So, Sue Me

For the first time in a long time, I somewhat enjoyed watching Glee last night because Sue Sylvester was not featured in the episode: it was about high school glee club singers and a singing competition. Oh, sure, there were still the side issues, including a recently-aged 18-year-old male student banging a single female teacher, and a third party trying to disrupt a gay couple’s relationship, and a teen mother willing to do anything to hold her child’s adoptive mother hostage to get her child back, but that’s almost mild compared to all the other manufactured issues that are presented as the typical high school experience on this … singing show!

If we are to believe the “issues taken from the headlines,” teachers and students are so busy with intra- and extra-curricular activities that it’s a wonder anyone has time to teach or an opportunity to learn. Teachers and students are single-mindedly focused on sex, both heterosexual and homosexual, to the exclusion of all other foci that life has to offer. What’s most important in the curriculum, according to Glee, is that everyone with sexual intimacy and/or gender identity issues must confront them here and now in the most public venue possible so there is never doubt in anyone’s mind what goes on behind closed doors.

Sue Sylvester’s character fuels the chaos, confuses the educational environment with political issues and actions that would result in immediate dismissal in the “real” world, and manipulates students to turn on one another so she can sit back and enjoy the fall-out. Parents are screaming in the media that their children are being bullied: tune into Glee and see an adult pro teach by example. Parents are screaming in the media that their children are being persecuted for their sexual preferences: tune into Glee and see an adult pro teach by example. Parents are screaming in the media that their children are not being presented with an adequate educational opportunity: tune into Glee and it’s easy to see that there is no time in anyone’s day to cope with all the dysfunction and also have time to teach, to learn, to experience something beyond the “desperate housewives” mentality that is alive and thriving in the media.

And, if you believe the writers of Glee, alive and thriving in the high schools of America.

Teaching is a tough gig: today’s academic core teacher no longer has the luxury of class size under 30, the top of the do-able scale based on my 35 years of standing at the podium. Today’s classroom equips every student who walks through the door, oftentimes in excess of 40 per class period, with a desk and not much else; the student provides the electronic device to fill the void where a textbook should be, as well as the seat time served listening to a well-meaning, well-educated professional try desperately to be more engaging, entertaining, and relevant than the Kardashians. For far too many students, class time is more time to text, to twitter, to take and post pictures, to visit one’s wall, to update one’s status, and to pass on any given individual’s take on what is happening at the most boring place on Earth: the totally out of control, dysfunctional American high school run by an out-of-touch administration and staffed by a faculty of buffoons that rivals the Barnum and Bailey Circus!

Add Sue Sylvester to the mix and the scenario goes too far beyond unreal to believe, but many parents believe that Sue’s the way it really is because that’s what their children tell them. Parents believe their children when they are told that “my teacher” did this or that, said this or that – and the parents go in for the kill. It’s hard to convince a parent that a child is making it up as s/he goes along to avoid consequences for their own actions when a very popular TV show seems to affirm that no matter how outrageous a student’s complaint, Sue Sylvester is much worse, with the rest of the fantasy high school staff not far behind! Rather than a microcosm of a typical high school, Glee has become the petri dish of dysfunction that parents would rather believe than the truth.

Glee was good when it was about an a capella choir learning how to function as a unit and then competing to challenge the choir to excel: great message for kids. The last 2 seasons, however, it has gone off-message regarding education and become something with absolutely no value-added, no matter how hard it tries, no matter how hard it pushes, no matter how outrageous the writers take the plot lines. In TV-land, it’s all about the ratings, about being renewed for another season, about making it big on the flat screen; for the educational community, for the first responders, for the hard-working middle class, it’s all about our jobs, our work ethic, our professional lives. Glee is just one more TV show to pit everything I believe and have worked my lifetime to achieve against a Nielson poll and win.