Some people love to teach. They want to make a career of teaching. They see teaching not as a job but as their life’s work, their mission.

Other people don’t understand why anyone would want to make a professional commitment to teaching. It’s a poorly paid profession, it is hard work, and a teacher must often deal with recalcitrant children who don’t want to be there.

But despite the obstacles and burdens, there are still people who love to teach, and their critics find it possible to know why.

Reader Jack Covey has collected a few choice quotes on this subject. As I read his comment, it seemed to me that someone could write a book collecting similar quotes disparaging teachers and teaching. Not only the infamous Newsweek cover story noted below, but also several TIME cover stories, including the recent one called “Rotten Apples,” about how Silicon Valley execs decided to “fix” education by eliminating tenure. No plan from Silucon Valley execs about how to reduce poverty or directly address the needs of children, just a plan to make it easier to fire teachers.

Here is Jack Covey’s comment:

“Let’s start with anti-corporate reformer Leonie Haimson:

http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/08/unmasking-the-blame-the-teacher-crowd.html

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LEONIIE HAIMSON: Scapegoating teachers has become the mantra of the so-called reformers. From Katie Haycock claiming (with no evidence) that the problems of low-performing schools are primarily due to poor teaching, to the recent cover of Newsweek, proclaiming that the ” Key to saving American education” is to “fire bad teachers,” with these words repeated over and over on the blackboard, this simplistic notion notion infects nearly every blog, magazine, and DC think tank, including this one.

In what other sphere would we make this claim? Is the key to reforming our inequitable health care system firing bad doctors? Or the key to reducing inner city crime firing bad cops? No. But somehow this inherently destructive perspective is the delivered wisdom among the privateers who populate and dominate thinking in this country.

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From corporate reformer Kati Haycock: (originally at NEWSWEEK—since deleted by NEWSWEEK) but still available at

http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/08/unmasking-the-blame-the-teacher-crowd.html

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KATI HAYCOCK: But what we need to do is change the idea that education is the only career that needs to be done for life. There are a lot of smart people who change careers every six or seven years, while education ends up with a bunch of people on the low end of the pile who don’t want to compete in the job market. Kati Haycock, President of Education Trust, (Newsweek, 9/1/08)

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From Corporate Reformer & hedge fund guru Whitney Tilson:

http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/08/unmasking-the-blame-the-teacher-crowd.html

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WHITNEY TILSON : (Public school teachers are) gutless weasels and completely disgraced themselves in siding with the unions against meaningful reforms of a public school system that systematically, all over the country, gives black and Latino students the very worst teachers and schools, thereby trapping black and Latino communities in multi-generational cycles of poverty, violence and despair. (July 30, 2011 blog post)
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And finally… From Michelle Rhee

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/crusader-of-the-classrooms/307080/

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ATLANTIC MONTHLY: One of the other concerns I’ve heard voiced about alternative selection models is that the teachers aren’t making a thirty-year, or even a ten-year commitment.

MICHELLE RHEE: Nobody makes a thirty-year or ten-year commitment to a single profession. Name one profession where the assumption is that when you go in, right out of graduating college, that the majority of people are going to stay in that profession. It’s not the reality anymore, maybe with the exception of medicine. But short of that, people don’t go into jobs and stay there forever anymore.

ATLANTIC MONTHLY: So you feel like teachers can be effective even within a short term?

MICHELLE RHEE: Absolutely, and I’d rather have a really effective teacher for two years than a mediocre or ineffective one for twenty years.

ATLANTIC MONTHLY: One thing that I’ve encountered personally in talking to a lot of veteran teachers is this idea that programs like Teach for America or the D.C. Teaching Fellows de-professionalize education. They see it as a kind of glorified internship.

MICHELLE RHEE: I’ll tell you what de-professionalizes education. It’s when we have people sitting in the classrooms—whether they’re certified or not, whether they’ve taught for two months or 22 years—that are not teaching kids. And whom we cannot remove from the classroom, and whom parents know are not good. Those are the things that de-professionalize the teaching corp. Not Teach for America, not D.C. Teaching Fellows. That, I think, is a ridiculous argument.

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Put yourself in the shoes of a university student. Are you going to spend and/or incur debt in a range of $100,000 – 300,000 for tuition/room & board/other expenses, then face all of that?