Althouse: Follow your bliss: "Jeff Bliss launched into a tirade after being ordered to leave his World History class at Duncanville High School in Texas..."

May 9, 2013

Follow your bliss: "Jeff Bliss launched into a tirade after being ordered to leave his World History class at Duncanville High School in Texas..."

"... reportedly for asking too many questions. His impassioned speech telling his teacher Mrs Phung how to do her job, secretly filmed by a fellow classmate, has gone viral since it was posted on YouTube earlier this week."

241 comments:

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Bender said...: Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own

If the sisters taught you that one, well . . . maybe they did need some classroom correction.; 5/9/13, 3:24 PM
Shanna said...: I have forgotten 95 percent of the specific facts I learned K-12.

I was playing Are you Smarter than Fifth grader for a while on my phone and I remember a surprising number of state capitols. Dinosaur eras and geology, not so much.

I learned the friend, romans, countrymen speech in 10th grade and I still remember most of it, but I do sometimes get mixed up with all the 'brutus is an honorable man' comments.; 5/9/13, 3:25 PM
Balfegor said...: RE: CEO-MMP:

This kid dropped out of school, then went back. He's a smart kid (and apparently is a legal adult to boot) who cares about his education.

On what basis are we saying he's a smart kid? I mean, he might be, but nothing in what he says in the video makes me think he's particularly smart. There's some reason to expect he cares about his education, but the way he talks about it -- teachers need to "touch the hearts" of their students, and "excite" them -- makes me think he's just watched too many soppy movies.; 5/9/13, 3:26 PM
Baron Zemo said...: No the tenth grade was when there was big influx of lay teachers in place of the Xaverian brothers who taught high school.

Many of the nuns had started leaving the convent back then. So they had to add civilians who couldn't get away with the beat downs that the religious could give you.; 5/9/13, 3:29 PM
Bender said...: I was taking advanced calculus in HS and got a 750 on the math SAT (99 percentile).

Yeah, some super genius. Today, I look at any problem beyond basic algebra and scratch my head because it all looks like gobbledy-gook.; 5/9/13, 3:30 PM
Baron Zemo said...: Bender that is what caculators are for.

Didn't you guys ever watch Star Trek?

We should all have tri-corders now. I mean we already have the communication devices in the cell phone and the bluetooth. It is just in our ear instead of a badge on our chest.; 5/9/13, 3:32 PM
Baron Zemo said...: Talk about a badge on your chest.

Beam me off Yeoman Rand!; 5/9/13, 3:34 PM
Bender said...: Was it Bradbury or Asimov who wrote the story about calculators?; 5/9/13, 3:38 PM
Cody Jarrett said...: Balfegor:

I don't know what basis "we" are saying he's smart, but I'll be happy to share why I said he was smart, if you like.

Because he dropped out of school and came back--as an 18 year old sophomore. Maybe you don't think that's a big deal, but it really is.

And I don't see anything particularly wrong with how he talks about the teacher needing to teach. He's not wrong--good teachers do touch their student's hearts and excite them. At least the 2-3 good teachers I ever had.

Full disclosure, I dropped out of high school just before Thanksgiving of my senior year. I proceeded to work a few really bad jobs over the next couple of years until I figured out I needed to do something different and went to college.

Had I been excited about learning I'd have stayed, and not wound up as a 21 year old college freshman (really popular on weekends though).; 5/9/13, 3:42 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: But about this memorization thing -- Could you please tell us maybe two or three specific things you learned in, say, 10th grade?

Not just 10th grade but most of high school some of the things I learned and still know most of the courses: Most of the periodic chart and abbreviations for the elements. State Capitols. The Bill of Rights. Separate departments of the Federal Government. How laws are (supposed) to be made. The succession to the President in the event of his death. Geographically, the names of most countries as visible on a map (of course those things have changed over time) Biological names of the body parts and internal organs. (Biology anatomy dissection course). Taxonomic ranks. Major dates in US history of the various wars, important events, purchases of land, additions to the country. Names of the Presidents from Washington to present. (I still forget some of those and where they are in order like Fillmore and Polk)

Do I remember all this stuff in perfect detail? Heck no....I'm OLD. But I do know and retain most of it because we had to memorize and regurgitate on tests.

I didn't really learn my times tables in elementary school because I had a terrible teacher who refused to help us learn. We did learn to diagram sentences in 6 or 7th grade. That was fun.

I don't think they teach ANY of this stuff anymore. The kids are illiterate, unable to do basic math, have zero concept of history or much of anything else. They would be better off and probably learn more if we just let them get to work in the real world at about 15 years old instead of vegetating in public schools; 5/9/13, 3:42 PM
Michael K said...: "I'm intrigued by the folks saying that they had "a teacher" in x grade and x subject who was just going through the motions. I'm younger than most here, though old enough that my education pre-dates most of the complaints that you hear today, and I'd be hard pressed to think of more than a few teachers who weren't just going through the motions. "

Boy, what a generational change ! I went to Catholic school and high school in Chicago. The level of math and science could have been better. No labs. But I can't think of a really bad teacher. The closest was a mechanical drawing teacher who was probably senile. I made fun of him and he slugged me. My jaw still pops at times.; 5/9/13, 3:42 PM
Shanna said...: Oh! Here's another thing I remember for no reason I can figure except that I did a good job memorizing it:

Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species.

And I was not a science person.; 5/9/13, 3:49 PM
Matt said...: CEO-MMP said...
@Matt:

Eight, is it not possible that BOTH the teacher and the student behaved inappropriately and that BOTH should be punished accordingly? Why does it have to be one or the other? Geez!"

Really? That's your solution? Punish everyone?

Yeah. That won't harden the kids opinion of his teacher, and it certainly will help show the teacher how she's wrong.

5/9/13, 3:17 PM

CEO, the kid himself has said he acted inappropriately. Asking him to write a letter of apology is not telling him what to put into that letter. Once he turns it in, you read and react from there.

If this teacher is truly as bad as she appears to be, I could see the kid writing something like, "I am sorry for mentioning any inadequacies at a time that was not appropriate." If she truly is a terrible teacher, the principal will know this. Seeing that in the response, I would chuckle and say, "Looks good to me!"

I do not understand why giving this kid so much as a slap on the wrist is such an awful thing.

"That won't harden the kids opinion of his teacher..."

I think the kids opinion of the teacher is fairly hard already. (That sounded very wrong...)

To make it clear to everyone, the reason for giving the kid SOME kind of punishment is to communicate to him AND the other students that outbursts like his are not acceptable. In no way does that mean the teacher is awesome, good, adequate or barely competent. If what is alleged about her aptitude is true, she should have been fired before they hired her.

I can understand why people would just want to let it slide though I think you are mistaken. Is my position REALLY that difficult to understand? Not accept! Just understand without it meaning I want to in someway seriously harm or "extract revenge" from the student?; 5/9/13, 3:49 PM
Balfegor said...: RE: CEO-MMP:

And I don't see anything particularly wrong with how he talks about the teacher needing to teach. He's not wrong--good teachers do touch their student's hearts and excite them. At least the 2-3 good teachers I ever had.

I have never had a teacher touch my heart or excite me about whatever subject they were teaching. That doesn't mean none of my teachers were "good." The handful of "good" teachers were the ones who knew their subject, provided students with the information they were to learn, stepped through it clearly in lectures or discussions, and gave useful feedback on homework and exams. If the bar for a "good" teacher is exciting students and touching their hearts, well, perhaps 1 in 100, 1 in 1000 teachers is going to be a "good" teacher. That's an absurd bar. It's the stuff of fantasy. A teacher should not be expected to be an entertainer.

Rather, we should encourage teachers to work on mastering their subjects and mastering pedagogical techniques to communicate the information and skills they have to teach, and provide useful feedback. On the human side, I'd like it if teachers felt empowered to meddle with their students' lives when their students are truant or engage in petty lawbreaking but I doubt that's possible, given the culture of the US today.

Re: dropping out and coming back as a sophomore -- good for him! That's a good thing to do. Doesn't make him "smart." Makes him sensible, at least about his own life. And you don't have to be intelligent to be sensible (thankfully).; 5/9/13, 3:59 PM
Balfegor said...: RE: Shanna:

Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species.

I was reviewing this in my head just now myself. I could remember King Phillip Came Over From German Shores, and could remember what everything stood for except for From => Family. Couldn't remember that.; 5/9/13, 4:02 PM
Alex said...: A teacher should not be expected to be an entertainer.

Bullshit. It's not about being entertaining, but about possessing the ability to create a spark in young minds.; 5/9/13, 4:02 PM
Bender said...: No, your obsessive demand here is understandable. It is simply not acceptable.

We do not accept it.

Is that really that hard to understand?; 5/9/13, 4:03 PM
donald said...: I had a history teacher who always had two packs of Marlboros in his top shirt pocket and some nasty dandruff.

He woulda hated her.

He LOVED teaching WWII history and it showed. Dude was like a salesman.

He later quit smoking, but still had the dandruff.; 5/9/13, 4:03 PM
Matt said...: From you, Bender, that is not hard to understand at all.; 5/9/13, 4:06 PM
Balfegor said...: Re: Alex:

Bullshit. It's not about being entertaining, but about possessing the ability to create a spark in young minds.

That's lovely when it happens, I'm sure, but I'll be satisfied if teachers are just competent. Sparks and that sort of thing can be a happy accident.; 5/9/13, 4:07 PM
Alex said...: If a teacher can't create a spark, either the teacher is bad or the student is hopeless.; 5/9/13, 4:08 PM
Shanna said...: King Phillip Came Over From German Shores

That's cute. I didn't learn that one, i guess I just learned it all in a row. Like the books of the bible (although I learned that in a song, it was just all the books set to music).

I was happy if my teachers seemed to actually know the subject and were capable of teaching it. Passion is a bonus, not a requirement, but if you hate kids you probably shouldn't be teaching. That's probably the biggest problem in schools.; 5/9/13, 4:11 PM
Alex said...: Too many teachers are in it for the cushy union job. The entire public education system is corrupt and useless. Blow it up and give it back to the private sector where it started.; 5/9/13, 4:15 PM
acm said...: Meh. I don't think the decision to go back to tenth grade at 18 is necessarily sensible. It's sensible to get some education, but that's hardly the only (or the best) way to do it, especially if the public school model has given you trouble before. He could've gone for his GED, gotten it in a few months, and gone to trade school or community college with other adults. That honestly seems smarter to me---takes less time, your teachers will be used to dealing with adults.; 5/9/13, 4:18 PM
hulitoons said...: Actually, I'd first like to know why the teacher asked him to leave the class in the first place. I've read a couple articles on this and the 'reason' he was asked to leave is not addressed. We have seen clearly that some 'teacher' did something right since the student spoke well and with a level of poise.; 5/9/13, 4:27 PM
Alex said...: Still I do agree that an 18yo should have gotten a GED instead and gone to community college or learn a trade. Going back to 10th grade is humiliating and pointless.; 5/9/13, 4:34 PM
acm said...: @hulitoons, he kept asking her why they didn't get more time to prepare for the STAAR test. I don't know what the teachers initial answer was, but it didn't satisfy him and he wouldn't drop it. Of course, teachers don't have any control over STAAR and usually hate it as much as the students.; 5/9/13, 4:53 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I like him.; 5/9/13, 4:56 PM
Balfegor said...: Re: Alex:

If a teacher can't create a spark, either the teacher is bad or the student is hopeless.

No teacher ever created a "spark" for me. I was a decent student and some of my teachers were good by my lights, though I suppose they were uniformly bad by yours. But then, I grew up in a respectable Korean-American household, where children were expected to go to school and study whether their teachers were "good" or not. And if I'd complained that my teachers were bad because they didn't excite me or touch my heart or create some "spark" in me, well, after my parents got their breath back from laughing so hard, I suppose I'd have been punished for neglecting my duties.; 5/9/13, 5:07 PM
Baron Zemo said...: Wait a minute....if you were bad...did you have to go out in the yard and dig up the Kimchi?; 5/9/13, 5:14 PM
Balfegor said...: Re: Baron Zemo:

Wait a minute....if you were bad...did you have to go out in the yard and dig up the Kimchi?

Korean-American, Herr Baron. Korean-American.; 5/9/13, 5:16 PM
Baron Zemo said...: What? You guys don't dig your native cuisine?

Kimchi is great. Very tasty side dish when you are having Korean bbq.; 5/9/13, 5:17 PM
Nathan Alexander said...: Isn't this a great example of the education system's war on males?
He didn't behave according to the female teacher's female-friendly rules of behavior, and so was denied participation.

This young man was making a point about using various modes of teaching because different kids learn in different ways. He was clearly very angry, but remained in control, and expressed his meaning clearly and without malice. And the teacher was sarcastic, dismissive, and impervious to feedback.; 5/9/13, 6:14 PM
Nathan Alexander said...: Inga,
Matt was getting hammered from his fellow righties because we actually think for ourselves and form our own opinions.

I know that is foreign to you, since your opinion is given to you in the form of OFA talking points on a regular basis.

Conservatives do actually believe in and exercise true diversity of thought, not just the false diversity of proportional identity markers.; 5/9/13, 6:39 PM
Alex said...: How is Matt a rightie?; 5/9/13, 6:45 PM
Matt said...: Alex said...
How is Matt a rightie?

5/9/13, 6:45 PM

Probably having to do with my previous statement elsewhere on the site that I would never vote for a Democrat again that I made to myself ten years ago.

As it happens, the conservative tent is the bigger one, thus, those of us who tend more socially liberal and fiscally conservative feel more comfortable on that side.; 5/9/13, 6:55 PM
Paddy O said...: "More field trips and movies."

Sure, Shanna, but the rest of the time Althouse posts handouts that everyone just fills in the blanks according to the established commenter role template.; 5/9/13, 8:29 PM
Alex said...: Whoever said school is all fun and games never went to school.; 5/9/13, 9:39 PM
PackerBronco said...: I'm a big believer in total school choice. Give parents the ability to pick the school and those parents become customers and the teachers need to work to earn that family's business.

Let's assume the problem is the teacher in this case: how much different would this situation have turned out if the kid left school that day and said: "the teachers here are total jag offs. let's take our business elsewhere." The frustration shown in the clip is partially due to the powerlessness to actually get out of a bad situation.; 5/9/13, 9:40 PM
Browndog said...: The young man was not speaking on his behalf. He was speaking to the greater good of a nation.

Hippy-dude has a fire inside him. One his school, his peers, his society, his country would like to extinguish.

Chill. Smoke some weed. Grab the X-box.

Fuck it.; 5/9/13, 9:53 PM
Jane Doe said...: I, as a student myself, applaud Jeff Bliss. He stood up for what he believed in, and said what is on a lot of students', including myself, minds.

There are ways to make history and math and science fun and exciting. Packets will not fully engage a student. They're tedious and boring to most, and while an excellent tool for independent learning, a lot of teachers use them to teach for them. It's like parents and television, if that makes sense.

This teacher obviously didn't care. She was literally putting up blocks between herself and the students. (See how she's locked behind her desk, with even a mini fridge and a microwave?) And Jeff himself was reportedly thrown out in the first place for asking too many questions.

I don't know about anybody else, but that is possibly one of the stupidest things I have ever heard in my life. It is a student's right to ask questions, because it is by questioning things that we learn, and the teacher was punishing him for it.

Jeff Bliss is freaking amazing, and I do not think handling the situation in another way would've done anything, knowing my own experiences with the public education system. He's inspiring kids to stand up, and if I ever meet him in the street I would give him a hug and tell him just how freaking awesome he is.; 8/18/13, 4:56 PM