Robert D. Shepherd comments on the story this morning about the teacher in Missouri who was suspended after writing an article on the Huffington Post about the abuses heaped on teachers:
“Teaching is a unique profession. Teachers are responsible for cultural transmission–for passing on to a new generation the best of what the culture has created–and it’s extremely important–it goes to the very heart of what it is to be a pluralistic democracy–that students be exposed to a variety of viewpoints presented by teachers who are opinionated scholars. In the past, we didn’t give tenure to teachers right away because we recognized that people had to earn the right, but we also recognized the importance of that right–of intellectual freedom. If someone wants to have an official single view enforced by a top-down, absolutist authority, then a very good place to start is with the killing of due process and tenure. The attack on tenure in the U.S. is not a free market reform. It’s Orwellian.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act. (George Orwell)
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It seems to me that by breaking the contracts for tenure and retirement, in essence, dilute provisions that were promised upon hiring. And the decisions are made unilaterally.
Applying a business model to the teaching of students is simply misguided. Students are not identical widgets. Teachers are not identical cogs. They are making a case for replacing the profession with computer technology as the delivery system.
There are some things that computers cannot provide, even if the student constantly gets “good try” or “excellent” as a response for their efforts. It feels “Orwellian” to me.
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What better vehicle for delivery of the single sanctioned official view than a machine that will never question it? The folks at INGSOC would have LOVED to have the capability of replacing actual human teachers with machines.
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I think that you’ve hit the nail on the head here. Dismantling public education is an intentional effort to kill intellectual freedom and suppress any form of dissent.
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And it won’t be long until this reaches the college level. When NPR took money from Walton and Gates, free thought was compromised especially on education policy. So how long until it’s political though that is also being purchased??
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Yours is to do, not to question!
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I have been fighting students, parents, staff and teachers being falsely charged and retributed on since 1995. In 1997 we finally had the State of California’s Auditor audit LAUSD on teachers being falsely charged with child abuse for whistleblowing. LAUSD agreed to stop this behavior and now it is worse than ever. So what is the answer, well, AB 375 which will take away due process rights for teachers. Not to stop the behavior. Orwellian, sure is. The audit is Oct. 1997, 96121.
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Will teachers eventually be charged with thoughtcrime?
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EVERYONE will, readingexchange.
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teaching is a unique and valuable profession to be sure. but not all teachers have transmission of our culture and scholarship in mind. Social and Emotional Learning is swiftly replacing historical knowledge transmission clouded by ” critical ” thinking which is a veiled catchphrase for just plain criticism, and mostly without context. the enjoyment of reading literature is being replaced by info text and “deep” engagement with it. which does not sound very liberal, sounds very directed and having the desire to get across one specific point only. I see the textbooks and curriculum. have seen the lesson plan scripts. I deal with some teachers who are far from scholars in any subject and I am sad for kids who have to deal with teachers who have been ravaged by teacher educators with only psychosocial entitlement transmission and social justice in mind distorting the transmission of our amazing culture warts and all, just showing the warts seems to be the trend. it is becoming warped. Opinions are great but when they all come from biased radical political views, critical theory and postmodern deconstructionism then our kids are out of luck and we scholar parents grab our kids and run for the hills, every man for himself. sad but true. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com suggest everyone take a look at this.
The imperious atitude of some teachers is truly remarkable and worth noting as well as those fewer and fewer who are truly inspiring teachers scholars who actually like kids and God forbid, even parents and give and take joy to and from the classroom. it seems that tenure for teachers is fine but parents cant have tenure according to current trends.
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Democracy is messy. It involves free actors with dramatically differing views, some of which any particular person is going to abhor. But Milton had it right, long ago, when he wrote in the Areopagitica that “Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.”
We shouldn’t be attempting to make our schools into places staffed with teachers whose opinions reflect some authoritarian, mandated, received, mainstream set of views and only those. In a pluralistic democracy, schools should be places of vigorous, free debate and contention. And kids should be trained to subject what those authorities, those teachers, say to critical scrutiny, not to be robots.
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