We Need To Talk About Monster Education or Why Can't Johnnystein Read

By Max

May 12, 2016

School is important. This is something we can all agree on. Whether you become a janitor or a physicist, a good education is vital to gaining the basic skills needed to make your way through life. No matter who you are, basic math and literacy are a must to be a citizen of today’s world. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the group that is being failed the most by our current educational system: monsters.

We need to address the quality of the education that these young monsters are receiving, an issue I have chosen to address by reviewing three monster schools. First we’ll be focusing on one particular institution: Miss Grimwood's Finishing School for Girls. This is a monster-only school, a fact we will look at only in passing. (An isolationist approach to teaching monsters is curiously common and a subject that deserves to be focused on in greater depth; I would speak of it here, but I fear it would both detract from my central thesis and would not do justice to the issue.) This is a center of education that holds a very strong pedigree when it comes to its students. Most, if not all, of the children being educated there are the children of famous creatures. This displays the distressingly common tendency of this sort of school to cater exclusively to the elite of the monster community, leaving the children of less influential ghouls and goblins to educated elsewhere. One might argue that this exclusivity is not beneficial to the students, as the private nature of these institutions allows them an arguably unhealthy amount of control over their staff and curriculum. Miss Grimwood’s, for example, appears to have three educators, two of whom are notably underqualified to teach. The school employs one Norville Roberts as one of its primary educators, though I believe his students refer to him by the nickname “Shaggy.” Mr. Roberts teaches with the aid of a Great Dane, who possesses the ability to speak, but does not appear to have any training that would qualify him to mold young minds. Neither, for that matter, does Mr. Roberts, who appears to be a teenager. Now, I would imagine most parents would not be thrilled with the idea of their children being taught by a teenage boy and his dog: however, I would argue that the content of the lessons is more disturbing than the person teaching them. Miss Grimwood’s has what could be termed an unhealthy competition with a nearby military academy. The competition manifests as an annual  sports meet in which both schools struggle to prove their superiority. Miss Grimwood has apparently decided that it would be best to shape her student’s entire school year around this single event, resulting in an education that seems to begin and end with gym class.

The next school I looked at was in far better shape than Miss Grimwood’s, though it may not be entirely fair to judge a high school against a primary school. Still, it is hard to ignore the difference in scholastic methods. Gravedale High has multiple teachers, first of all, and those teachers seem to be actually qualified. They have a human on the staff and it was his class I ended up spending most of my time in. Mr Schneider heads a troubled class that has a wide spectrum of different monsters, but he manages to work well with each student on their own individual level. It seems odd that this class is limited to a single teacher and I worry about Mr Schneider’s ability to keep pace with the curriculum in the long term. He appears to be in charge of teaching every single subject. I can’t help but think that this will negatively affect his performance. He also seems to be over-involved in his students’ personal lives. Though I would like to applaud him for going above and beyond in his duties, I fear that this level of involvement verges on the inappropriate. There should be a clear line between teachers and students and Mr Schneider is very close to crossing it. Much like my other issue with Gravedale High, this could probably be helped by an increase in staff, particularly a counselor and a nurse. There was an incident in which Mr Schneider was called upon to take a student to the hospital, interrupting an entire day of class and creating a situation in which a teacher was alone with a student off campus. These problems are easier to fix than the ones present at Miss Grimwood’s, though it would be untrue to say that I was entirely satisfied with my visit to Gravedale High. Despite the presence of a human teacher, there is a fairly strong anti-human sentiment in the school. The gym teacher is very outspoken about his hatred of humans and many of the students parrot his sentiments. The surrounding area appears to be rife with people who have their own issues with monsters, which is not helping the situation. Perhaps a community outreach program would do some good here.

The final school I reviewed was Monster High. I will freely admit that I spent the least amount of time here. This was probably the most populated institute I visited, with much larger classes and much more diverse student body. (Though I did notice that the children of more famous monsters seemed to receive far more attention than the other students, a disturbingly common theme in my research.) Monster High appears to place a great value on the socialization of their students, constantly seeking to control and expand the social circles of the monster in their charge. While I admire the commitment to helping students develop their interpersonal skills, the focus on the minutiae of teenage interactions seems unhealthy at best. The students are obsessed with the way that they look and the friends they make: being appropriately attired and networking are important skills, to be sure, but not the focal point of formal education. Though rich in the areas of parties and extracurricular activities, the instructional aspects of the scholastic experience appear to be being overshadowed entirely. I will admit that this may be a failing of research on my part. My visit to Monster High was brief and not particularly in depth: a short walk down the halls left me feeling unbelievably old and deeply unfashionable.

And so my report draws to a close. This was just preliminary look at the state of monster education in our country, but already several glaring issues present themselves. If a cursory glance can reveal this many problems, then who knows what further investigations will turn up? Clearly the situation is dire. Things are not going to improve on their own. If we want a brighter future for monsters tomorrow, we must take action today.

About the author:

Max writes comics about comics at Waiting For The T.

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