Whenever an article appears about schools or teaching, the comments that follow are often rants against both. Whence comes this rage? Why do so many people blame their teachers for whatever ails them? It doesn’t help that Race to the Top pushes the idea that teachers–not students–are the sole source of students’ test scores. If you don’t like the quality of schools, blame the teachers, not those in charge who control the resources.
This teacher says, as should we all, Enough! She is responding to Lisa Myer’s “A Teacher’s Letter to America.” By the way, that post went viral. It has been read by more than 30,000 people on this site alone and posted on Facebook more than 10,000 times.
“Lisa, I thought your post was very well written and certainly expressed how I’ve been feeling after 29 years of teaching. After reading many of the comments responding to your post, I find it very interesting that people who have never taught a day in their life seem to know everything there is to know about teaching. I would invite any one of them to spend a day with me in the classroom.
“For those of you who think teachers are overpaid, I am a professional. I have my master’s degree and have taught for 29 years. I serve on many committees at my school and in my district for which I am not given a stipend. We had 10 furlough days for which I was not paid. I spend hour upon hour outside of the classroom preparing materials and curriculum for my students, for which I am not paid. I do not get paid over the summer. I pay for part of my insurance and I have been contributing to my retirement since I began teaching.
“I would never presume to know enough about another profession since I have never walked in their shoes. Some of the comments I see here are straight from the 6:00 news or from the pages of newspapers, neither of which seem to be a friend to education these days. Please, before you throw out comments about the teaching profession and teachers, know the facts. I would invite any one of you who seem to know so much about being a teacher to walk one day in my shoes.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Amen! And to those of you who think we teachers have a three-day weekend coming up, think again. I’ll be heading to my classroom today to get all the things done that I can’t get done during the school week because of loss of prep periods, despite being at school 10 hours a day for five days straight.
Oh my goodness. We are “professionals” now because we have our Master’s Degree (in education?) and we’ve had 29 years of “experience” (wiping the noses of ignorant teenagers?) and we have paid part of our benefits (defined contribution or defined benefits?). We are professionals and union members!!!!!!! No one says it isn’t hard work, but it’s a good deal better than the factory floor. Been there, done that. But at least there we don’t call ourselves “professional” when we’re really just wage slaves. A cut above????? Puhleeze. I’ve done the weekend preparations and the summers on campus taking sweaty ed school courses, but I never claimed to profess anything. At best, we are good pipelines. But we’re not the oil. It DOES take a certain kind of good character to deliver the knowledge that others have pumped out of the universe, but that is really all we do. Yes, the pressure gets high sometimes, we spring a leak, or we take up so much time testing that we don’t have the energy to maintain the pipeline properly, or even to install new liners properly like the CCSS. A little humility please. Remember that originally, the pedagogue in Ancient Greece, was merely the slave who walked the kid to the Gymnasium where he acquired his real education from the great minds of the day, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes. THOSE were the professors, not us. We’re still the slaves who walk the kids to the real teachers, but we are not those real teachers ourselves. We’re just slightly more advanced students. Enjoy it while you can, but do recognize your actual status in the cosmos of knowledge. I have nothing against teachers, I am one myself, but the hybris is what is unsettling, and does not inspire confidence.
You have a very low opinion of yourself. Don’t project it onto all of us please.
Linda: you know KrazyTA is always there to back you and other teachers up, so let me lend an appendage here…
Surprise! You’ve been had! I have been reliably informed by a runaway helot [rumor has it that Spartans are hot on his trail to punish him for this act of jocular insubordination] that the comment you are responding to was originally tagged “SATIRE ALERT.” Unfortunately, they just don’t make slaves like they used to. Turns out that while this wretch was walking this particular email to the gymnasium [a place that somehow mixes up being naked with exercising? what does that have to do with the internet?—google please] the tagline was somehow lost.
I only bring this to your attention because my drinking bud, Socrates, told me last week that the unexamined send-up is not worth laughing at.
I can’t believe it but someone told me an educator who admired Socrates [same guy as above?] commented that if you sat on one end of a log and the other end of the log was on top of the person to whom you responded, that would be the best education of all. [All due apologies to James A. Garfield]
Now I don’t know about logs and such but I do know what Mark Twain said: “If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.”
If I may be so bold, I suggest the person in question let go of your tail. Might learn a lot more than he wants to know.
But what do I know? I just got excessed again as an online TA. Must not be meeting my latest Holy Metric of Eduexcellency…
Care to knock back a few at the Pink Slip Bar with me and Socrates? Always an extra spot on the log for a real teacher or two…
🙂
“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” [Mark Twain]
KTA,
You made me spit my bourbon!
It burns a bit coming out the nose.
Best laugh of the week goes to…
Krazy TA.
Thanks again!
Ang
Ang: so sorry I made you waste some perfectly good bourbon.
🙂
Thank you, Dr. Freudess.
Harlan, find a hobby please. You’ve spent a lifetime teaching in private selective schools, schools that enforce supposed “excellence” through exclusivity, and you want to maintain your own sense of importance and exclusivity by supporting every policy that degrades public schools. Please do not comment about public school teaching as you know nothing about it. The worst are indeed full of passionate intensity, as you prove every time you post such pseudo-intellectual drivel.
Harlan’s hobby is schadenfreude. He revels in the bashing of teachers. He sees himself as different, but if decades of experience and a Master’s Degree “in education?” are of no value, then his years of teaching and his doctorate “IN EDUCATION” are equally worthless in many people’s eyes.
He tries to set himself apart through his hateful diatribes, from a holier than thou. private school, us vs. them mentality. But as a private school teacher myself, I can tell you that the “private school teacher” classification does not automatically change things in many people’s minds. Those who hate teachers hate us all. The only exception I’ve seen is for TFAers who aren’t actually planning to become career teachers.
Diane asked, “Whence comes this rage? Why do so many people blame their teachers for whatever ails them?”
I think the answer to that is complicated, but I believe that, at least in part, it’s related to the bandwagon effect, since politicians, corporate “reformers” and their neo-liberal propaganda have given permission for everyone to disdain and deride teachers. In a culture where most groups are now protected from discrimination and hate crimes, the few left who are unprotected are very easy targets, such as those who are fat, ugly, poor and teachers.
It’s not difficult to be a member of each one of those groups all at once and that kind of vulnerability to personal attacks can lead people who are feeling like they’ve been put on the defense to taking the offense instead. Virtually everything we do is for self-preservation, including for externaiizers like Harlan.
Our laws ought to include protections from discrimination and hate crimes due to physical characteristics, socio-economic status and profession.
Thank you for your support of the First Amendment.
Just read in the Times that, after the brutal murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in a London street this week by Muslim extremists, people there have been trashing Muslims on Twitter and Facebook and some were arrested for “laws against inciting racial or religious hatred.”
Can you imagine if we had a law against INCITING hatred of teachers? There would be a whole lot of politicians and billionaires who would have to learn how to talk very differently about educators or go to jail. They are never going to pass a law like that here.
I taught for 42 years and felt greatly fulfilled the entire time. Yes, I was one of those lucky people who “never had to work a day in her life” because I loved my job. Also, my husband and I were smart enough to combine our modest salaries to invest in CA real estate and stock. It worked out so well that we were able to send our sons to Harvard and Stanford without scholarships. Yes, teaching is the ideal profession; the one chosen by some of the greatest people in history. Like a lot of other retired teachers, I am now traveling around the world and taking my sons and grandchildren with me. I feel extremely proud that I was in a profession that made a big contribution to the children of this country.
Sorry it wasn’t the same for you.
Great response Linda…I thank for telling your story. As one who also came of age in California, if you were careful and wise and bought up real estate in the earlier time of a rising market, you are so lucky as well as smart. The sad part is how different things are today. Young teachers will never have the same opportunities to accumulate a modicum of wealth much less be able to afford Harvard and Stanford educations for their children.
This coming generation will have fewer and lower paying jobs than their parents, and reading about the Affordable Health Care Act today in the LA Times should bring dismay to every thinking person. How many of today’s working poor will be able to shell out from approximately $250 – $400 a month for mandated health insurance?
With the stability of your marriage, and the two salaries wisely invested, you lived the American Dream. I fear that Dream is dead for our current generation. It is rather, not a brave new world.
Ellen,
I don’t think the dream is dead but a person has to be much more strategic in planning for a career. Instead of two teachers, it might have to be a plumber and an electrician or a physician and a nurse.
“$250 – $400 a month for mandated health insurance”
This has been deemed “affordable?” By whom? What happened to, “market forces” will bring down the cost –of virtually everything that neo-liberal capitalists want to see privatized? Did they forget that things are very different when corporations are not feeding at the public trough, or when the elites can’t outsource to other countries, in order to maintain their standard of living as billionaires?
There is absolutely no way that I could ever afford to pay that kind of money each month. My rent just went up $400 each month, which is enormous to me, and I couldn’t even afford the cost it would be to move to a cheaper place.
The government is going to have to consider all the people like me who don’t qualify for subsidies and have no disposable income. I am not going to take what little money I earn away from putting food on the table and a roof over my head. If I get sick, so be it. I have a DNR. I’d rather be sick and die at home than live healthy on the street.
People in Chicago can attest to how the privatization of public parking led to prices literally skyrocketing off the charts. And if charter schools are supposed to save money, then how come they rarely do that and are often asking for additional funding from government and foundations –while typically paying their teachers low salaries and non-educator executives higher six figure salaries than public school administrators earn? THAT is what privatization is all about, ensuring that the wealth is maintained at the top and NOT redistributed amongst those in the 99% who are in greatest need of it.
No one should be falling for the neo-liberals’ intoxication over “free-markets.” 40 years of flat incomes for average working class people is evidence that “market forces” offer little to the struggling middle class and lower income groups.
We need to get the business model out of all public services, whose aim should be “to promote the general welfare,” including education, social and health care services. Business is about monetary profits for a fraction of people and that’s in conflict with promoting the welfare of all the people. Our constitution says nothing about promoting markets!
Look at what’s been happening in Sweden this week, where low income immigrants who feel marginalized and without upward mobility have been on a rampage every night, burning cars and buildings, including schools. Think it’s just a coincidence that the education system there has been privatized and disenfranchised poor people are burning schools???
You have done well, and I’m happy for you. But “profession”? Why must it be a “profession”? You worked hard and well, and have reaped the fruits of your dedication and character. Other people have sent their children to Stanford and Harvard using their own money which they earned selling cars? Is that a “profession”? By they way, defined benefit or defined contribution?
If you look at the actual etymology for “professional”and “professor,” a professional is one out working and being paid to work in a way that follows a professor. A professional lawyer will recall and follow (or not) what he or she learned from law professors. Same with doctors, musicians, etc.
Teachers are professionals whose professors have been challenged, and deemed irrelevant or at least not necessary on the time table most teachers were trained on (several years of classes, with a year of interning). So it is a confusing time for teachers. Confusing times yield many types of responses.
As for outsiders (non teachers) heaping on ridicule, I see a frustrated citizenry (economy) looking for stones to turn and to throw in order to find a comfort level with business as usual (or a definition for what business as usual looks like and will look like). I am supposing that if we believe education to be a continuous conversation, we would not be tempted to find ways to quiet the conversation. If a strong enough force pushes for an idea, it will likely come to pass. And vice versa. The key is to keep the conversation going, which I guess is why Diane started this blog. It is why I read it.
There is no “the” etymology. Usually it’s a guess. Think again. (Or learn more about dictionary making)
Harlan, I think you got spoiled. Why don’t you teach in a real school with real students who think you are a god but don’t necessarily mind you. I have never been a wage slave. I have found myself teaching on the bus, in my own house, at church—-breaking things down so someone with limitations or just low levels of education can comprehend, right down into a true special education task analysis that anyone could follow. The paycheck lets us teach instead of having to find a job in order to support our calling. If you don’t comprehend this you are not a teacher. You are a person who fills a teaching position. And as for better than the factory floor goes, plant workers in Louisiana who are fortunate enough to get on with the companies themselves make about $35 per hour.
That’s a good thought, that teaching is a “calling.” I can accept that, but in my quest for calling things by their right names, I dissent on “profession.” Besides, metaphor always fails pretty quickly. Even if teachers are pipe lines, what you describe can’t be included in the metaphor unless we introduce automatically self-adjusting valves and all sorts of clap trap like that. The paycheck does permit you to live by your love. Good for you.
There is “the” etymology that I followed and I don’t need direction from an angry blogger on how to interpret language. It is my language too. Furthermore my point was to more graciously and eloquently hit in a point I think you were struggling to make which is that there is change going on around us and about us that would not be coming about if teachers had been the epitome of professionally minded, perhaps, in the last fifty years. My blog response was one of the only ones that tried to actually see where you were coming from but because of your response I can see you have it all figured out in your crass, self-loathing rants and the only lesson here, for me, is to just ignore your posts; which I shall do from now on.
Touché Mr. Teacher.
Its hubris
Diane, I have been a teacher since 2001. I teach in Bridgeport, CT and am VP of the BEA, which puts me in the midst of a Vallas catastrophe. Before teaching I worked over 23 years as a community and labor organizer. My wife of 25 years is still working as an organizer, mostly with public housing residents. She suggested last year that we start a “Walk a mile in my shoes” campaign. Simply put, invite all elected officials to run my class for the day (I would even prepare the lessons if they wanted). I would sit in the room to make sure something terrible didn’t happen; but, they would take the kids to the bathroom and to specials and to lunch… I have just been elected to the CEA Board and am chairing a new committee to activate members. It’s one of the ideas that I will be pushing! They think they know our jobs because they went to school!
And make sure it’s in the BEGINNING of the school year… well before the students have been consistently taught the expectations and are still testing the waters to see if you’re serious about the rules and consequences… mwahahaha!
I would be a little meaner and leave them in there alone with no support. I would especially do that to Gov. Bobby Jindal, Supt John White, and BESE President Chas Roemer in Louisiana. I would particularly like to leave them in a class of high school students with moderate to severe autism since they want to mess with funding for special education. Would they even come out alive??? Hard to say since a student in such a class a few years ago kicked his very experienced teacher in the abdomen and damaged her bladder a few years ago and one in another class broke the teacher’s arm.
When I worked at a residential state school with children who had severe multiple disabilities, (this is the mentally retarded/developmentally disabled population, which includes low functioning autism), getting bitten by students was an occupational hazard for virtually every teacher. I loved my work there, but the violent temper tantrums that involved kids throwing furniture and feces, kicking, scratching, hitting, biting, etc. were just brutal.
Most people have no idea that many teachers have been trained in non-violent crisis intervention, in order to be able to deal with such situations. Restraining kids who are in this kind of crisis mode may become necessary. Having more females than males in education means that some very tiny women have been taught how to turn your head into an elbow when being choked from behind, so you can still breathe (yes, I did do that when I was assaulted and it does work), as well as how to hold a much larger out-of-control adolescent in a half nelson. Fortunately, the few male teachers we had would help out female teachers with that.
And Harlan thinks public education is just about “wiping the noses of ignorant teenagers.”
No Harlan, public education must serve ALL children, including 21 year old special needs students who might not be able to wipe their own noses or use the bathroom AND who may they throw furniture and feces.
Harlan, You have no clue about the realities of public education. Teachers have had little to no say in public education for decades. Non-educators have long been in charge of education in our major cities, where school districts have been under mayoral control, with appointed school boards and appointed CEOs/superintendents, like Chicago for the past 18 years and New York for 12 years. Parents have had no say during that time either.
Federally, teachers were not even invited to the table when national standards were written by non-educators. Public education is ruled by politicians and their corporate sponsors. Teachers should have some say about education practices and the direction their field takes. (And no, human beings, learning and teaching are much too complex for the characterization of animal “trainer” to be applicable to the education profession.)
You paint a dismal picture of big city public education. How did it come about that public school teachers became slaves? You say teachers should have a say in what they teach. You are certainly correct about that. I always did, and it was crucial for me and helped me learn new stuff. Why, on this blog are we then defending a prison system where the teachers have become the capos?
Harlan, The status quo for teachers consists of mayoral control and other kinds of “reforms” that have put into place over the past 20 years and teachers have not been defending them on this blog, nor has Diane.
Parents and educators alike have been calling for doing away with mayoral control and establishing democratically elected school boards, instead of boards hand picked by mayors and who then rubber stamp whatever the mayor wants. For example, this week, the board of education in Chicago decided to close 50 schools in less than 3 minutes, because that’s what the mayor wants. (This has been typically done to make way for charter school expansion, even though research indicates that 83% of charters perform the same or worse than traditional public schools.) Many Chicago parents protested because they wanted to keep their neighborhood schools open, but they were ignored.
Across the nation, it’s the teacher’s unions that have been behaving like capos and that’s a very fitting analogy. The unions have signed off on many of the demands of politicians and corporate reformers, and they were paid handsomely by Gates to do so, especially the AFT. See: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/k=American%20Federation%20of%20Teachers
Many teachers on this blog have been expressing concerns about that and they clearly feel betrayed by their unions.
The exception is Chicago, because the teacher’s union here broke free from the national capos and works in collaboration with parents.
But does that make you a “professional” horse trainer, getting them to make the jumps? Teaching them new tricks? I remember some teacher movie in which a former Marine got his class’s attention by taking off his shirt and flexing his muscles while his back was turned to the class. It worked. He commanded respect in his classroom after than and caught the crooks running drugs out of the shop class.
I really do have nothing against public school teachers. The whole country depends on them. What I do find “problematic” (to use a nice elite liberal word) is the pervasive assumption that they have a right to control the schools which are paid for with citizen taxes. The citizens are free to change the relationships whenever they want to and can must enough votes. It’s this presumption that public school teachers own the schools they work in that is offensive to me. It reeks of elitism, of “I know better than you-ism,” and “The citizenry can’t get along without ME-ism.” Nonsense.
“Whence comes this rage?” This is the very question I cannot answer. Is there some societal mandate that requires a common enemy, and for this time in history teachers are the identified witches? Cyndi Burgess, thank you for your reply, and please know that there are many out there who understand your frustration and are working to turn the current tide in education. Diane, of course, is a huge voice here, but there are several more lining up to say “enough” and are utilizing methods to make their voices heard. Many have run for and won positions on their local school boards (I am one of these), others are standing up and refusing to be Pearson’s testing robots (go Seattle!), and many more are taking up the mighty pen and starting a revolution in the blogosphere (like you, Cyndi – hmm, there’s some historical support for this last method, I believe).
Krazy TA, My friends and I were contemplating our precarious economic standing. We’ll join you for that notional drink, but we also figured that we will be among the few that remember how to actually teach without scripts. We figure we can start a teaching farm on 5 acres, raise our own food, and boycott the capitalist madhouse. We will compete against the “rheeformers” by offering a real education for just a few students so as to help them and their families. When we retire we plan to provide extensive tutoring in support of our public schools, for free, as well as advocating and supporting political candidates that support public education. We are dreaming, but if we can survive and collect our retirements, the 5 of us will hurt the reformers where it hurts, by competition with a better idea.
Old Teacher: we’ll raise our glasses high next time we meet at the Pink Slip Bar in honor of your suggestion.
Setting goals makes all the difference: “You got to have a dream, If you don’t have a dream, How you gonna have a dream come true?” [from the song “Happy Talk” from the musical South Pacific]
Best of luck.
🙂
Now THAT’s the good old American spirit. That’s taking real self-responsibility. See Wendell Barry for such farms. 40 acres are needed. And horses. Lots of horses, for the horse manure. But that’s private education you’d be doing, and you’d be competing, which is a good thing. “If you can’t stand them, build a better school.” Or something like that.
You would think that with teachers giving their lives for their students in Sandy Hook and lying on top of them protecting the children from the tornado in Oklahoma this week that teachers would be the most highly respected professionals in America. But they never, ever stop disgracing and abusing us. How many corporatizers and privatizers would do this? But I could guarantee almost every teacher would without a second thought.
You’d think so. I was impressed by the Oklahoma teacher who saved her ten kids. I do think that is characteristic of the teaching profession (Oh, dear, I slipped and used it). That kind of self sacrifice and protection of the innocent is not confined to teachers, but in general there is a responsibility ethos that goes with the job. It’s really part of the job. Why then is there this general social abuse of teachers, and you may see my posts as part of it, but I claim I am not. SOME teachers, especially first year teachers don’t have the coping skills. SOME teachers are just not interested in thinking. I’m not sure there are enough of those to ruin the reputation of the entire profession (Oooops. slipped again.) To what, then, can we attribute the media made negative image of “teachers.” My own metaphor is that public school teachers parade around like priests of an established church, as if they are entitled to position, pension, and perks BECAUSE they have been to the seminary of Ed School and have qualified to celebrate the mass. And don’t think anyone else should be licensed to do so.
That ain’t the way the world works any more. The hostility is a bit like anti-clericalism in France, after the revolution. It wasn’t until about 1870 when the Catholic Church has almost lost its political power that it promulgated the doctrine of infallibility. That’s what I find in so many posts here, a presumed infallibility, an unwillingness to question, even when it seems to an outsider as if they are really only defending their personal pecuniary interests. The church is losing control of the citizenry, even as the priests lost control of Martin Luther’s followers. What was his objection? Selling of indulgences to finance the building of St. Peter’s. The soul rebelled at the illogic of it, and we got those anarchic protestants. If the public school establishment would just be a little more tolerant, they might find less hostility. But, where matters of faith are concerned, we know that identity is congruent with doctrine, and the public school person doesn’t want to sacrifice his robes and the magic of authority, to see himself as just ONE of many ways people can be educated.
We say that public schools provide an education for democracy, but the current privatizers are more democratic than the school systems. Greed has become the explanation here, as if public school teachers are totally uninterested in their wages and benefits. What is happening is the break up of the monopoly of public education over everyone but the rich who ship their kids off to private schools anyway. I suspect that in the public schools “democracy” means something totally different from the word “democracy” in the general culture.
Democracy means having the right to vote for people to represent us, so that we have input regarding the course of education in our communities, instead of having mayoral appointed cronies on our city school boards and an unelected federal Secretary of Education dictating education policies to us.
Feel free to call yourself an unskilled worker, Harlan. Those of us who have skill sets, including teachers and linguists, who have studied the art and science of their craft and regularly make informed decisions in their careers based on research in the field, and do not just “guess,” will be calling ourselves professionals.
I don’t think I called myself an “unskilled worker.” I have observed ditch digger teachers, even at the university, and they are a boring disaster. But I notice that you also call your practice a “craft.” That’s what I like to call myself, someone who can take someone else’s original thinking and dramatize it a bit, like an actor. There’s a nice knack to it. I like doing it.
But to magnify teaching as an “art” seems to me to be going beyond what is justified. And science as well. I was answered once on this blog that there truly IS a science of education, and that it rests on the psychology of human development. It may be so, but if it is a science, we ought to be able to teach it so that new teachers can apply it and that it will work every time. I doubt we do that. But it there were a science of learning that has as much credibility as E=mc^
But IS there a science of education?
Do you realize that you are spouting the same old “reformer” claims? Unions suck at the public funding trough and so unionized teachers are bad by extension. What works for one child or class or school or community or district should work for all and be scaled up and scripted, etc….
Yes, there is a scientific basis for child development and teachers do study this. However, human beings are idiosyncratic. So, while there are predictable milestones and stages, there are ranges when children can be expected to achieve them, because kids progress at their own rates of development. Teachers should not be expected to pigeon hole students and address them as if they are all on the same page on the same day of their lives as every other student their age. Each student has their own constellation of strengths and needs as well, and different prior experiences, so we are not in a position to say that one size should fit all or that there is one right way of teaching every student.
There is no creativity in education? You just described examples of that in your own practices. That is part of the art of teaching and it includes adapting to address diverse populations of students at hand, including meeting motivational needs. (And, just like other college graduates, teachers have studied the Arts and Sciences and those influences are incorporated into their work. They played a HUGE role in my elementary school teaching experiences, but I taught mostly at private schools and had a great deal of freedom in choosing my own curriculum and teaching methods.)
A lot of “reformers” what to “teacher-proof” public education by requiring that teachers use a scripted curriculum, which is one-size-fits-all like the Common Core standards are. Scripted curricula also expect every child in each grade to be on the same page on the same day of their lives and scripting prevents teachers from being creative. So public school teachers are effectively being robbed of their ability to practice the art and science of teaching.
Which of us has not been blessed, at various times in our lives, with good teachers? I know that there are many whom I look back upon with honor and reverence. And when I think about those teachers, I can think of very little that they had in common except that they were extremely knowledgeable and passionate about sharing what they knew. I certainly wouldn’t describe them as mere conduits for others’ ideas, for each was a life-long learner who couldn’t help but have original, interesting ideas because of all that learning.
And they were as different as their passions. They tended to be peculiar individuals, driven by their interests and not the sort to follow anyone’s script. I think of the Algebra teacher I had who couldn’t care less about most of what was in our textbook but who was passionate about set theory and logic and proof and computing and what was computable and what was not. I think of the 9th-grade drama teacher who fancied herself an existentialist and had us reading Sartre and Camus and thinking about the awesome and terrible responsibility and possibility presented by our freedom. I think of the crazy English teacher who said, “You won’t get Poe unless you are willing to take his trip, and it’s a strange one” and then dramatically shoved everything off his desk, lay down on top of it, closed his eyes, and recited “Anabelle Lee” from ecstatic memory. And what happened in such people’s classes is that one was swept up in the torrent of his or her passion for some particular part of his or her “subject” and carried far, far downstream.
Standardized learning is an OXYMORON. Learning, real learning, is always particular and peculiar. It is like falling down a rabbit hole or stepping through a wardrobe into the strange, the unfamiliar, and one returns from a journey with such a teacher changed, unable to view one’s self, others, the world in the same way again. Those who wish to standardize learning don’t have a clue what real learning is. The Brave New World in which all teachers follow scripts is one in which teachers have vanished and have been replaced by trainers. Fortunately, there are always those who will teach DESPITE what is required of them, who will skip the lesson on Standard L.5.3a because the class has unearthed or stumbled upon something amazing or valuable that has to be lingered over. Those people, who teach their passions, are professors. They profess because they have to do so, because their intense interest in this or that inevitably bears fruit, and their students receive the windfall of that interest, and the fruit is sweet to the students’ taste. Students are desperate to encounter someone who actually cares about something, and they respond to people who do.
A good teacher is a learner and is MOSTLY a model to his or her students of what a learner is. I have had some good teachers of that kind at every level, from elementary school through graduate school.
I’ve known plenty of nonteachers, of course, who simply held the job–the French teacher did not speak and read French, not really, who went home at night and didn’t read Moliere but read the next chapter so that he could remember what it was he was supposed to be teaching the following week, the middle-school science teacher who knew no science and cared only about basketball. Those folks aren’t teachers, but they will do quite well under the standardized, test prep regime.
BTW, Socrates was a professor and Plato was a professional not because someone granted him or her a degree, not because each passed some certification exam, not because he followed someone’s script that told what to teach and when but because each was a passionately committed learner and thinker. We don’t need robots in our classrooms. We need learners–strange, unique individuals who care deeply about whatever it is that they profess, deeply enough to have learned enough to have something worth sharing with others and to feel compelled to do so.
So, that’s the essential criterion. If you don’t know something because you are passionate about it, then you can’t teach, not well. And if you do, you cannot do other than teach.
Again, Standardized learning is an OXYMORON. Learning, real learning, is always particular and peculiar. It is like falling down a rabbit hole or stepping through a wardrobe into the strange, the unfamiliar, and one returns from a journey with such a teacher changed, unable to view one’s self, others, the world in the same way again. Those who wish to standardize learning don’t have a clue what real learning is. The Brave New World in which all teachers follow scripts is one in which teachers have vanished and have been replaced by trainers, like those who beat and chain and bullhook elephants in preparation for a lifetime of enslavement and performance of tricks in circuses.
Yes, very well written! You reminded me of the really extraordinary teachers that I have had in my life and, you are right, they were passionate, lifelong learners and some were indeed very “peculiar individuals, driven by their interests and not the sort to follow anyone’s script.”
The most effective example is from my first year of college, when I went on a trip to Europe with a group of students that was informally led by an English professor. Though English had been my favorite subject, I never took any of his courses and I first met him on the flight going over there. We didn’t have to go anywhere with him while we were in Europe, except when we traveled from one city to the next, but I learned so much from him straight away about such a wide variety of subjects, such as classical music, art, architecture, religion, history, science etc., that I quickly realized what a wide variety of interests I had and my own passion for learning was reignited, so I opted to go to different places with him.
After a few weeks, he asked me if I believed everything a teacher said just because they were a teacher. He told me that I should not accept so much at face value from teachers. Then he would sometimes intentionally tell me the opposite of what was true, like by saying that we were on the Right bank in Paris when we were really on the Left. I quickly became a skeptic and ramped up my critical thinking skills. I even returned to Europe the next year by myself, just to get my bearings and figure out what he had said that was true and what was false. (Les Invalides is not a hospital that you would never want to visit. I’m so glad I went back!)
I doubt the rest of my professors appreciated how much I questioned them after that point, but it is because of those spontaneous, odd, confusing and exciting experiences with that brilliant professor that I became a passionate lifelong learner, teacher and, ultimately, a professor myself. (And I could never follow a script either.)
Standardized education may be an oxymoron, but standardized schools are required if students are admitted to a school based on geography.
No, zoning does not mean that standardized schools are required. That;s just your incessant call for charters and vouchers. Enough already. We get your one-track mind..
Your public school district must be less concerned with equity than mine. The two high schools in my district must each offer substantially the same programs to maintain the geographic admission criteria.
Your public school district maintains both geographic admissions and allows specialization of schools? How does it deal with parents who might correclt prefer the programs in the other schools for their children?
A complex, diverse, pluralistic society is well served by standardized schools? That makes no social or economic sense.
Magnet schools and magnet programs within schools. My neighborhood high school has different program concentrations students in our area, as well as students from other areas, can select from, IB or Arts (visual and performing), or a military program co-located in the same building. Most of our high schools and many of our elementary schools have selected to run a choice of different program concentrations similar to this.
I think we have found the source of our disagreement. I take traditional zones school to be you live in a geographically defined school district and you are assigned to a school. In high school you may be able to make some requests for classes, but you may well not get the ones you ask for. No IB for any (well I think there are 8 schools in the state that have IB program, but none in my district) no school within a school, no magnet schools of any sort. This is the traditional public school that I went to, this is the traditional public school that my children go to.
With magnets, there are more choices, but we have many schools that are not magnets and they can also have their own theme related concentrations. Schools have similar core courses, but no two schools are exactly alike. nor do they have to be.
I think one key to are different understanding of traditional zoned based schools is in your discussion about high school where you say “My neighborhood high school has different program concentrations students in our area, as well as students from other areas…”
No students from other areas are allowed in my local high school, students in my high achool’s catchment area are allowed in other high schools.
It seems to me that your school district is not the traditional district that mine is.
No, it’s dependent on state law. You have to check your state school code. Unless the state requires standardization, local control is usually honored and districts have a lot of laterality. Maybe administratively, your district chose to standardize, but if it’s not mandated by law, it’s just district policy could be contested.
I would argue that it is the parents that would make it difficult to shut some students out of a specific program and shut others in.
There seems to be little of the traditional zoned school system in your school system, something that I applaud. In our school district, for example, the only accommodation for gifted students is skipping grades.
It depends on the school board. If you have an elected school board that includes parents, you might be able to make a case to them. Or you could run for the school board yourself and try to change policies from within.
My mom did just that, in a small suburban school district, because my brother’s school only offered skipping grades for gifted and she had been skipped herself and didn’t want that for him. Ultimately, she was elected to the school board and they added an enrichment program in the schools for gifted kids.
I agree that the local school board might have the power to change traditional zoned public schools into a system more like your school system.
The idea that teachers are professionals is anathema to those who classify any service that humans perform in the rearing of the next generation as babysitting. I would invite anyone who believes that teachers are not professionals to come into my classroom and teach for a day, provided that, at the absolute minimum, they have the appropriate substitute teaching license and have passed an appropriate background check and appropriate drug testing…except that my kids deserve better than to spend their valuable class time with the untrained and the closed-minded, even to prove a point. When I have to be absent, I am grateful for a substitute teacher to watch over my students and to help them with the lessons I have left. It is very rare, however, to find a substitute teacher with a degree in my field of expertise, and so, as grateful as I am, I know that having such a person come in is second-best at most. To add another day of what will turn out to be at its finest only second best seems too frivolous, but I will extend that invitation in the hopes that the overall benefit to my students will be greater than what they lose out by missing a day with an honest-to-goodness professional teacher. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to take much more than one day’s gentle experience to get a hostile, closed-minded visitor to understand that in between periods, out in the hall, out in front of the building after the end of the day, and all the other times in between, we don’t turn off the teaching and supervision of our students – or any students. Here we are, still teaching the public what it means to be a teacher, and certainly the public, as a whole, is frustratingly slow to learn because it is so unbelievably unwilling to open its eyes, mind, and heart. One thing is certain: one does not fully understand what it’s like to be a teacher until one has done it for a few years, day-in, day-out. Not everyone who has ever taught a class, licensed or not, is a teacher.