This teacher wrote a great letter to President Obama. I hope you will write one also, and send it to my colleague anthony_cody@hotmail.com
October 6, 2012
Dear President Obama: I Feel As Though I’m Playing In The Band On The Titanic
My part in the presidential letter writing campaign this October.
The Titanic was a behemoth that was too large for its time. It could not change course to avoid obstacles due to its massive size, yet this juggernaut was capable of 24 knots (about 28 mph to us land-bound souls). Despite being the marvel of its day, it sank in less than three hours after hitting an iceberg. My favorite Titanic story is about how the band kept playing until the last possible moment. It was only their job, but they knew that it would calm the masses as they were fighting for room in the sparse lifeboats. Today, after 27 years in the classroom I feel like I am a member of the band, hopelessly playing along as if nothing is wrong. Going about my job while everything I dedicated my life to and believe in falls apart around me. It is ironic that the musicians on the Titanic traveled as second class passengers on board this ship as do the teachers in American public schools today.
The Titanic was seen as the pinnacle of decades if not centuries of marine engineering and people saw it as infallible. Though we have been working for decades on our education system and graduation rates and NEAP scores are up, education is now seen as being responsible for a national security crisis. This is the third crisis in my lifetime if you count “Sputnik” and “A Nation At Risk.” This time things feel different though. This crisis has hidden agendas and a dual purpose. Some would even say it is manufactured. I believe that originally school vouchers were about giving money back to wealthy individuals who put their children in private schools while paying taxes for public schools, but they have a more insidious purpose today. Today they are about putting public money in the pockets of private companies.
The people on the Titanic had blind faith in the unsinkable ship and it’s captain who was said to believe that icebergs could not hurt his modern ship. The passengers were blissfully unaware of the dangers that were inherent in the crossing but the captain knew of and disregarded the warnings from other ships. Americans seem unaware of the true agenda of “reform” so cleverly cloaked behind a big media campaign today. Online schools, charters, grading schools, and testing for teacher evaluation are hallmarks of the privatization agenda. Anti-union advocates point at Finland to quote test scores, but never mention that all of Finland’s teachers are unionized. The best performing states in the country are unionized, but facts seem to fall on deaf ears in this debate. I am amazed at how blissfully unaware the average American is about our education voyage as well. Most are only focused on their local school and surveys show that they are overwhelmingly happy with them but the “reform” movement has convinced them that “other” schools are not like theirs.
Something that few Americans understand is that we spend almost as much nationally on education K-12 as we spend on defense. It is one of the last great pools of public money that is yet to be given to the lowest bidder. Still we find ourselves traveling at 24 knots with no radar or depth gauge at night in the fog in uncharted waters. These are dangerous waters indeed to be steaming at full speed as was the norm in the day of the Titanic. One of the “reforms” that we are pushing through at full speed despite the lack of research supporting it is teacher evaluation. Though teacher evaluation needs revision, high stakes testing has little validity. Teacher’s scores are dictated by the students they have. Moving excelling students from a “high performing” teacher to the classroom of a “low performing” teacher magically makes the poor teacher’s value added score highly effective. Let’s improve education through sound research, not the kind produced by politically motivated think tanks. We now know that cost cutting, brittle steel, and cheap rivets doomed the Titanic. Budget cuts and privatization are stacking the deck against public education as well.
My wife and I are both teachers and we raised two children with the help of the public school system. Both had full tuition academic scholarship offers. One was even a valedictorian now leaving college as a chemical engineer. The other a talented writer and artist who finished a double major bachelors in just 3 and 1/2 years. They went to a great public school, but more importantly, they were brought up in a home with high expectations, no poverty, emotional support and parents that were highly involved in their education. If you want to improve education, find a way to level the playing field for children who do not have these advantages. Poverty is not an excuse, just a reality. I will keep playing as long as the band will let me, but I see a large object looming on the horizon. Please keep in mind how hard it is to change the direction of a ship this large. There isn’t much time.
Respectfully,
Doug Purdy
YES the ship is sinking and has been for decades.
You will want to read the book by Charlotte Iserbyte to understand who has been targeting your ship and trying to destroy public ed !
oops. Deliberate Dumbing Down. You can read it online.
Gee mom, for a sinking ship it sure seemed to served you well. Anyone not suffering the ill effects of poverty, having parents or guardians that provide parenting and guidance, do quite well in our supposed failing schools. As I told my children, you will get the education that your are willing to work for. Your teachers teach, your job is to be a good student and exert yourself in the task of learning. My local so called failing school enabled both of my oldest sons to develop their considerable potential and attend college for engineering and math on full ride scholarships. This school has not made AYP in over 8 years but has some of the best math and science teachers in the state, all of whom possess Ph.D degrees in their areas as well as teaching credentials. They know what most teachers know: We can’t do this alone, schools and teachers need help. Home is more important than school in terms of enabling educational success. Don’t forget, we are one of the few countries that attempts to educate all students and tests them all on these vaunted international tests. Most countries only present the results of their top students, others do not take the tests. These results should not be shaping our policy. Our “international” standing is not the reason our economy is having difficulty.
Amen
typing error, seems to have served you well.
Whether it be a simile or a metaphor, we are on a sinking ship. Obama has shown himself to be “a puppet.”He gave away stimulus money to savvy thieves. He does not appear to have learned from his errors. In fact, he has verified that he sold us out. Biden’ s brave and excellent performance will never overcome the damage Obama did in his devastating revelation of the facade he has sold the American people.
Amazing. I am thinking about my letter. I’ve been watching instant episodes of the last season of Damages. And for some reason I feel the opening of the theme song is highly applicable to our situation as teachers. The lyrics are “Little Lamb, smile. When I get through with you, there won’t be anything left. . . .” It just speaks to me because I feel when this is all over all teachers will have been sucked dry and there won’t be anyone left to replace us. Our students are being sacrificed and will just become test taking robots.
I like your Titanic analogy. Here is Australia, we too have governments pushing this privatization agenda, informed by the corporate world. Our Victoruan state government is hellbent on performance pay for teachers that perform. We are yet to be informed as to how this will be measured. Student data only tells a small part of the story.
I hope you fixed “it’s” to show possession, not a plural. Sorry. Occupational hazard.
Thanks on it, or it’s I mean.
Great letter. According to James Cameron’s account (accurate?), the captain was being dictated to be higher-ups to show off the ship’s speed. If the Titanic had heeded the warnings and slowed down, it may have been able to steer clear of danger. Arrogance was the folly. The assault on public education from which we currently suffer goes far beyond arrogance. It’s devious and purposeful.
Quite true. It said on wikipedia that top speed was the norm of the day. I think I missed an opportunity for another appropriate metaphor.
Doug
Be sure to add your letter to the archive at http://campaignforourpublicschools.org after emailing Anthony. Here you can read what other teachers and parents are writing and get ideas for your own letter.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Performance pay, many years ago I was in the college opera company, if I sing before a lesson will that qualify? It has been so many years, I had probably better not. We perform every day.
I think you’re on to something. I’m on stage every moment the kids are in my room. There’s no down time. There’s no moment where students are working independently and I can catch a breath. I sing, move, and play the recorder and the piano every day. No wonder I’m exhausted. I hope the pay is retroactive for all my performances. I’m very excited at the prospect of actually getting compensated for putting all that energy out in performance every minute of the day. After all, that’s why they pay me the “big bucks,” right? 😛
Education is not failing. Education is pushing forward. Education is not a community event. It is a global event. Our focus should not just be Johnny up the street. The reality we have to understand that we are competing against a kid who will never step on American soil, but who will benefit greatly from America’s needs. As for teachers, our challenge is to do whatever it takes to get the job done. That is it.
I agree that we have problems in education. There is no doubt about that. But when have there ever been little to no problems in education?
As for you titanic analogy…here is the story
2,227 people on board.
Deaths of 1,517 people.
All the lifeboats, except for two, had been launched.
They could have saved 468 MORE people if the lifeboats had been loaded properly — but they weren’t.
The life boats could only 1,178 people, only 33% of Titanic’s total capacity.
Most of the boats were launched partially empty; one boat meant to hold 40 people left Titanic with only 12 people on board.
They kept launching the boats into the water with less than half the capacity of the boats.
Education is building teachers who can have the capacity to save all students. This includes social economic deprived students and English language learners. Our job is not to sit on the deck and play a tune. Our job is to react to the situation and to load that boat! Not scream on deck, “The ship is sinking!”
I respect your point of view. Now lets load that boat! We have kids to save.
Your reverse analogy doesn’t make sense to me. Why would we need to load the life boats to save the kids if the boat wasn’t sinking? (i.e. Education isn’t failing). You sound more like you are in denial about what is happening (kind of like the Captain who just couldn’t believe his ship was sinking). I think the point of the article is that our system of education is failing because too many outside influences with agendas other than helping kids have determined its structure and direction, which is easy for those of us who have “sailed” on many reform ships through the years to see, and frustrating because we know it is doomed and we can’t get through to the “passengers”. The people they hear are the slick media propagandists who are paid to paint a beautiful picture of how their for-profit businesses are pushing education forward full-steam ahead and distracting them with all of the shiny bells and whistles that cover up the fact there are not enough life boats to save the kids when it finally cannot be denied that sinking is inevitable. They have no back up plan. They are in it for the huge profit, not for the future of our kids.
Education is not failing. Eduction is doing what it is supposed to do. Educate. True their are outside influences. But what do you expect? Education is not about a single classroom teacher”s experiences. It is about growth and to getting better.
Let’s try to play with the metaphor of a great ship. All of us are on the great ship (no, it is not the Titanic, it is American society).
The ship is magnificent, and it is sailing in rough waters. Along come a bunch of money-grubbing salesmen who offer to take a handful of passengers and “save” them. They are the peddlers of snake oil, the ones who open a shiny new charter or who are peddling vouchers. They don’t care about the fate of the ship with its large number of passengers. They just want as many as their little boats will hold.
If the little boats carry away the captain and the crew, the whole boat will sink. But their little lifeboats will do very well.
Education is not failing. Education is pushing forward. Education is not a community event. It is a global event. Our focus should not just be Johnny up the street. The reality we have to understand that we are competing against a kid who will never step on American soil, but who will benefit greatly from America’s needs. As for teachers, our challenge is to do whatever it takes to get the job done. That is it.
I agree that we have problems in education. There is no doubt about that. But when have there ever been little to no problems in education?
As for you titanic analogy…here is the story
2,227 people on board.
Deaths of 1,517 people.
All the lifeboats, except for two, had been launched.
They could have saved 468 MORE people if the lifeboats had been loaded properly — but they weren’t.
The life boats could only 1,178 people, only 33% of Titanic’s total capacity.
Most of the boats were launched partially empty; one boat meant to hold 40 people left Titanic with only 12 people on board.
They kept launching the boats into the water with less than half the capacity of the boats.
Education is building teachers who can have the capacity to save all students. This includes social economic deprived students and English language learners. Our job is not to sit on the deck and play a tune. Our job is to react to the situation and to load that boat! Not scream on deck, “The ship is sinking!”
I respect your point of view. Now lets load that boat! We have kids to save.
I would posit one addition Dr. Ravitch. They have their own descendants of Captain Bligh to skipper their lifeboats, they want us to walk the plank, we must repel the mutiny of these pirates trying to sink the ship.
If the teachers’ unions would stop supporting the Democratic and Republican parties, and begin the process of creating a truly democratic party that represented the working and middle classes, we would begin the process of forging a new social consciousness in the US and elsewhere. The NEA and AFT are mammoth organizations that could alter the political landscape in the way that Lewis’s mineworkers changed the union movement (Unfortunately, he didn’t lead to the next step, a labor party).
Agreed. Came across this from my old files. When Obama was just a year and half into his term.
“Quite frankly.. I’m exhausted of defending you… defending your administration. http://abcn.ws/V3ovNc (via @ABC)