Working In These Times
When Did Teachers Become the Enemy?
Teachers and students protest during a one-day strike outside of Oakland High School on April 29 in Oakland, Calif., after the city's School Board implemented a new contract that leaves teachers without a pay raise. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Education has been consuming a great deal of attention of late. There have been two major articles in the New York Times in the past few months. Schools are dealing with body-blow-like budget cuts, the demands of No Child Left Behind and the Obama Administration’s focus on Race to the Top.
Charters and high-stakes testing are the new normal. Teachers, and especially their unions (both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association) are now widely seen as obstacles to reform: The teacher unions are holding back change, hurting our kids.
The cover story in Sunday's NYT Magazine depicts a circle of national reformers who have vilified the union and see collective bargaining as the enemy. How did we get here? When did teachers become the problem? Yes, there have always been problem teachers (we have either had one or have had children who have). But by most evidence, teachers by and large are good, dedicated and caring.
It has got to stink being a teacher these days, especially one in an underperforming urban district. Mandated testing, lack of resources and precarious job security are constant. Teachers in many states are waiting for pink slips, watching state budgets and hoping for the best. Pundits are demanding that tenure be abolished and the workday lengthened.
What is missing from this conversation is a historically informed understanding of teaching. Teachers, as history tells us, were for many, many years underpaid and unprofessional. In the 20th century, they marched to professionalization, and with that improved schools and their own economic situations.
Today we stand at a crossroads. Diane Ravitch, in her new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, has traced the decline of teachers to mere functionaries. Ravitch, as you may have heard, had been not just a cheerleader and active policy wonk for testing and charters, but a George H.W. Bush undersecretary of education. In her new book she does an about-face.
Ravitch worries about what is lost: We have traded curriculum for testing, but what are we really testing for? She calls for a return to a time when teachers were intellectuals, informed professionals, and where there was a public consensus on the importance of public education.
Are we too late? As the charter schools movement grows, funded by a handful of huge foundations that Ravitch calls "the Billionaire Boy's Club," and public funding and support of education wanes, we are in serious jeopardy of loosing it all. Ravitch is right; we have lost faith in education as a social and economic necessity.
But, did we ever really have it? Ravitch does not want to return to some mystical past where things were better. She is too smart to realize that place does not exist. But what did exist is an excited and far-reaching public debate that had meaning. I too hope we can have such a meaningful discussion. Without it, we are doomed to continued failing schools, whole scale disinvestment in education and a permanent underclass.
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Comments
Thank you for this article! I think my reaction to growing ‘teacher + public education bashing’ is one of heartbreak rather than intellectual ‘argument’ in support of teachers and public education. So I am most grateful when others articulate what needs to be said! After hospitals and medical clinics - which of course are ‘about’ breath and life - there is no environment more revealing of “the essence of humanity”, in my experience, than a classroom in a public school. A room-size collection of hearts and heads immersed in exploration of self, of bodies of knowledge, of ideas, of larger world, of development in skill and technique. How painful sometimes to notice this joyful and challenging opportunity is cast so low by so many! During my time of teaching this ‘bashing’ arose from time to time but also abated, giving us time to forget it, and carry on with our business of learning. My heart goes out to all on the ‘front lines’ in public schools: teachers, students, support staff, and parents who value and support their schools. Publicly provided education for all citizens is treated as if it were “THE problem”, when in fact it is one of our few best solutions to intelligent citizen participation in our self-governance!
True education reform cannot exclude the participation of public school teacher’s unions. I’m sorry. Teachers are the professionals that continue to get the blame and who are for the most part ignored by so-called education experts.
If we want true education reform we must seriously consider the following:1) No more mandated exams that tend to negate the progress of a child rather than to enhance it. Not all students do well on standardized tests and that is a fact. 2) We need to recognize our school teachers as a vital part of our communities. Teachers need support not unwarranted condemnation such as what the current Education Czar has been doing along with the president! 3) Political leaders from the federal level down need to acknowledge that impoverished inner city kids do poorly for a variety of reasons. Nutrition, lack of healthcare, dysfunctional parents, dangerous neighborhoods, insensitive politcial leaders who cram 40 or more students into a classroom, etc. 4) School budgets should be increased NOT cut back! The funding is there. We need only to end the unnecessary, unjustified wars in Afghanistan and Iraq! 5) We must recognize and acknowledge the fact that class and race play very damaging roles in our public school systems! In my hometown of San Antonio,TX we have no less than 16 separate and unequal school districts! If one is familiar with the local school districts, the economic class and racial segregation are quite clear. My guess that this is a similar problem in other urban areas.
When society puts more value into the future of children and the professional work of teachers and less emphasis on profit margins for large corporations, we will have begun the struggle to truly reform our public school systems!
Diane Ravitch is right-on in her analysis and I am grateful to Mr. Greenwald for continuing to keep this issue alive.
Steven Brill, who wrote the NYT Magazine piece that inspires Richard Greenwald’s article, is best known as the founder of Court TV, and no expert on education. What he evidently did for this article was to spend a lot of time talking with a guy named Jon Schnur who “runs a Manhattan-based school-reform group called New Leaders for New Schools.” In fact, it seems like all Brill’s ideas and contacts came through Schnur.
A quick check revels that Schnur not only heads New Leaders for New Schools but is part of another non-profit I’ve worked with, the Alliance for Excellent Education, funded by the wealthy Leeds family. And the connections go on and on among the web of idealistic reformers associated with liberal think tanks and foundations. Everybody I have encountered in this web loves Obama, and many recall fondly the moments when they were in the same room with him. And Brill was right to start his research with the well-connected Jon Schnur since all these folks are good friends with each other and with Ed Sec Arne Duncan, well-meaning classic liberals each and every one.
And all of them committed to a privatization scheme that will smash the last bastion of the American labor movement, the Teachers Unions. And why not? The liberal ideology is totally top-down. They know best and will guide the lower classes to enlightenment. And the lower classes definitely include teachers, who seldom have the right Ivy League credentials and are often seem disturbingly blue-collar. Not to mention all those minority women who have come into teaching in recent years. Liberals may think they love minorities but they really are disturbed when people have less than perfectly grammatical English.
And the NY Times still harbors a deep resentment of the once-powerful printers and teamsters, and is the natural home for a hit piece like Brill’s
The liberals with whom Obama moves are not friendly to labor unions. This is something the last remnants of the US labor movement ought to recognize before they are completely pushed out of existence.
Valatius, I agree with you to a certain degree. A lot (not all) of so-called liberals tend to act in just as reactionary ways as do conservatives when it comes to labor. To me these are not true liberals, but “moderate” conservatives! Unfortunatley far too many labor leaders also engage in the ineffective but controlling top down management style.
(ineffective in that those of us at the bottom are denied a real voice, thus controlling)
As to fayewongwuyi, all I can say is; Don’t you take this issue seriously? Or are you so numbed by materialism that all that matters is your own selfish gratification?