School of Harsh Reality

Frank Wilson

is a retired Inquirer

books editor

Pennsauken High School English teacher Frank Stepnowski is none too pleased with the state of public education in the United States.

But Step, his alter ego in a pair of fictional books Stepnowski has written - Why Do All the Good Teachers Go Crazy? and S.C.R.E.W.E.D.: An Educational Fairytale - is downright enraged.

"Step is an amplified version of me," Stepnowski says. "It's like in professional wrestling. The wrestling persona is a hyperbolic version of the wrestler."

Stepnowski, 43, who has been teaching for 21 years, is thoughtful and soft-spoken, given to saying things such as "I tell my students that the highest compliment I can pay them is to treat them the way I treat my own children."

Step, on the other hand, is high-decibel, fond of lacing his politically incorrect utterances with a string of profanity unquotable in a family newspaper. But, with skillful use of ellipses, Step's fundamental position, found near the start of S.C.R.E.W.E.D., can be cited:

"I HAD A DREAM. A dream that someday, in the not too distant future . . . the educational system in this country will perform the function that it was designed to do.

"It will collapse.

"Rising from the ashes will be a new type of school based on harsh reality. Born of a sense of insightful desperation and willing to function as the instrument of righteous cruelty needed to whip our fractured youth back into shape."

Lest the phrase righteous cruelty give the impression that what is being proposed is the pedagogical equivalent of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation," rest assured that is just Step being his over-the-top self. Here's Stepnowski's own, more nuanced version: "I am known for being borderline brutal with my students in terms of my expectations and my commentary - and they line up for more, which does not surprise me . . . because kids can handle the truth."

Both of Stepnowski's books were self-published (a percentage of the proceeds go to the Wounded Warriors Project). That has advantages and disadvantages. The obvious advantage is that it saves time, and Stepnowski admits that he was more interested in getting his message out than polishing it. As he says (in his own voice) toward the end of S.C.R.E.W.E.D., "I could have taken months to edit and rewrite, omit and refine, but . . . I wanted the passion and spontaneity that only comes from working without a net."

So both books are messy, undisciplined, at times irritating (too much talking directly to the reader, for instance), but also, as often as not, incisive, insightful, moving, and terrifying. The writer whose work they most resemble is Henry Miller, who in real life was also quite unlike Val, the anarchic antihero of his otherwise thoroughly autobiographical novels. Like Miller, Stepnowski has a tendency from time to time to let his exuberance get the better of him (but both his books are vastly better than Miller's earliest work, such as Moloch or Crazy Cock).

S.C.R.E.W.E.D. makes use of one of the oldest tricks in the literary bag, the medieval dream-vision (lit majors may remember bumping into William Langland's Piers the Ploughman, which also targeted society and its institutions). In Stepnowski's rock-and-rap absurdist version, it's 2012, Oprah Winfrey is president, the late George Carlin is secretary of education, and Step has been asked to straighten things out in the nation's school system.

Step's program is appropriately acronymed T.E.A.M. - Trust in our Extreme Alternative Methodology. Its philosophy is an equal and opposite reaction to the refusal to "confront people even when they're completely inappropriate or noncompliant, simply because we're afraid of having to get to know them a bit better, hurting their feelings, or dealing with their lawyers."

And yes, it does allow for corporal punishment. At one point, Step rails against the amount of time "we waste . . . on counseling, manifestation hearings, written discipline referrals, mediation meetings, parental interventions," when things "could be solved by a swift kick in the [gluteus maximus]."

T.E.A.M.'s aim is "to smash the spoiled, arrogant, ignorant, nonaccountable, overly enabled low-attention-spanned youth of our country into submission, then slowly and strictly build them back up." Step's rage is fueled by the devastating effect on students of the pointless and time-consuming rules and regulations imposed by the teachers unions, politicians, bureaucrats, and school administrators.

Early on, Stepnowski tells the story of one such student named Randall, who, when Stepnowski tries "to help him . . . talk to him," punches him in the face. And then cries. A lot.

Stepnowski drove Randall home that day. When "we pushed open what passed for a front door . . . I saw why Randy was imploding." Randy ended up in a residential facility, then behind bars. His mother, who had demanded that "he 'get his [gluteus maximus] out there and sell [drugs]' so they could keep the lights on, was upset only that her source of income was now beyond her control."

But what about the schooling itself, the curriculum, the teaching? Well, Stepnowski has some pretty shrewd things to say on that score as well.

"I asked my students, 'How many of you like to read when you can pick what you want to read?' The answer? Fifty percent. So I'm . . . trying to teach them something that half of them don't even like when they get to pick it. We are now aware of how hard my job is. So how do we fix that?

"Well, if you hate a book, don't teach it. You have a very limited time, and you lose these kids fast. And if you're not passionate about what you're teaching, it's going to fall flat."

As it happens, one of Stepnowski's more unconventional reading assignments has proved quite popular: former Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez's first novel, Third and Indiana.

S.C.R.E.W.E.D. has garnered much praise from Stepnowski's fellow teachers. One Amazon review is typical: "The author delivers the TRUTH with Blunt force. This book was written in the trenches during battle. If you are involved in Public Education at any level, you need to read this book."

For all its fierceness, the message of the book is surprisingly practical and gentle:

"Find out what our kids need to know. Understand that they all won't learn the same way (nor should they). Care about each other enough to be honest. Know that real learning can't be measured by data and tests. . . . Embrace the idea that real teaching and learning do require hard work. . . . Don't quit."

What most of the time sounds like a primal scream turns out to be a cri de coeur.