The Christmas season is a time to keep ignorance at bay

Bah! Humbug!

Christmas is like a cold-spell, real pretty but the season will find your weak links.

Christmas-seasoned teachers expect their students in need to unravel: family weak links of money stress, divorce, home problems and increased substance abuse appear in the disguise of a few more student fights, a new piece of bathroom graffiti, a vicious round of notes or rumors, more tears from the girls and more curse words from the boys.

Teachers become Scrooges with ferret eyes denying any late work and growling at the pre-Christmas fidgeting, giggling, Santa hats and hallway decorations.

We wrap the schools in red and green construction paper chains, collect food for the hungry and sing songs for the parents. During one short month, we house the homeless, shod the shoeless and deliver wrapped gifts for the children we do not otherwise notice.

And somewhere between all of the glitter, the kindergarten programs and preparing for countless vacation assignments, class is held.

Charles Dickens penned it best in 1843 in the first stave of A Christmas Carol, [It] “is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt and Abundance rejoices.”

“A Christmas Carol” was inspired from the Industrial Revolution, a time period when advances in technology outpaced society’s ability to accommodate the changes. Peasants migrated to crowded cities as they struggled to evolve from the barter system to cash.

Dickens felt morally obligated to question this industrial society’s treatment of its ignorant poor and their children. He championed schooling and opportunities for children throughout his life.

Literacy sang loudest in “A Christmas Carol’s” image of the wretched girl and boy hiding beneath the Ghost of Christmas Present.

“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is doom…”

For our children in December of 2005, the World Wide Web instantaneously rearranges itself in the express lane, and money exchange evolves from cash to plastic.

The 21st century makes its own Industrial Revolution, outpacing society’s ability to accommodate the change.

Look down any hall of any school to see the truth of Dickens. The monsters Want and Ignorance, once hiding beneath the capacious gut of the Ghost of Christmas Present, sit in the back row of any classroom. Believe me, though the clothes from Wal-Mart disguise their plight; these children of Dickens’ time continue to exist.

They eat the glue. They steal someone’s lunch to throw it in the garbage. They pass notes swearing about unfair teachers. They lose their homework. They don’t understand. They don’t know. They cut. They threaten.

Sometimes, they simply disappear.

How ironic — the Scrooge who defines the teacher’s December attitude is the same Scrooge who symbolizes the teacher’s conviction that the individual changes society more than society changes the individual.

His “I shall honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all year round” is the classroom’s axiom.

It’s just that under all of December’s silver and gold, teaching can be like a long cold spell.

Nevertheless, I am well aware that come January, unlike a temporary drop in temperature, the children of Want and Ignorance still need care and attention; Dickens was right, ‘A little learning is dangerous.’

So, to all of my fellow educators, while you keep Ignorance at bay during this hectic and tiring season, thank you.

God bless you, everyone.

Emily Forstner teaches language arts at Colony Middle School.