What defines an abusive relationship?
Has teaching become an abusive relationship?
Why do teachers remain in jobs where they are treated like infants or meek wives?
More important, how can they stand up and say enough is enough? See “Chicago, Teachers Strike”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They stay in abusive relationships for the same reason women (and sometimes men) stay in abusive relationships.
They think they can make things better.
Every once in a while the abuser says “sorry” and all is forgiven.
They have no other sustainable source of income and no where to go.
They think they are to blame and if only they would try harder the abuser would stop abusing them.
Did I leave anything out?
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Teachers think they have rights that simply don’t exist. “Tenure” laws, what are left of them, actually protect school districts from civil liability when their lousy administrators screw up.
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This actually reminds me of some of my good friends in education who are voting for Obama:
“He’s going to get better. He’s going to change.”
“He doesn’t see what he is doing. We need to let him know how we feel and then he will stop hurting us.”
“The alternative to him would be worse.”
I personally want out of this abusive relationship. As Diane said, enough is enough.
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POWERFUL.
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Equally disturbing…are teachers an endangered species? See full link below:
For a diminishing number, however, for those who teach because they thrive on witnessing the learning they engender, because they see each student in his or her struggle to learn, and because ironically they can never be absolutely certain that somebody learned something that day, no matter what the tests say…for those people, that group who force themselves to ignore the implicit and explicit expressions of disdain, the numbers will most likely diminish. Their kind of learning experience seems not to be what our society any longer thinks it needs. Things probably will continue toward extinction, unless, as with all endangered species, enough determined small numbers of people will exert their energies and push back against the endangering forces to try slowly and persistently to save the species.
http://rcsnmi.blogspot.com/2012/09/are-teachers-endangered-species.html
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I think you first have to decide what relationship you’re describing. Teachers have to deal with students, parents, administrators, and some elected governing agency including school boards and departments of education.
As a member of my local school board, I have have never seen or heard of such behavior towards any of our teachers from the board’s members, administration, parents or students (setting aside individual exceptions). But here in Maine our governor has been especially nasty towards teachers, and is aided (or enabled) by our Commissioner of Education. I’ve also noticed that another district’s school board, one that apparently has a large number of “business types”, can be quite insulting to the teachers. And of course we can all find examples of boors who write letters to the editor.
My point is that while I can find plenty of examples of abusive behavior towards the teaching profession, I hope that the writer remembers that sowing a general sense of persecution will not help teachers at all, because it will alienate their many allies.
So what’s going on and what to do? We are living through another propaganda campaign by corporate America that is almost identical to the one waged on the teaching profession nearly a century ago, and that did so much to screw up public education in the first place. Then, as now, our business leaders decided that they alone had the right to decide what was taught and how it would be taught. They were enabled by the best academic institutions in the country, who were anxious to show they too were, as Paul Krugman puts it, “Very Serious People”. Since the businesses control money, and the academicians claim expertise, the press uncritically broadcast their stories–errors, lies, foolishness, and all–to the public, fanning their fears and giving voice to every nasty crank out there. And of course the politicians had to follow the money and press as well. The teachers and parents, with but a few exceptions, were steamrollered. In this way, the progressives engineered their first coup over public policy. As any reader of this blog knows, what is past is now prologue.
We have to fight back, which is tough but not impossible.
First, learn the history of education reform. Read Diane’s book “Left Back” and Richard Hofstadter’s “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”. You can buy these from Amazon either new or used.
Second, learn about the history of how the Very Serious People employ propaganda in American press so very effectively. Read Walter Lippmann’s “Public Opinion” and Eduard Bernays’s “Propaganda”–these two founded Madison Avenue and were key to getting the public to buy into Woodrow Wilson’s flip-flop over entering World War I. Also important are Vance Packard’s “The Hidden Persuaders” and Noam Chomsky’s “Manufactured Consent” (a phrase coined by Lippmann). You can buy these from Amazon either new or used.
Third, start writing letters to the editors of your newspapers supporting your schools and damning with facts and logic the corruption and stupidity of the reformers. Let’s start making the reformers the issue.
Fourth, join your local school board and contact your state and federal representatives. Ultimately, the elected leaders of the country DO answer to the voters–when the get loud and when the vote. Demand that all charters be held to the same standards as the public schools. Demand mechanisms for accountability and ethical practices for charters. Demand proportionate funding for charters to keep them from getting taxpayer windfalls.
Fifth, spread the messages above among your friends and neighbors.
We can win this, and learn a lot in the process to become better Americans, but we can’t be passive.
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Great comments. Thanks. As I said in the blog, I have only had to deal with the reforms that have taken place, though someone I teach with every day was treated very rudely by two community members. It is odd that Americans love their schools but dislike education when polled. I guess what disturbs me is exactly what you said, people are not standing up and saying enough. After reading about 400 teachers being fired in Washington DC and the fact that teachers there seem to have a 50% attrition rate after just a couple years. I see that not everyone is as lucky as I am. Thank you for the insight, we need to offer solutions not just complain about the problem. The board members at my school are doing the best they can given the situation as you obviously are. I feel lucky to work at my school.
My heart goes out to these fellow teachers.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/09/21/dc-sets-bar-for-firing-teachers-over-performance/
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I wrote about this exact thing just today!
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Hey, Some of us like a good beating…. #satire http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/08/grin-and-bear-it-teachers-paddled-in.html
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Oh, that’s funny! I also like Rhee First.
http://www.rheefirst.com/
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Check out some of the comments here:
http://neatoday.org/2012/05/16/bullying-of-teachers-pervasive-in-many-schools/
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Another reason teachers stay in the relationship: The job market is awful, so there’s a dearth of options outside of education, particularly for those who teach something besides math or science.
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I hear there a lot of holiday jobs coming up at $7.50 an hour. Some may even become permanent! Rush right out to your local Target if you aren’t already there for your second job.
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and sometimes the abuse comes with box springs #satire http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/09/pallets-for-pedagogues.html
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I love your writing. My two favorite things are the fact that you have to tell people at the top of the article that it’s not real news – it really is getting hard to tell these days, and how you often end with a shout-out to the Walton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – the Walton Foundation usually providing the stick, the Gates Foundation providing the carrot. Brilliant. Frightening, but brilliant.
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Every writer loves to hear those four words. That’s the psychic income we work for. Not merit pay or bonuses.
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