The author of this email requested anonymity, for obvious reasons.
This was, as it turned out, a good thing, since I wasn’t ready to teach (nor was anyone in the program, if the current experiences of my friends who continued in the program count for anything); I was unwilling to continue using the required behaviorist, authoritarian classroom management methods and scripted lesson plans; and I discovered that the principal that hired me had a policy of hiring only TFA and TNTP participants for the ‘core’ academic subjects.
In the process of making sense of my strange experience, I decided to read Wendy Kopp’s original thesis on her idea for a ‘Teacher Corps.’ In some ways, the original idea is very different from what it is today — she envisioned that corps members would only teach in districts experiencing shortages of fully-certified teachers (and only in high schools — there is no mention whatsoever of charter schools).
In other ways, not so different: “Like the Peace Corps did in its early days, the Teacher Corps will create a level of spirit and mystique which would rival the hype that currently lures so many who have undefined career plans into investment banking!”
But what struck me most was the advice given to Wendy Kopp by the president of the NEA, to whom she wrote about her idea of a teacher corps: “We feel strongly that the core of this Nation’s commitment to education must flow from fully prepared, career focused, and professionally oriented persons. Even a suggestion that acceptable levels of expertise could develop in short termers simply doesn’t mesh with what those of us in the business know it takes to do the job–much less with what our young people need and deserve….We certainly wish you the very best with your idea and hope you choose to devote your energies to a career in teaching. There are few more satisfying or challenging professions you could elect.”
Thanks again for your blog, and I hope I will be able to write to you in the not-so-distant future that I am teaching math, fully certified through a real teacher preparation program.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Please see the following articles in the Tufts University Daily newspaper re: TFA:
http://www.tuftsdaily.com/news/tufts-among-top-teach-for-america-colleges-1.2836176#.UkHzXSjojuc
http://www.tuftsdaily.com/op-ed/op-ed-the-other-side-of-the-tfa-story-1.2836855#.UkHzQijojuc
I am so glad that this op-ed piece was submitted and published!
A friend of mine, Richard Arthur, was one of the first TFA trainers in L.A. in the beginning. I do not remember it being anything like it is now nor does he. It is amazing what money can do with a manufactured crisis in order to implement.
Read this note, as I do all the posts on the blog, with great interest and concern. First let me say that I am both a product and proponent of public education, locally controlled school boards and collective bargaining and teacher’s unions. I should also add that I have a Ph.D. from a land-grant state university in Applied Behavior Analysis.
This then leads me to my major critique of the note: I’m not sure what the writer was referring to when citing the “behaviorist methods” being forced on the teachers in training, but was surprised and disappointed by the horror expressed in the tone of the comment.
Many people who do not have a full understanding of the principles of behavior tend to misunderstand them and inappropriately apply them in many settings. On the other hand, when fully understood and appropriately utilized in an educational setting at any level and in accordance with the needs of the learner in mind, I believe the can produce the most effective, humane and desired results of any of educational methods known or practiced.
When behavioral principals are misunderstood and applied, the practitioner should be called out for their malpractice, but we need not throw out the science because of it’s use by inept individuals.
Thanks for listening.
The problem with behaviorism is that it’s only concerned with behavior that can be seen. Behaviorism considers the underlying motivation for the behavior to be irrelevant. But behavior, especially in children, is communication. If you don’t pay attention to what the person/child is trying to communicate and just focus on controlling the behavior, you’re missing the message and making the situation worse – the person/child will just try harder to get you to “hear” them and/or they will resent you for controlling them/shutting them down and they will act out of that resentment.
This does, indeed happen. And from very early ages. See Alison Gopnik’s The Scientist in the Crib, The Philosophical Baby, and Words, Thoughts, and Theories. All superb.
Dienne, if I may extend on your remarks, as a former military profiler with a background in Psychology, behaviorism seeks to define the parameters of rewards and punishments a person operates within to not only control, but to attack the mind and define acceptable behavior. Seligman’s (yes the one involved in charter schools) main research was designed to get P.O.W.’s to cease their resistance. Normal social inhibitions are overcome to get people to do things they would not otherwise do in order to prepare them for war. Personality and behavior can be altered with enough control over the environment. The Kubrick movie “Clockwork Orange” was not really so far off the mark. Behaviorism is an amoral tool, beware of the wielders. See B.F. Skinner’s works for a philosophy that makes this even more abhorrent, he would have found common ground with Ayn Rand. We do not want this as an underpinning of any useful social institution, let alone, public education. Behaviorism literally is social Darwinism at it’s worst. To the poster above, how can “humane practice” be defined? Look at the abuses of history with this concept. It is best left alone.
Since we do not know exactly what the original poster was being asked to do, it is hard to determine its appropriateness in any general sense.
Old teacher – agreed. Well said. Martin Seligman is perhaps the most frightening psychologist still alive and he has an awful lot of influence with both education and the military.
bernie – except that we do know that she described it as “authoritarian” and was unwilling to continue implementing it. That tells me pretty much what kind of program it was.
crloftin: yes, certainly so. In the writer’s defense, I suspect that he or she did not mean to cast aspersions on all applications of Behavior modification techniques. These sorts of references to Behaviorism have become a shorthand way of referring to those who treat others as though they were mindless automatons. There is a lot of that happening in teacher “trainings” these days–you know what I’m talking about: “Roll over. Fetch. Sit. Good Boy.”
Who is this wonderful young person! A great teacher in the making, certainly. Such thoughtfulness!
Wendy Kopp is all about Wendy Kopp; too deep into her own power trip to consider….really, anything else. Thoroughly corrupted by power–a perfect case study for an Introduction to Politics & Government class.
Yes, fully agree, Robert D. Shepard. Thanks for your Thoughtful observations. I certainly did not mean to disparage this young educator… the nation needs more teachers this thoughtfully! I would encourage this and any other educator in training (or experienced for that matter!) to learn more about the science of behavior! You said it, Dienne: to communicate is to behave; to behave is to communicate!
What behaviorist text are you reading that gives a fig for communication? The heart and soul of behaviorism is shaping (i.e., controlling) behavior through reinforcing successive approximations of the behavior you want while extinguishing behavior you don’t want. Communication is irrelevant in this process.
The critique of TFA as short-termers makes sense to me. The aligning of TFA with the Peace Corps may have made sense from a political/marketing perspective but it makes no sense from an educational impact perspective. By the same token, IMO, the Peace Corps offered more benefits to those who joined than to those it served for exactly the same reason – it takes specialized training and real world experience in addition to energy and goodwill to have a lasting impact on tough problems.
Well said, Bernie!
Peace Corps was a great marketing and recruiting tool for the CIA.
Duane:
Did you have a better recruitment tool in mind for the CIA?
No, but it’s interesting that a couple of years ago one of the two of our top students said that he and the other top students had been contacted by them as juniors in high school. Now you should take that for what it’s worth but he was a part of a delegation of kids from around here that went to DC and did go to the CIA building as part of a trip. He was the valedictorian (we don’t do those anymore, thankfully). I have no reason to doubt him.
I am not sure I understand your point. Why shouldn’t the CIA recruit smart, public spirited individuals. The opposite would be very disturbing. My son is career Navy. He is smart, ethical, very calm under pressure, and public spirited. I would think we want the entire officer corps made up of folks like him.
Bernie,
My disgust with organizations like the CIA goes way back. Of the two wings, the operational one has won out (basically since its inception-see Arbenz, see Mossadegh, see Allende) over the intelligence gathering side (but boy they’d love all to think that the CIA is only about gathering “intelligence”) and I find it totally appalling that the president (no matter who the president has been since Truman) has his own private army to do his bidding. If you have not read William Blum’s “Killing Hope” I suggest you do. That and read as much Ray Mcgovern (a former daily presidential security briefer) as you can find.
Duane:
Regardless of your disgust at particular policies, you have to decide whether you want an intelligence organization staffed with smart public spirited people or dumb, power hungry jerks. So, decide.
Well, as far as I’m concerned it is currently staffed at the highest level with “dumb, power hungry jerks who are f*&k*ng (yeah, I made it socially friggin acceptable) idiots overall.
Have you read Blum’s work?
Duane:
The question remains who should they hire?