system, is e-mailed to every staff member using a computer on more than a weekly basis. It's on the bottom of every web page. We teach it to them at new teacher orientation.
"Hello, xxxxxxxxx department."
"Yes, um, my computer doesn't work."
"Have you called the help desk?"
"What's that?"
Caller ID to the rescue again. These are not neophyte teachers, backed against the wall by their young charges. These are grizzled, bluish-haired veterans who have been at the same job since before electricity was in vogue. We know. We see. We laugh.

Sadly, we transfer these folks to the help desk instead of putting in a work order to change out their computers with Etch-A-Sketch™ wireless devices.

The folks in the Help Desk industry even have a trouble ticket code for these folks :ID10T. You do the math.

Let me get an Expert on the Phone
A staff member is being walked through a set of instructions to connect her computer to a printer. We're talking Windows XP here, not a Burroughs 800-series mainframe. After the steps necessary to call up the control panel, then printers, then add a printer, she stops her helper.
"I'm sorry, this is just too complicated," she says. "Here, talk to Andi."
A pause, then a querulous, middle school voice. "Hi?" It lilts up.
"Do you know how to install a printer?" the help desk person says.
"Uh, sure," answers the sixth grader. "What's the IP address and do I need to create an output port?"
'Nuff said.

My Student the System Administrator
We had been having repeated problems with out computer network at a school. Teachers were complaining their students could not log in, they could not take attendance... in short, crazy-making. After much searching, we found that someone had plugged a server computer into the network. As the name implies, a server serves up things to its customers. Since computers are no smarter than the brooms in Disney's Sorceror's Apprentice, it began robotically serving up 'street addresses' -- IP addresses -- to computers around it. When we finally killed the connection to the laboratory, the teacher called in a huff.
"Why doesn't my lab work? What did you do?"
Short, tersely polite explanation followed.
"Oh," she said, unabashed. "That must have been my students. I was teaching them about servers and they must have plugged it into a network port. I told them not to!"
The teacher had no clue. Not in understanding what she was teaching, and certainly not in how to monitor what her students, clearly her technological superiors, were doing. They're the ones, after all, who turned on and configured the DHCP service that was so blithely readdressing computers around the school.

A postscript: a few weeks later, during summer school, the same teacher wrote the administrative user name and password to the campus computers on the white board, so her students could install software they needed. We're still picking illegal software off of them. The teacher is. not surprisingly, still gainfully employed.

I write these vignettes not just to vent, but to point out that it is vital that a teacher not only be a page ahead of their students, but really know the tools of their trade. Can you imagine Rembrandt not being able to teach his students how to make a brush or mix paints? Or set up an easel or stretch a canvas? The metasubject being taught is as important as the relevant syllabus entry.

It's not about teaching to the standardized test: it is about modeling intelligent humanity to the generation that will hold your life support plug in its hands.

It's not too late to worry.