Classroom Terrorists (Unwarranted Student Promotion: Part I)
The public school system’s adherence to social-emotional learning theories catalyzed the catastrophic and nonsensical professional practice of promoting students to higher grade levels without mastery of prior grade-level content. The conscious and misguided choice to elevate students above their comprehension has created insurmountably disastrous effects in public education that appear as a variety of negative phenomena: student illiteracy, classroom terrorism, a national teacher shortage, teacher absenteeism, and a system-wide loss of accountability at every level. These negative consequences are a direct result of the system’s decision to cease retention of students, and they cannot be reasonably discussed, understood, or resolved by looking at them individually. When analyzed comprehensively, though, it becomes clear that unwarranted student promotion is a system-destroying practice that amplifies injustice and prohibits students from experiencing freedom. I will address each phenomenon as individually as possible before fully connecting them and describing their collective consequences.
Allowing students to ascend to higher grade levels without mastery of prerequisite skills is an unsustainable practice accompanied by negative, system-wide ramifications that compound year-after-year. To help understand the compounding consequences, visualize each elementary grade, kindergarten through fifth, as a curriculum book, each book of equal size and educational value. A kindergartner is expected to learn the kindergarten curriculum book, a first grader the first grade curriculum book, and so on up the system. Accordingly, the kindergarten teacher is obliged to teach the kindergarten curriculum book, the first grade teacher the first grade curriculum book, and so on up through the grades. It all seems so logical. But when we elevate students that have not mastered necessary skills, that rational algorithm breaks.
Imagine a kindergartner promoted to first grade without mastering the content of their kindergarten curriculum book. That student carries an additional burden not placed on other students that were appropriately promoted. Instead of walking into their first day of first grade with only a first grade curriculum book in hand, those students promoted without academic justification are weighed down with additional kindergarten curriculum book cargo. Already struggling and tasked with learning more knowledge in an academic year than their on-level peers, fresh learning gaps emerge, comprehension is stifled, and unwanted behaviors can start to emerge. When policy dictates the continuous promotion of students no matter their level of academic mastery, expectations become pointless, grade-level content becomes meaningless, and each additional year of unwarranted promotion serves only to magnify, exacerbate, and intensify student knowledge deficits. Far too many children are reaching fifth grade with an entire tower of curriculum books they failed to master, some with the kindergarten book still at the bottom of the stack. It is not possible for children to achieve success when they do not have the prerequisite skills necessary to engage with their grade-level content, and that eventually radicalizes some children to a life as a classroom terrorist.
Classroom terrorists are the students so far behind, nothing (and I mean nothing – no amount of small group time, special education minutes, Tier 3 interventions, or support systems) in our modern public education system can help them. They are students that can no longer safely engage with classroom content because the failed public school system and the adults that operate it promoted them above their comprehension. Classroom terrorists are the students more comfortable blurting out all sorts of raucous bullshit and fucking around than putting a pencil tip to a piece of paper. Their learning gaps are uncrossable canyons, new grade-level skills are literally impossible to achieve, and they no longer participate in their own education. These students are the behavioral kryptonite of most teachers, and unwarranted student promotion justified by social-emotional learning theories is the process that radicalized them. Classroom terrorists are students that social-emotional learning theories have fully failed.
In case you were unaware, sitting in class all day doing nothing because you literally can’t do anything is fucking boring. As well, many of us have had the experience of sitting in a foreign language, math, or computer science class while simultaneously not having any fucking idea what was happening at any fucking moment in time. It’s a bewilderment that can only be experienced by the ignorant, and it is scary, unsettling, and nerve-racking. It is also the experience many of our students have been promoted into, and it is unjust. We must realize that a system promoting students out of comprehension and into illiteracy is unacceptable and incapable of providing the uplifting benefits necessary for students to experience freedom by pursuing their dreams.
