Litercurious Book Review

educate (v.) mid-15c., educaten, “bring up (children), to train,” from Latin educatus, past participle of educare “bring up, rear, educate”

From Etymonline “Educate” Douglas Harper 2001-2020 https://www.etymonline.com/word/educate

AUTHOR

Robert Lantana has a dozen years of teaching in the dark denizens of education we like to call schools. During his time as an instructor, he seems to have acquired the attitude that all is lost in the current system of education. He produced this satire depicting the trials and tribulations of a day in the life of a teacher.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Teachers, Student Teachers, Students, Parent & Teacher Association, and scholars over 18 years of age may find this tome interesting.

SYNOPSIS

I Hate Everything: A Day in the Life of a Teacher is an no holds barred discourse on the profession from the point of view of a working educator. It is a funny, raw, vulgar, expletive filled rant against the experience of teaching in a modern-day academic institution.

The book begins with cutting humor and a bitter irony that comes to characterize the book by the end. The individual chapters include the express reason that he hates everything; capitalized for emphasis. The humor quickly becomes sidelined with his loss of hope and motivation. The disparaging opinion of the tutor’s allegations leaves the reader in no doubt as to his frustrations. His antipathy quickly becomes palpable.

Initially funny with reckless abandon and an utter lack of finesse, the atmosphere quickly changes and becomes terminally depressing and lacking in any kind of positive appeal. Phrases used to describe those in his care like “psychotic zombie monkeys” or as a “self-absorbed, reality-warped generation” line the pages. The disparaging remarks continue and are qualified towards the end the book with the comment “we aren’t educating the future. We are herding cattle.”

You have to dig deep on occasion to find the humanity that this character is left with. Despite the constant unending whinging on about his loss of faith and hope in a broken system; some passages showed he entered the profession with positive aspirations, goals, and a genuine love for imparting knowledge to willing and able students. Lantana describes the dulling of his initial enthusiasm as it slowly eroded over time due to poor pay, disrespect from the school body and the administration. The long hours with little thanks combined with trying to teach the unteachable whilst protecting the academically motivated continue to skew his mindset in a negative direction.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Lantana couldn’t give a damn about the young people under his tutelage. However, woven through the pages is a small voice which shows just how much he cares for the institution and its charges. He is concerned enough to write a book to expose to the world the problems of todays academia. His expressed concern about his scholars not having enough to eat, lacking home based leadership and basic social skills more than prompt the reader to understand his earlier desperation.

CONCLUSION

If you enjoy dark humor mixed with witty irony and raw unfiltered opinions and language that would make a sailor blush, I think you might just appreciate this. I know that many in the Western teaching profession will see similarities in their own working conditions and will sympathize with the author and his experiences.

I found this book to be a mixed bag of dark humor and the desperate cry of a solitary instructor who has lost all hope of improving an impossible situation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Robert Lantana, NetGalley, and Dog Ear Publishing for affording me the opportunity to review I Hate Everything: A Day in the Life of a Teacher.