In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis
Wednesday 14 April 2010
by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Jose Kevo, emurray)
There has been a long, though declining, tradition in the United States in which public school teaching was embraced as an important public service. It was assumed that teachers provided a crucial foundation for educating young people in the values, skills and knowledge that enabled them to be critical citizens capable of shaping and expanding democratic institutions. Since the 1980s, teachers have been under an unprecedented attack by those forces that view schools less as a public good than as a private right. Seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.
Indications of the poisonous transformation of both the role of the public school and the nature of teacher work abound. The passage of laws promoting high-stakes testing for students and the use of test scores to measure teacher quality have both limited the autonomy of teacher authority and devalued the possibility of critical teaching and visionary goals for student learning. Teachers are no longer asked to think critically and be creative in the classroom. On the contrary, they are now forced to simply implement predetermined instructional procedures and standardized content, at best; and, at worst, put their imaginative powers on hold while using precious classroom time to teach students how to master the skill of test taking. Subject to what might be labeled as a form of bare or stripped-down pedagogy, teachers are removed from the processes of deliberation and reflection, reduced to implementing lock-step, time-on-task pedagogies that do great violence to students, while promoting a division of labor between conception and execution hatched by bureaucrats and "experts" from mainly conservative foundations. Questions regarding how teachers motivate students, make knowledge meaningful in order to make it critical and transformative, work with parents and the larger community or exercise the authority needed to become a constructive pedagogical force in the classroom and community are now sacrificed to the dictates of an instrumental rationality largely defined through the optic of measurable utility.
Little is said in this discourse about allocating more federal dollars for public schooling, replacing the aging infrastructures of schooling or increasing salaries so as to expand the pool of qualified teachers. Nor are teachers praised for their public service, the trust we in part to them in educating our children or the firewall they provide between a culture saturated in violence and idiocy and the civilizing and radical imaginative possibilities of an educated mind capable of transforming the economic, political and racial injustices that surround and bear down so heavily on public schools. Instead, teachers are stripped of their worth and dignity by being forced to adopt an educational vision and philosophy that has little respect for the empowering possibilities of either knowledge or critical classroom practices. Put bluntly, knowledge that can't be measured is viewed as irrelevant, and teachers who refuse to implement a standardized curriculum and evaluate young people through objective measures of assessments are judged as incompetent or disrespectful. Any educator who believes that students should learn more than how to obey the rules, take tests, learn a work skill or adopt without question the cruel and harsh market values that dominate society "will meet," as James Baldwin insists in his "Talk to Teachers," "the most fantastic, the most brutal and the most determined resistance."[1] And while the mythic character of education has always been at odds with its reality, as Baldwin noted in talking about the toxic education imposed on poor black children, the assault on public schooling in its current form truly suggests that "we are living through a very dangerous time."[2]
As the space of public schooling is reduced to a mindless infatuation with the metrics of endless modes of testing and increasingly enforces this deadening experience with disciplinary measures reminiscent of prison culture, teachers are increasingly removed from dealing with children as part of a broader historical, social and cultural context. As the school is militarized, student behavior becomes an issue that either the police or security forces handle. Removed from the normative and pedagogical framing of classroom life, teachers no longer have the option to think outside of the box, to experiment, be poetic or inspire joy in their students. School has become a form of dead time, designed to kill the imagination of both teachers and students. For years, teachers have offered students advice, corrected their behavior, offered help in addressing their personal problems and went out of their way to understand the circumstances surrounding even the most serious of student infractions. Couple this role of teachers as both caretaker and engaging intellectual with the imposition of a stripped-down curriculum that actually disdains creative teacher work while relegating teachers to the status of clerks. Needless to say, the consequences for both teachers and students have been deadly. Great ideas, modes of knowledge, disciplinary traditions and honorable civic ideals are no longer engaged, debated and offered up as a civilizing force for expanding the students' capacities as critical individuals and social agents. Knowledge is now instrumentalized and the awe, magic and insight it might provide is stripped way as it is redefined through the mindless logic of quantification and measurement that now grips the culture of schooling and drives the larger matrix of efficiency, productivity and consumerism shaping the broader society.
One current example of the unprecedented attack being waged against teachers, meaningful knowledge and critical pedagogy can be found in Senate Bill 6, which is being pushed by Florida legislators. Under this bill, the quality of teaching and the worth of a teacher are solely determined by student test scores on standardized tests. Teacher pay would be dependent upon such test scores, while the previous experience of a teacher would be deemed irrelevant. Moreover, advanced degrees and professional credentials would now become meaningless in determining a teacher's salary. Professional experience and quality credentials are now made irrelevant next to the hard reality of an empiricism that appears divorced from any semblance of reality. The real point of the bill is to both weaken the autonomy and authority of teachers and to force the Florida teacher's union to accept merit pay for teachers. But there is more at stake in this bill than a regressive understanding of the role and power of teachers and the desire to eliminate the very conditions, places and spaces that make good teaching possible. The bill also mandates that the power of local school boards be restricted, that new teachers be given probationary contracts for up to five years and then placed on a contract to be renewed annually. Moreover, salaries are now excluded as a subject of collective bargaining. This bill degrades the purpose of schooling, teaching and learning. It is not only harsh and cruel, but educationally reactionary and is designed to turn public schools into political tools for corporate dominated legislators, while depriving students of any viable notion of teaching and learning. This bill is bad for schools, teachers, students and democracy. It lacks any viable ethical and political understanding of how schools work, what role they should play in a democracy and what the myriad forces are that both undermine critical teaching and critical learning. Moreover, it turns the curriculum into a tool box for ignoramuses.
We need a new language for understanding public education as formative for democratic institutions and for the vital role that teachers play in such a project. When I first wrote "Teachers as Intellectuals" in 1988, I argued that education should be viewed as a moral and political practice that always presupposes particular renditions of what constitutes legitimate knowledge, values, citizenship, modes of understanding and views of the future. In other words, teaching was always directive in its attempt to shape students as particular agents and offer them a particular understanding of the present and the future. And while schools have a long history of simply attempting to reproduce the ideological contours of the existing society, they are capable of much more, and therein lay their danger and possibilities. At their worst, teachers have been viewed as merely gatekeepers. At best, they are one of the most valued professions we have in educating future generations in the discourse, values and relations of democratic empowerment. Rather than viewed as disinterested technicians, teachers should be viewed as engaged intellectuals, willing to construct the classroom conditions that provide the knowledge, skills and culture of questioning necessary for students to participate in critical dialogue with the past, question authority, struggle with ongoing relations of power and prepare themselves for what it means to be active and engaged citizens in the interrelated local, national and global public spheres.
Defining teachers as public intellectuals and schools as democratic public spheres is as applicable today as it was when I wrote "Teachers as Intellectuals." Central to fostering a pedagogy that is open and discerning, fused with a spirit of critical inquiry that fosters rather than mandates modes of individual and social agency is the assumption that teachers should not only be critical intellectuals, but also have some control over the conditions of their own pedagogical labor. Academic labor at its best flourishes when it is open to dialogue, respects the time and conditions teachers need to prepare lessons, research, cooperate with each other and engage valuable community resources. Put differently, teachers are the major resource for what it means to establish the conditions for education to be linked to critical learning rather than training, embrace a vision of democratic possibility rather than a narrow instrumental notion of education and embrace the specificity and diversity of children's lives rather than treat them as if such differences did not matter. Hence, teachers deserve the respect, autonomy, power and dignity that such a task demands.
The basic premise here is that if public education is a crucial sphere for creating citizens equipped to exercise their freedoms and learn the competencies necessary to question the basic assumptions that govern democratic political life, public school teachers must be allowed to shape the conditions that enable them to assume their responsibility as citizen-scholars, take critical positions, relate their work to larger social issues, offer multiple forms of literacies, debate and dialogue about pressing social problems and provide the conditions for students to conjure up the hope and belief that civic life matters, that they can make a difference in shaping society so as to expand its democratic possibilities for all groups. Of course, this is not merely a matter of changing the consciousness of teachers or the larger public or the ways in which teachers are educated. These are important considerations, but what must be embraced in this recognition of the importance of public schools teachers is that such an investment is an issue of politics, ethics and power, all of which must be viewed as part of a larger struggle to connect the crisis of schooling and teaching to the crisis of democracy itself.
Teachers all over America now labor under the shadow of a number of anti-democratic tendencies extending from a ruthless market fundamentalism that mistakes students for products and equates learning with the practice of conformity and disciplinary mindlessness. On the other side are those anti-intellectual and residual religious and political fundamentalists who view schooling as a threat to orthodoxy and tradition and want to silence critical forms of pedagogy as well as eliminate those teachers who value thinking over conformity, teaching over training and empowerment over deskilling. What all of these anti-democratic tendencies share are a disregard for critical teaching and a disdain for the notion of teachers as critical and public intellectuals. Against these anti-democratic tendencies is the challenge of redefining and reimagining teachers as public intellectuals and the schools as a democratic public sphere, both of which provide an invaluable resource in reminding the larger society, if not teachers and everyone concerned about education, of their responsibility to take ethical and risky positions and engage practices currently at odds with both religious fundamentalism and the market-driven values that dominate schooling.
Educators now face the daunting challenge of creating new discourses, pedagogies and collective strategies that will offer students the hope and tools necessary to revive education as a political and ethical response to the demise of democratic public life. Such a challenge suggests struggling to keep alive those institutional spaces, forums and public spheres that support and defend critical education, help students come to terms with their own power as individual and social agents, exercise civic courage and engage in community projects and research that are socially responsible. None of this will happen unless the American public refuses to allow schools and teachers to surrender what counts as knowledge, values and skills to the highest bidder. In part, this requires pedagogical practices that connect the space of language, culture and identity to their deployment in larger physical and social spaces. Such pedagogical practices are based on the presupposition that it is not enough to teach students how to read the word and knowledge critically. They most also learn how to act on their beliefs, reflect on their role as engaged citizens and intervene in the world as part of the obligation of what it means to be a socially responsible agent. As critical and public intellectuals, teachers must fight for the right to dream, conceptualize and connect their visions to classroom practice. They must also learn to confront directly the threat from fundamentalisms of all varieties that seek to turn democracy into a mall, a sectarian church or an adjunct of the emerging punishing state. What the concept of teachers as public intellectuals references, once again, is that the most important role of teachers is not only to educate students to be critical thinkers, but also prepare them to be activists in the best sense of the term - that is, thoughtful and active citizens willing to fight for the economic, political and social conditions and institutions that make democracy possible. The reason why public education has become so dangerous is that it associates teaching and learning with civic values, civic courage and a respect for the common good - a position decidedly at odds with the unbridled individualism, privatized discourse, excessive competition, hyper militarized masculinity and corporate values that now drive educational policy and practice.
There are those critics who, in tough economic times, insist that providing students with anything other than work skills threatens their future viability on the job market. While I believe that public education should equip students with skills to enter the workplace, it should also educate them to contest workplace inequalities, imagine democratically organized forms of work and identify and challenge those injustices that contradict and undercut the most fundamental principles of freedom, equality and respect for all people who constitute the global public sphere. Moreover, public education should be about more than learning how to take a test, job preparation or even critical consciousness raising; it is also about imagining a more just future, one that does more than replicate the present. In contrast to the cynicism and political withdrawal that screen and mainstream media cultures foster, a critical education demands that its citizens be able to translate the interface of private considerations and public issues; be able to recognize those anti-democratic forces that deny social, economic and political justice; and be willing to give some thought to their experiences as a matter of anticipating and struggling for a better world. In short, democratic rather than commercial values should be the primary concerns of both public education and the university.
If the right-wing educational reforms now being championed by the Obama administration and many state governments continue unchallenged, America will become a society in which a highly trained, largely white elite will continue to command the techno-information revolution, while a vast, low-skilled majority of poor and minority workers will be relegated to filling the McJobs proliferating in the service sector. The children of the rich and privilege will be educated in exclusive private schools and the rest of the population, mostly poor and nonwhite, will be offered bare forms of pedagogy suitable to work in the dead end low skill service sector of society, assuming that these jobs will be available. Teachers will lose most of their rights, protections and dignity and be treated as clerks of the empire. And as more and more young people fail to graduate from high school, they will fill the ranks of those disposable populations now filling up our prisons at a record pace. In contrast to this vision, I strongly believe that genuine, critical education cannot be confused with job training. At the same time, public schools have to be viewed as institutions as crucial to the security and safety of the country as national defense. If educators and others are to prevent this distinction between education and training from becoming blurred, it is crucial to both challenge the ongoing corporatization of public schools, while upholding the promise of the modern social contract in which all youth, guaranteed the necessary protections and opportunities, were a primary source of economic and moral investment, symbolizing the hope for a democratic future. In short, those individuals and groups concerned about the promise of education need to reclaim their commitment to future generations by taking seriously the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's belief that the ultimate test of morality for any democratic society resides in the condition of its children. If public education is to honor this ethical commitment, it will have to not only re-establish its obligation to young people, but reclaim its role as a democratic public sphere and uphold its support for teachers.
Defending teachers as engaged intellectuals and public schools as democratic public spheres is not a call for any one ideology on the political spectrum to determine the shape of the future direction of public and university education. But at the same time, such a defense reflects a particular vision of the purpose and meaning of public and higher education and their crucial role in educating students to participate in an inclusive democracy. Teachers have a responsibility to engage critical pedagogy as a an ethical referent and a call to action for educators, parents, students and others to reclaim public education as a democratic public sphere, a place where teaching is not reduced to learning how to master either tests or acquire low level jobs skills, but a safe space where reason, understanding, dialogue and critical engagement are available to all faculty and students. Education, if not teaching itself, in this reading, becomes the site of ongoing struggles to preserve and extend the conditions in which autonomy of judgment and freedom of action are informed by the democratic imperatives of equality, liberty and justice, while ratifying and legitimating the role of teachers as critical and public intellectuals. Viewing public schools as laboratories of democracy and teachers as critical intellectuals offers a new generation of educators an opportunity to understand education as a concrete reminder that the struggle for democracy is, in part, an attempt to liberate humanity from the blind obedience to authority and that individual and social agency gain meaning primarily through the freedoms guaranteed by the public sphere, where the autonomy of individuals only becomes meaningful under those conditions that guarantee the workings of an autonomous society. The current vicious assault on public school teachers is a reminder that the educational conditions that make democratic identities, values and politics possible and effective have to be fought for more urgently at a time when democratic public spheres, public goods and public spaces are under attack by market and other ideological fundamentalists who either believe that corporations can solve all human problems or that dissent is comparable to aiding terrorists - positions that share the common dominator of disabling a substantive notion of ethics, politics and democracy. The rhetoric of accountability, privatization and standardization that now dominates both major political parties does more than deskill teachers, weaken teacher unions, dumb down the curriculum and punish students; it also offers up a model for education that undermines it as a public good. Under such circumstances, teacher work and autonomy are not only devalued; learning how to govern and be a critical citizen in a fragile democracy are hijacked.
As Baldwin reminded us, we live in dangerous times, yet as educators, parents, activists and workers, we can address the current assault on democracy by building local and social movements that fight for the rights of teachers and students to teach and learn with the necessary autonomy, resources and dignity. Democratic struggles cannot overemphasize the special responsibility of teachers as intellectuals to shatter the conventional wisdom and myths of those ideologies that would relegate educators to mere technicians, clerks of the empire or mere adjuncts of the corporation. As the late Pierre Bourdieu argued, the "power of the dominant order is not just economic, but intellectual - lying in the realm of beliefs," and it is precisely within the domain of ideas that a sense of utopian possibility can be restored to the public realm.[3] Teaching in this instance is not simply about critical thinking, but also about social engagement, a crucial element of not just learning and social engagement, but politics itself. Most specifically, democracy necessitates quality teachers and critical pedagogical practices that provide a new ethic of freedom and a reassertion of collective responsibility as central preoccupations of a vibrant democratic culture and society. Such a task, in part, suggests that any movement for social change put education and the rights of students and teachers at the forefront of such a struggle. Teachers are more crucial in the struggle for democracy than security guards and the criminal justice system. Students deserve more that being trained to be ignorant and willing accomplices of the corporation and the empire. Teachers represent a valued resource and are one of the few groups left that can educate students in ways that enable them to resist the collective insanity that now threatens this country. We need to take them seriously by giving them the dignity, labor conditions, salaries, freedom, time and support they deserve. This may be the most important challenge Americans face as we move into the 21st century.
[1]. James Baldwin, "A Talk to Teachers," The Saturday Review (December 21, 1963). Online: http://richgibson.com/talktoteachers.htm
[2]. Ibid.
[3]. Pierre Bourdieu and Gunter Grass, "The 'Progressive' Restoration: A Franco-German Dialogue," New Left Review 14 (March-April, 2003), p. 66.
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Comments
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Well, if only confined to
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 13:31 — Vic Anderson (not verified)Well, if only confined to public employees (including Obummer, if not all US workers) the teachers' plight won't be reversed until a meritocracy whereby ALL are guaranteed life's necessities; but no one receives luxuries without superlative performance. So Barry barely gets Casa Blanca (Michelle can do the cleaning) and Airbus I; while excellent teachers and other true Public SERVANTS get the yachts and trips to Majorca (or WHATEVER). And PEACE; no justice, then none of ,\/,, either!
We spend from $12,000 per
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 13:42 — Anonymous (not verified)We spend from $12,000 per child (Phoenix) to $27,000 per child (NYC) on public education when it's all added up. It's estimated public schools cost almost twice the median for private schools. And what do we get for it???
Yet teachers' unions oppose what would save our children AND save money: vouchers. If we gave $5000 toward any child's private education AND reduced government education spending by the per-child rate, we'd save a bundle and our children would get an education. The best public school teachers could easily get a job at a private school. The unions are there to protect the bad teachers. Who cares about the kids.
Giroux is right on. The
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 15:27 — Gene Anderson (not verified)Giroux is right on. The insane testing craze is destroying the kids as well as the schools. The right wing is simply concerned with union-busting. They know perfectly well that you don't attract good teachers by devastating the pay and the working conditions. But, since the public schools will soon have mostly "minority" kids, the right wing is eager to destroy public education anyway.
The wing nuts can't abide
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 15:50 — farmertx (not verified)The wing nuts can't abide educated people. They are harder to fool with smoke and mirrors.
Just as in TX where the local nuts got appointed to school book review committee and insisted that TX history books be re-written to stress their beliefs.
In Texas, with lil Ricky as governor, you can re-write history.
Texas is doing such a great job that all colleges in the State have remedial classes for freshmen.
To 18:42 I bet you didn't
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 15:57 — Liced-Christ (not verified)To 18:42
I bet you didn't even read (or understand) a single point made in this article.
With a crypto-Republican in
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 15:59 — Anonymous (not verified)With a crypto-Republican in the White House there is little hope for public education. As in much else, Obama is an enemy of progressives--and of common sense.
The statement: "if public
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 16:32 — Nick Fritsch (not verified)The statement:
"if public education is a crucial sphere for creating citizens equipped to exercise their freedoms and learn the competencies necessary to question the basic assumptions that govern democratic political life"
...is exactly WHY this assault on teachers and public education is in such ferocious swing right now. Politicians, faith-based advocates, tea baggers and others, love to talk about teachers as if they were unionized bank robbers, stealing everyone's money and giving nothing in return. However the real reason is that the ideals embodied in the above statement are precisely what this coporate-centered society NO longer wants! No questions, no critical thought or analysis, just a lifetime of trips to and from work, the mall and the game. If you start this path at an early enough age, eventually no one will remember what 'freedom of thought" actually meant.
I'd love my taxes to go for
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 16:34 — Jane B. (not verified)I'd love my taxes to go for public education instead of billions upon billions of dollars in "offense" spending.
I don't think the unions are doing much good, either. But it fries me every time someone brings up vouchers. What good to an already financially strapped family will a $5,000 voucher do when a private school in their community costs $7,50-$24,000 a year? That's what private and parochial schools cost in my city. And that's not counting the fundraising and volunteer time parents are obliged to put in, and the extra time to bus or drive a child to a school that may be miles out of their neighborhood. VOUCHERS. DON'T. WORK.
That said, private schools aren't necessarily great centers of learning either. In my state, private schoolteachers don't have to be licensed to teach. Thanks to the usual Republican reverse-Robin Hood policies over the past 30 years, and Democrats' naivete about "reaching across the aisle" to an aisle that doesn't want to be reached out to, only the wealthy communities will continue to have excellent public schools, while the rest of us will continue to see our schools plummet in virtually every area, from the physical plant to the lack of textbooks, to poorly paid teachers with decreasing skills.
So drive another nail in the coffin of what used to be a wonderful country. So sad.
Instead of laying off
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 16:35 — Midwest Tom (not verified)Instead of laying off teachers, why not simply cut all of their pay, which is what many companies have done is this recession. In general government employees are paid over 50% more (including benefits) than similarly educated workers in the private sector. By the way the headquarters cost of our county school distract has risen by over $1.5 million in the last two years, in a county with 300,000 residents.
I think we need to avoid
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 16:42 — Geoffrey Henny, Ann Arbor, MI (not verified)I think we need to avoid demonizing either side. Education is and always has been a battlefield of ideas and ideologies. Its always changing and every generation claims things are getting worse when they in fact have always gotten better.
The problems facing teachers, parents, government and business today - when it comes to education - are complex The plain fact is we really don't know what the future will require of young people so we are not sure what to teach them or how to teach them. Its always been like that; a sort of muddling through with a core notion of literacy and numeracy along with our own experience and trying lots of new things to see what might stick.
We are certainly spending plenty of money on education compared to previous eras so I don't believe that is really the issue. I also hear from many leaders concerned with education that our teacher training institution are lousy across the board as are most of the research studies done on education. That might be part of the problem, especially since we can no longer count on the huge numbers of extremely talented women who now can become doctors, scientists and business people instead of being restricted to teaching, nursing and homemaking, as they were in an earlier time. The other thing that has always intrigues me is why we think people should start teaching in their 20s instead of the their 40s. In my experience (and I'm 60) and I'm in good company with Plato on this, you don't really know anything about 'how it works until middle age (if then).
In 1993, I was using my GI
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 16:44 — Harry Thomas (not verified)In 1993, I was using my GI Bill benefits to achieve a degree in education, with the goal of becoming a teacher. I had some doubts about my ability to deal with teenage angst and helicopter parents, so I talked to my professors and friends who were teachers. All of them told me the same thing: if you have any doubt, change your major now. I took their advice and went in a different direction.
Considering what has happened to the public education sphere, I am extremely glad that I did follow their advice. I would probably have quit or been encouraged to leave the first year that I found that I was required to "teach to the test."
Like our government, the institution has become so corrupted by both internal and external factors that the only real solution is to tear it down and start over.
What's really ironic to me is that we have the greatest resource of information ever available in the history of the world via the Internet; but we're dumbing down the ability of our children to take advantage of it. You have to be taught how to learn, not just regurgitate answers on a test grid.
My mother, father and sister
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 16:46 — Don (not verified)My mother, father and sister were all excellent, dedicated public school teachers but after they retired, none would have picked teaching as a career after the right-wing No Child Left Behind philosophy came into vogue. Teachers have become the scapegoat for destroying public education so the right-wing middle class can get vouchers to send their children to all-white schools.
Incidentally, it appears 18:42 and 18:31 are products of the current education system.
Parents used to hold
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 16:54 — Anonymous (not verified)Parents used to hold teachers in higher esteem because the teacher was usually better educated than the parent. But now that a college education is the norm, that is no longer the case.
It also didn't help when parents learned about new teaching methods they were suspicious of: when you asked your 10-year old to divide 45 by 9 and he couldn't do it...that's an eye-opener. Or your daughter is writing a big History report about "Diversity" but doesn't even know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Ouch.
I thoroughly disagree with the author that society's attitude about education has changed from a public good to a private right. What's changed is the public's view of the value they are receiving for education dollars spent.
Goal is keeping wages low/
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 16:55 — NYCartist (not verified)Goal is keeping wages low/ union busting and privatization, which can do the former, also. I was a teacher for 5 years in public jr. high school, before becoming an artist - in the early 1960s. While a young, new teacher, I was involved in the first NYC teacher strikes: 1961-for the right to have a union; 1962 - for the first contract. I had gone to a state teachers' college where we were told, "teaching is a profession; you don't need a union" and my starting pay in 1960 was under $5,000.per year. Mayoral control is a throwback of over a century.
Vouchers work great and
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 17:00 — Anonymous (not verified)Vouchers work great and $5000 a year would be enough for a ton of kids to get out of the public school system, which is why teachers' unions oppose them. If they weren't popular and lots of people wouldn't use them, teachers' unions wouldn't care one way or the other. In some areas, $5000 a year would cover the private school tuition altogether! In other areas, if the local government kicked in a few thou, they could still save money over the cost of the public system.
If public school teachers
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 17:02 — Anonymous (not verified)If public school teachers support unions and unions oppose vouchers, that's reason enough to be down on public school teachers.
Vouchers are very popular
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 17:04 — Anonymous (not verified)Vouchers are very popular with minorities. So if a white person opposes them, does that mean they are racist?
To MidWest Tom, The flaw in
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 18:03 — SunnyHours (not verified)To MidWest Tom,
The flaw in your statement is that some teachers already earn less than similarly educated peers. A science teacher with a masters degree earns far less than someone working in the private sector.
Charter schools and vouchers
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 19:47 — Liced-Christ (not verified)Charter schools and vouchers both contribute to the destruction of the public school system. Why do you think conservatives love these tools and advocate them whenever the discussion on improving public schools come up? The point is that conservatives want a purchasable education, a privatized education, and mostly importantly one in which religion, specifically the myth called Christianity, can be introduced into the classroom where this brazen act cannot be contested or argued (against) from a publicly legal standpoint.
I currently teach in a
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 20:34 — privateteacher (not verified)I currently teach in a private school after several years working in the public schools. While I thoroughly enjoyed working with the public school students, I abhorred the inane testing regimen and lack of pedagogical flexibility. The school where I currently teach has done away with most AP courses and replaced them with creative offerings that emphasize critical thinking over rote memorization. There are good teachers in the public schools, but they are hamstrung by federal and state standards and apathetic, or worse yet, ignorant parents.
As for vouchers being the solution: this is laughable. My school won't take vouchers because we don't want to risk subjecting ourselves to federal standards. Further, a $5000 voucher would barely put a dent in the tuition bill.
Excellent article.
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 20:49 — Maggie (not verified)Excellent article.
A friend, professor of
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 20:57 — cicciuzzu (not verified)A friend, professor of education at UCI, told me that in the 1920's the hope was that public education would combat the hold fundamentalist religion had on our citizens. The polls in the 1980's showing religious fundamentalism was as strong as ever in the US convinced him public education was a failure. I concur.
Retiring end of June after
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 21:31 — Futhark (not verified)Retiring end of June after 32 years of high school teaching, I can testify that the emphasis of what we are supposed to do has shifted from the formation and execution of creative lesson plans to the presentation of a set of facts upon which the students will be tested. Also, more teacher time and energy is devoted to data entry for attendance and grading. This shifts the burden of recording data from the office staff, which has doubled in my tenure, to the teachers, whose numbers have declined by about 25%.
Schools badly need to improve the efficiency with which they use taxpayer dollars, starting with people who push papers and paperclips around all day in offices, remote from the scenes of educational action. These are the people who have been empowered to set educational policies and allocate resources, even though they may not have been in or around a classroom or young person in weeks, months, or years. The results are mandates (usually transmitted electronically) that have little practical interface with either the existing facility or with available resources or with age-appropriateness of topics or techniques. As employees, teachers are bound to follow the dictates of their "superiors", even when they suspect that mandates and directives are seriously flawed. The experiences and insights of veteran classroom teachers seems to be almost universally overlooked or dismissed when educational practices or policies are being reformed.
To 01:34: So what? Even if
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 21:59 — Anonymous (not verified)To 01:34: So what? Even if your school does not take vouchers, that does not mean vouchers would not work. In fact, if they made no difference, the teachers' unions would not be opposing them. To the teachers' unions, vouchers are no laughing matter, because in fact they do work. There are plenty of other private schools out there, many of whom would accept vouchers, and who have tuition low enough that this would make it affordable for many people.
If someone objects to Christianity being taught in a private school, so what? They can go to a different school, or start their own school! Private schools have to be responsive to the needs of their parents, because otherwise they will lose business.
What liberals hate about
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 22:06 — Anonymous (not verified)What liberals hate about private schools is that it empowers parents. With a private system, parents can then choose what kind of education is best for them and their children. Liberals would rather take that choice away from parents and steep all children in liberal indoctrination camps.
Just look at 01:57 as a case in point. "... [T]he hope was that public education would combat the hold fundamentalist religion had on our citizens." This means the liberal education establishment wanted to substitute their judgment for that of parents! This did not stop in the 1920's, it is still going on. Liberals want to brainwash kids at an early age--which would be fine if they would limit themselves to their own kids. And no, I am not a big fan of fundamentalist religion, but I do not consider that a justification for me to take rights away from parents, as liberals apparently do.
You are wrong. Teachers
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 22:39 — Michigan (not verified)You are wrong. Teachers need to hit the streets. And so does the rest of the truly liberal American.
What grant of bravery and
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 22:41 — oldgymrat63 (not verified)What grant of bravery and omniscience alows Anonymous what "liberals" want to do besides allow the most children to recieve the best education possible for both their's and the polis's betterment. Yep pretty evil those Liberals.
To 03:06: Liberals don't
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 23:41 — Anonymous (not verified)To 03:06:
Liberals don't hate private schools, but some of us do dislike fundamentalist religions, which are the scourge of the earth. You can send your kid to private school or really keep him ignorant by home schooling for all we care. Our kid went to public schools and flourished, recently earned an advanced degree with a 4.0. Her parents are educated, but understand that teachers know more about education, so they deferred to teachers. Anyone who understands the value of expertise would do the same. Public schools function just fine if parents support the teachers. And religion -- that's what churches are for. Keep religion out of schools, except perhaps for a course on comparative religion (but that wouldn't fit the conservative agenda -- might cause the kids to think).
If parents had to pay for
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 05:46 — Anonymous (not verified)If parents had to pay for child care for 180 days a year, 7 hours a day, how much would that cost? If a teacher took care of 25 children, that might amount to about 180,000 dollars just at child care rate (each child, 200 per week).
Teachers are doing much more than child care, I think they are actually a real bargain.
10:46: Your argument
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 07:55 — Anonymous (not verified)10:46: Your argument supports private schools more than public schools. Private school teachers are more of a bargain then, since private schools on average cost much less and do a better job.
04:41: I also dislike
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 08:01 — Anonymous (not verified)04:41: I also dislike religious fundamentalism. However, that does not give me or anyone else the right to force fundamentalists to pay for liberal public schools. I respect fundamentalists' rights to raise their children as they wish. At the very least, they should not have to deal with having their children pumped full of liberal nonsense in the public schools.
03:41: Liberals themselves tell me what they think! See 01:51 and 04:41. They seem to think it is a virtue to use public schools to combat religion. What happened to separation of church and state?
Continuing on from
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 08:47 — Anonymous (not verified)Continuing on from 13:01:
Not only do some liberals openly advocate using the public schools to combat religion, notice that neither you (03:41) nor any other liberal reading these comments has found this attitude sufficiently odious to object to it. Nor have I ever found a lot of liberals campaigning for stopping the spread of liberal ideas through the public schools, but I have found lots of liberals advocating it. This tells me that this is a widely accepted liberal idea. No psychic powers are necessary.
We retired early from
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 09:01 — Anonymous (not verified)We retired early from teaching to protect my health, sanity, and to end the hapless poorly trained administrators wedded to the NCLB schema. Having been a bargaining unit chair, watching a large District close its books on a 30 plus million dollar surplus ABOVE reserves, while classes crumbled and teachers struggled, led me to agree with the article. Interestingly, the District was investigated by the County Grand Jury four times in 8 years. Two board members ultimately went to jail. Teachers were NOT the problem. The efforts by the Evangelical movement and the Right to destroy competent education and educators has borne fruit. We are 17th in the world in innovation, far worse in math and the sciences.
This is a false issue & as
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 09:19 — Anonarcmous (not verified)This is a false issue & as comparing apples & oranges: big difference between the 'public & private/voucher'education is mostly what the children/students COME HOME to.By the time someone is paying for tuition, they are fairly educated, & definitely invested in their child future. They also impress the importance of education throughout life. So children who have motivated parents can well attend [lesser] public schools & do well. This is a little as dentistry: you may have the scheduled care of a stellar dentist BUT all his skills & equipment cannot overcome deterioration＆ ｄｅｇｒａｄａｔｉｏｎ if you do not do the multi-daily personal SELF-RESPONSIBLE 24-hour care routines of diet, brushing, flossing, etc..= with education--how many in public schools come home to nothing to support their education. That does not happen much in private/voucher schools->that is the difference. Successful education is a lot more than what happens between the walls of the schools for 8 hours. Actually, really motivated students can miss a lot of school, but are committed to learning & will do very well. This is an additional reason why women must be in control of their reproduction & that men must be held accountable. Also other laws--as the incarcerated census moneys should go BACK to the original incarcerated's address to support services foher/ his family & children-- & NOT to the area where s/he is incarcerated...
There are two factors in
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 10:00 — basta (not verified)There are two factors in play here: The need for continued generations of poorly educated people who won't understand important issues and won't ask tough questions about things like spending priorities, and the elimination of the last vestiges of organized labor. These have been the right-wing dream of the last few decades, and now it is happening. Like the trillions in your money rained down on crooked bankers, and like the trillions in your money rained down on Muslims in the form of bombs, there is not one damned thing you can do about it, because that's the way the ruling elite want it.
Students have always had
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 10:13 — Jeff (not verified)Students have always had standardized testing. I did in the 1970s in elementary school and in the 1980s in middle and high school.
If students were simply taught the fundamental subjects and given opportunities in arts/music/literature, then the tests would be easy.
The problem is not the tests themselves. The problem is that so many educators and administrators are convinced that teachers must teach "to the test". Hogwash.
So, anonaremous, you are
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 12:11 — Anonymous (not verified)So, anonaremous, you are arguing a straw man. No one ever claimed parents had nothing to do with the outcomes, and this does not contradict the fact that schools and teachers have a lot to do with the outcome, too!
Voucher programs are still pretty new, but preliminary evidence suggests they are especially beneficial for minority and low-income kids. They are certainly popular amongst the recipients. That's why liberals who are against parental choice want to shut down the whole voucher experiment. The teachers' unions' motives are obvious.
Anyone see a pattern here?
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 13:59 — Anonymous (not verified)Anyone see a pattern here? The unspoken truth is that public school teachers, (and community/junior college professors too) are largely and originally mostly WOMEN.
So it is and has been ok to underpay them; undervalue them; undermine them; and as in Illinois, threaten to take away the one security that encouraged them to keep on teaching in less than appropriate environments and for so little pay --- their pensions.
Every recent attack by the rightwing radicals on education, reproductive health, health in general is a thinly veiled attempt to control and use women.
Wake up!
Great article. Good test of
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 16:49 — Floresta (not verified)Great article. Good test of real reading comprehension too, ha ha ha.
As a former teacher, (that was with a MS degree) most of the non-teaching posters here are full of the right wing talking 'points' kool-aide.
Voucher, smoucher! What an absolute crap solution to the "problem".
Education is NOT a business and the languaging and framing of education in this way is wrong, wrong, wrong.
A pox on no-child-left-behind! Other than having a great moniker, it is as empty as Bu$h's suit.
And finally, where, oh where are the parents? Yes, they are around in mid and upper middle class neighborhoods, but forget about it in the 'hoods where I taught. Some of my best students were made fun of for being bright and engaged in their quest for knowledge, by their parents!
So I don't recall ever
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 17:57 — Nick (not verified)So I don't recall ever seeing anyone writing/decreeing/lobbying or otherwise influencing individuals or groups of people to prevent anyone who has the money and the inclination to send their kids to private schools, from happily doing just that. Where is 03:06 getting this secret, hidden information? Is he picking up martian news and opinion broadcasts?
I was a teacher for 40
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 20:37 — Elizabeth (not verified)I was a teacher for 40 years. Throughout every change of imposed curricula and accountability, I found a way to be a renegade. I rejected adherence to strict “teach to the test” accountability by using my creativity and enthusiasm. Yes they passed the tests. There are many joyful renegades out there.
I was a teacher for 40
Thu, 04/15/2010 - 20:44 — Elizabeth (not verified)I was a teacher for 40 years. Throughout every change of imposed curricula and accountability, I found a way to be a renegade. I rejected adherence to strict “teach to the test” accountability by using my creativity and enthusiasm. Yes they passed the tests. There are many joyful renegades out there.
Floresta 21:49 is absolutely
Fri, 04/16/2010 - 07:55 — Don (not verified)Floresta 21:49 is absolutely right --- and one of the few intelligent comments in this blog. The business models being foisted on schools are about as valid as the swap derivatives exchanged on Wall Street -- and we know how reliable those were! Accountability and competence is important, but there can't be that many "bad" teachers out there to account for all the students and schools that aren't performing. It just doesn't add up! How about holding parents and students and taxpayers accountable, too, instead of just blaming teachers and unions?
"Parents and students and
Fri, 04/16/2010 - 11:37 — Anonymous (not verified)"Parents and students and taxpayers" are not forcing me to pay them money. However, public school teachers and their monopoly-protecting unions are paid with money that was forced from me. Since I am paying them, I have every right to hold them accountable. They would rather throw poor and minority kids under the bus than lose their monopoly.
It is reasonable to expect that we should pursue vouchers which would save taxpayer money while helping poor and minority kids. Now that's a win-win... oh, except for the teachers' union monopoly. They lose.
By "forcing" you to pay
Fri, 04/16/2010 - 13:47 — Don (not verified)By "forcing" you to pay public school teachers just shows that you're a selfish citizen -- a prime example of what is wrong with this country today. The whole idea of public education was that everyone, not just those with children, chipped in so that we would have an educated work force for the good of all. By spreading the cost to everyone, all children can get a decent education. That has been the concept since the 1800's --- but apparently history is not a strong suit for the current generations. It's when people try to opt out by shirking their civic responsibility that the system collapses.
Yes, I know people who are single or older or richer who think "why should I be paying taxes to send others children to school?" These are the people who constantly vote down school bonds and property taxes. But then, who paid for YOUR education?
And then there are those who don't want to pay taxes because they imagine it's going to THEM -- usually children from other races or lower incomes.
Since most middleclass families cannot actually afford the real cost of public education (or private schools either), vouchers cannot possibly save any money except to subsidize those who don't want to support public education in any form --- it's basically a welfare system for the selfish taxpayers or to support religion.
Blaming the teachers and the unions is just a smoke screen that some selfish and racists hide behind, especially those who have no idea what teaching is about.
Newsflash: The first five
Fri, 04/16/2010 - 19:51 — Anonymous (not verified)Newsflash: The first five years are key. Other industrialized nations get it.
Kids need
prenatal care
postpartum care
nutuance
security
nutrition
heat
housing
stimulation
play
exercise
being talked to
being listened to
songs
being read to
All in the first five years, with the first three most critical.
Do poor kids get all of the above?
Nope
Now, teachers, we command you to fix five years of deprivation and ongoing poor living conditions--or else.
Hope exists when the lessons are learned,
Look at the Harlem Chldren's Zone for an example.Please.
Don, If more taxpayers were
Fri, 04/16/2010 - 21:54 — Anonymous (not verified)Don,
If more taxpayers were "selfish" and objected when their money is thrown down a rathole, this would make life better for everyone (except for those wasting the money).
Again, we spend almost twice as much educating each child as the median private school tuition. Evidently, liberals see nothing wrong with this. They want to spend more. They have no shame, no sense of accountability. They would rather keep poor and minority kids trapped in awful schools and keep that money flowing down the rathole than help kids find a way out. In fact, they'd like to make that rathole even bigger so even more money goes bye-bye.
Again, vouchers do in fact work for poor and minority kids, so your objection there is false. The median private tuition was only about $3500 in 2003-04 according to the Department of Education! So actually, maybe $3000 vouchers would be enough to do it, but even if it's $5000 that would still save the taxpayer a fortune while benefiting huge numbers of kids.
Giroux is a pinhead and an
Fri, 04/16/2010 - 22:25 — MA in Teaching (not verified)Giroux is a pinhead and an idealogue, but he's right about the Florida law. That being said . . .
There is no "right wing conspiracy" against teachers. Liberal, kool aid drinkers need to let that go. It is a simple "cost benefit analysis" situation (which Liberals hate, and true conservatives insist on). What are we getting for our investment? We're getting Urban school systems that have 30% drop out rates. We have rural school systems that are graduating illiterates (I know, because I live in one). We spend more and more money, and we get worse results.
Teachers in the U.S. now make, on average, more than police officers and fire fighters -- and no police officer or fire fighter gets 15 weeks of vacation every year. Stop whining about your salaries.
Teachers want autonomy, but still want the protection of unions and publicly-funded schools. You can't have both! On the day teachers made themselves blue collar workers by unionizing, they not only lost the right to be treated like professionals, they abdicated their responsibility to the children and nation they serve.
The simple solution is to totally privatize the education system. If liberals need to keep a little control, let the government fund education at a per=student rate, but make ALL schools private schools, allowing parents to send their children anywhere they please. Then, good teachers are rewarded; creative and effective administrators are rewarded; involved parents are rewarded by well-educated children. The rest can go find something else to do that doesn't negatively impact our kids and our country to the degree that letting them anywhere near a classroom does.
As a teacher, I would LOVE a system like this. Then, all of you people who gave up on teaching 15 years ago but are still taking up space in a classroom would be gone, and the rest of us could get on with the business of turning out well-educated kids who knew how to think.
Here's the real scoop on
Fri, 04/16/2010 - 23:18 — Don (not verified)Here's the real scoop on private school tuition from the Council for American Private Education (CAPE): See http://www.capenet.org/facts.html.
There is a nice table that shows the actual tuitions: Overall, the average US 2003-04 tuition ranged from about $3,500 avg for CATHOLIC elementary to $17,000 avg for non-sectarian secondary schools depending on level (elementary, secondary or K-12)
Specifically,
All schools: $6,600 average for all levels ($5,000 - $8,400)
Catholic: $4,250 avg all levels ($3,500 - $6000)
Other religious: $5,800 avg all levels ($5,400 - $9,500)
Non-sectarian: $13,400 avg all levels ($12,100 - $17,400)
The religious sponsored schools are cheaper and obviously are subsidized. And this lowers the overall average because ~80% of private schools were religious, mostly Catholic and conservative Christian. Non-religious schools cost more than double than religious subsidized schools, even at the elementary levels.
So, the claimed $3,500/yr average tuition is either sheer fantasy or applies only to Catholic elementary schools, which are obviously heavily subsidized by the Church directly or by providing teachers and administrators at extremely low cost.
It is clear from this data that $3,500/yr cannot possibly pay for the REAL cost of K-12 education which, if you factor out the religious subsidies, is at least at average of $12,000.
The total enrollment in 2009 was about 6 million or 11% of all students. Clearly, providing private schools for the other 89% is beyond rational feasibility. So, vouchers are set up to SUBSIDIZE primarily religious-based education (at taxpayer expense!!) for the elite minority of families who are rich enough or lucky enough to have the rest paid for.
MA in Teaching (above) says
Sat, 04/17/2010 - 07:49 — Don (not verified)MA in Teaching (above) says the average teacher makes more than firefighters or police, which is not quite true. The Bureau of Labor Statistics "Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-11" (http://www.capenet.org/facts.html) shows national average salaries for K thru 12 for classroom teachers were$47,100 to $51,180 in 2008(depending on grade taught. Firefighters overall average salary was $44,260, which appears lower (and 66% are in unions). And police and sheriffs averaged $51,410, which is similar or higher.
But that is not the whole story because overtime earnings are not included specifically for police (and apparently not for firefighters, either) in this data, since it is based on salary rates, not actual income.
The argument that teachers have 15 weeks vacation is not quite valid when comparing salaries, since some teach 11+ months and many work 50-60+ hour weeks during the school year and are NOT paid overtime, like firefighters and police, for the additional time they put in.
Note the teacher data above is for classroom teachers. Elementary and secondary administrators average salaries were $83,880, so clearly the "high" salaries attributed to teachers are partly those of management not the union teachers. In 2008, there were 236,000 administrators in K-12 and 3,476,200 teachers, so administrators account for about 6.4% and earn about 10% of the total salaries for K-12.
It is unfortunate that the
Sat, 04/17/2010 - 10:45 — M Schumacher (not verified)It is unfortunate that the author couples pedantic vernacular, with a word choice error (marginally homophonic), to form a misdirected address which speaks only to the academic choir. Had the diction and syntax been more accessible to those who need to hear the message, it might have done more good than harm. Perhaps he needs a few days interregnum among the great unwashed. Or to have his thesaurus confiscated. ;-)
M Schumacher -- That's why
Sat, 04/17/2010 - 11:16 — MA in Teaching (not verified)M Schumacher -- That's why he's a pinhead!
Don (above) says many
Sat, 04/17/2010 - 11:22 — MA in Teaching (not verified)Don (above) says many teachers work 50-50 hour weeks. I hear that a lot, but I have yet to find ONE teacher who works 60 hour weeks. And the vast majority of teaches get 15 weeks of vacation a year. That's a simple fact. If you choose to work a summer job, that's your business.
Most professionals have times when they work 50 - 60 hour weeks or more. That's normal in the business world -- people who work hard get ahead. It's only teachers who whine about it. Expecting to get "overtime" is that blue-collar, Unionist attitude that keeps teachers from being treated like professionals.
Although it's a great
Sat, 04/17/2010 - 11:44 — Anonymous (not verified)Although it's a great article in concept, I agree with M Schumacher's sly assessment that a shorter, better organized version would help make the message clearer. Some English teachers would rate this composition B or lower, I think.
I'm no dummy (PhD) but still often confused trying to determine whether he was adding to a previous idea, presenting a new subject or just repeating an idea. It seemed rambling rather than focused. The paragraphs are too long and some sentences cram in every nuance, sort of like reading a legal document (e.g. shall not fold, spindle, mutilate, burn, tear, alter, modify, ....). A few key subheadings might have helped to clue the reader to subject changes.
I hold a graduate degree in
Sat, 04/17/2010 - 18:19 — Uppity Woman (not verified)I hold a graduate degree in secondary education, and have worked in education in one capacity or another for the last 20 years. I am currently a minor cog in the standardized testing wheel, and while I'm not proud of this per se, it is giving me valuable experience and perspective that perhaps may prove helpful in the long run.
As it is, I'm in a great position to understand standardized testing better than any of the "pinheads" posting here. Since standardized testing is the main metric, and the only thing other than graduation rates, used to determine the "success" of a school system, we should seriously reconsider the idea that our schools are failing our students at all. I know for sure that standardized test scores are neither a valid nor reliable metric for judging school success. They are, at best, clever tools that can help teachers find out where their student are on a continuum of understanding, but that is the best that they can do, and they sometimes fail at that.
Our schools and teachers do a fine job of educating children, and they deserve our praise and support. I know this because I have observed in hundreds of classrooms and have seen pretty much everything. Even the worst teachers I observed did a great job of keeping the students safe, advancing each one's particular understanding to the extent the student would let them, and keeping up with copious idiot demands made on them by multiple constituencies, all of whom thought that they were "paying the teachers and holding them accountable" even thought most of these people had never even tried to teach a child anything.
To those who do not want to pay to teach other people children, seeing this as a "waste of money;" I have one question: The children of today grow into the adults of tomorrow. We will have no choice but to put up with them; do you really want to be old in a world full of illiterate, ignorant people?
One more thought, about
Sat, 04/17/2010 - 18:29 — Uppity Woman (not verified)One more thought, about Professor Giroux writing style:
Every time I read the posts on TO following an essay by Professor Giroux, they are always numerous comments from those who criticize him and say his writing is inaccessible. They focus on minutiae, pick the essay apart stylistically and grammatically, and do not tend to address his points in a substantive way.
First, I have have to wonder: me thinks all of you protesteth too much. Are you jealous because he has a very good command of the language?
Second, who died and made you all the deciders of what is accessible to us great unwashed internet readers? Isn't your elitism showing? After all, you understood the essay, or you would not have bothered to post. If the critics here can understand the essay, I bet most of us can as well.
And thanks, Don, for finding and using actual documented facts in your posts, instead of the made up mess that passes as "information' on right-wing talk radio.
A big thank you to Don! and
Sat, 04/17/2010 - 20:43 — Floresta (not verified)A big thank you to Don! and Uppity Woman,both of you a refreshing breath of intelligent, reasoned discourse.
Pull you kids out of school
Sat, 04/17/2010 - 21:46 — Maggie (not verified)Pull you kids out of school if you can -- and I really HATE to say that, but it's the truth these days.
@ Maggie 02:46 "Pull you
Sun, 04/18/2010 - 13:55 — Anonymous (not verified)@ Maggie 02:46
"Pull you kids out of school if you can -- and I really HATE to say that, but it's the truth these days."
And do what with them? I'm a full-time mechanic, not a school teacher! I can teach my girl how to use a wrench, but she wants to be a medical doctor.
Vouchers may empower
Sun, 04/18/2010 - 22:46 — Anonymous (not verified)Vouchers may empower parents, but they don't empower students. The children needing the most help are the ones whose parents don't care, don't know enough, or have too many other problems to be able to make a difference. These kids face an uphill battle and are the very kids who may to contribute less to society and cost taxpayers more if we don’t care about their fates. In the long, we will all be worse off.
It also doesn't help that students are hearing that their schools are worthless and their teachers aren't valued. Why should they work hard when everyone is telling them that the system can't help them? Educators and education are valued in other countries, but here they are disparaged by many.
Parents may think that they know what is best for their kids. If the public could hear the kinds of things parents try to pressure teachers and schools to do, it would see that many parents don't have the experience and knowledge for their kids' long term best interests. There are parents who don't want their kids to get the hard teachers because it might hurt their grades; they don't want their kids to face the consequences of cheating, lying, or being truant because it might hurt their kids' chances of getting into good schools.
The teachers who challenge students are the ones who are later thanked by the students after they graduate. They realize that what they were wrong about what they thought was in their best interests. In a society where each parent chooses what is perceived to be in his or her own child’s best interest, the end result would be detrimental to both the child and to society.
It would also exacerbate disparities already present. The parents who are well-educated, wealthier and better connected will tend to get what they want. The children of parents the system has already failed will fall further and further behind in getting the kind of resources they need.
As to those private schools that are subsidized by religious organizations – has anyone noticed that they’re closing all over the place?
Vouchers may empower
Sun, 04/18/2010 - 23:14 — Anonymous (not verified)Vouchers may empower parents, but they don't empower students. The children needing the most help are the ones whose parents don't care, don't know enough, or have too many other problems to be able to make a difference. These kids face an uphill battle and may end up contributing less to society and costing taxpayers more if we don’t care about their fates. In the long, we will all be worse off.
It also doesn't help that students are hearing that their schools are worthless and their teachers aren't valued. Why should they work hard when everyone is telling them that the system can't help them? Educators and education are valued in other countries, but here they are disparaged by many.
Parents may think that they know what is best for their kids. If the public could hear the kinds of things parents try to pressure teachers and schools to do, it would see that many parents don't have the experience and knowledge for their kids' long term best interests. There are parents who don't want their kids to get the hard teachers because it might hurt their grades; they don't want their kids to face the consequences of cheating, lying, or being truant because it might hurt their kids' chances of getting into good schools. Yet the teachers who challenge students are the ones who are later thanked by the students, months or years after they graduate. They realize that they were wrong about what they thought was in their best interests. In a society where each parent chooses what is perceived to be in his or her own child’s best interest, the end result would be detrimental to both the child and to society.
It would also exacerbate disparities already present. The parents who are better educated, wealthier and better connected will tend to get what they want. The children of parents the system has already failed will fall further behind in getting the resources they need.
As to those private schools subsidized by religious organizations – has anyone noticed that they’re closing all over the place?
Food For Thought: In a
Sun, 04/18/2010 - 23:41 — pallas_athena2 (not verified)Food For Thought:
In a survey of civic knowledge, people who had held elective office knew less than those who hadn't.
Elected Officials Score Lower than the General Public
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/additional_finding.html
Uppity-woman, I began life
Mon, 04/19/2010 - 01:34 — Bamboozler (not verified)Uppity-woman, I began life in a world full of ignorant illiterates, and yes, I'm glad to have grown old around them, it gave me a sense of personal quality that you just can't buy... at least I didn't have to wear robes to work and suffer the resulting "God" complex... but I'm sure my superior humility would have prevented that. ;-)
I had to quit school to continue my education...
The impression I got from what they were trying to get me to swallow when I was in high school, was that they needed soldiers, factory workers and people that could sell crap to other people and make them think it was fudge... and worth the extra $. I was facing the certainty of prison when I graduated because I was NOT going to Canada or Viet Nam, so I didn't see any use in listening to any more lies. I quit high school so I could enjoy a couple summers free before I paid my debt to society, but fortunately the war wasn't paying off so they didn't need to punish me after all.
I wanted my curiosity slaked so I became autodidactic as much as possible and found that people don't like sharing information or knowledge that might be useful if they think they can sell it. Trade guilds discovered that long ago. So did the Japanese.
I studied Japanese Style Gardens in Japan and had to learn the language and live Japanese style...(I never would have gone down that path if I'd stayed the course set for me by my public school mentors... or as I lovingly refer to them, my "Tor mentors")
Anyway, the old manual written by the Zen dudes about gardens mentions that you should never build Gardens unless you've "recieved the oral transmissions" and if you share any of these secrets with outsiders your ass is grass!
I don't see ANY fundamental difference in high school agendas now-a-days. We're just more like we are now than we were then 'cause there's more of us now. At least there's a glimmer in the recognition by child psychologists of the importance of pre-school developement... it must eat at their souls to see kids bond to TV sets, advertising icons and Disney characters... at least SpongeBob can be ANY sponge and Patrick...? Name your kid's toothbrush "Patrick"
18:55-Anon. You know more than just how to use a wrench... If you can demonstrate to her how to be a loving parent and admirable character you'll do something schools can't.
Please forgive this pinhead for ranting and rambling, it's fun.
Carry- on, carrion...;-)
Bam
Reply to Bamboozler: My
Mon, 04/19/2010 - 18:40 — Uppity Woman (not verified)Reply to Bamboozler:
My appreciation of public school teachers is not unqualified. I do believe that many teachers could do a better job, but the support for teacher professional development is so lacking that every teacher is on his or her own to continue their education and stay abreast of research on best practices. This is one reason why schooling has not changed much over the years, in spite of the plethora of research that shows that there are many good, effective practices that could revolutionize classroom teaching and learning and produce the gains everyone claims to want for our students. Placing the burden for finding, understanding and implementing these practices solely on the classroom teacher, in addition to many other frivolous but time consuming demands, ensures that none of the research we have already paid for will benefit our students, or change the status quo. At the end of the day, there is only so much time and money that a person can put into their career before the rest of their life begins to suffer, and teachers often face this challenge because of the lack of support and resources at the classroom level.
A revolution in education is brewing, backed by research into cognition and effective learning environments. This revolution has been brewing for 20 years or more, and the only thing stopping it is the incredibly stupid focus on standardized testing; which continues to be the only "reform" that politicians, apparently, can wrap their tiny pinheads around. And much of this focus is about dis-empowering women, not only female educators, but female students as well. The fact that few women are content to remain ignorant illiterate twits is disturbing to those who think they are in charge. Perhaps they (mistakenly) believe that if they strip all of the richness and beauty from school they will dissuade women from teaching and attending?
While some teachers
Mon, 04/19/2010 - 18:41 — Uppity Woman (not verified)While some teachers gleefully embrace and promote the status quo, most of the teachers I have observed are skeptical about the usefulness of the "dominant" world view. But teachers do not develop the state standards, nor the education policies of their district. Many are aware that they will have the most ignorant parents causing all kinds of trouble if they go too far in teaching their students to question the dominant paradigm. These teachers are forced to assume a sort of false neutrality that will keep complaining parents and administrators from wrecking their day/week/semester/ life.
I wonder why anyone would be a classroom teacher, yet every teacher I know is delighted by students who desire to develop their critical thinking skills, and will work extra hours to help any student that half way tries to learn. The teachers you had before you left school allowed you to become auto-didactic; if you chose to give up on your education because some people would not share information, well, that sounds like a convenient excuse to me. There are more books available than I can ever hope to read before I die, and I'm sure I can continue to learn until I'm no longer able to think.
There once was a time when most people could not read, write, or do complex math simply because they were too poor as children to afford school. And while many are functionally illiterate today (i.e. they won't read) it is usually their own choice as nearly anyone who attends school learns to read by the end of grade 8, unless they have a learning difficulty. I believe we could do more to instill a love of reading in our students, but that isn't going to happen on a standardized test, nor can it be measured by a standardized test. Most likely it comes from being read to as a child.
Many poor children will grow up to be remarkable adults who will improve life for everyone- these children should not be deprived of the opportunity to realize their gifts. And, as our previous president has shown, wealth does not necessarily mean that a person will actually do anything worthwhile with their education, or that attending the best schools ensures that an education will be received. Even with universal public education there will still be plenty of willfully ignorant people out there to make you feel good about yourself.
And to MA in Teaching: The
Mon, 04/19/2010 - 18:42 — Uppity Woman (not verified)And to MA in Teaching: The problem with privatizing schools and issuing vouchers is that every thinking parent will send their kids to the Waldorf school (as this is the very best education available today) and the capacity is not there to handle such an influx. Access to a quality education would remain a matter of luck, so your suggestion would solve none of our current problems.
It is time to give up on this obviously failed, 40 year experiment that sees standardized testing as some sort of educational reform. Holding teachers ever more accountable through increased testing is not going to somehow improve educational outcomes. It like believing that getting an x-ray will set a broken bone. This is "voodoo education" and it is obviously not working. It is time to get the willfully ignorant out of the way, and let the revolution begin.
Plato didn't operate in a
Mon, 04/19/2010 - 19:08 — Anonymous (not verified)Plato didn't operate in a culture of obsession and obedience coming out of grotesque relations that owe their existence to capital.
The only hope for education is for communities, teachers and students to expropriate the spaces they use for educatio; occupying everything and doing the impossible will disrupt the agendat urning us into docile servants.
I surmise if all K-12
Mon, 04/19/2010 - 23:50 — Don (not verified)I surmise if all K-12 schools could be converted to private with vouchers (essentially tax refunds subsidized by taxpayers with no children -- is that socialism?) for parents to pick any school, we would still have the same proportion of uninterested or unavailable parents, same low income & single parent families, same IQ range, same high crime districts, same taxpayers who view taxes as robbery rather than civic responsibility, same students harassed by peers if they do well --- all of these and much more which cannot be magically erased by private schools.
An advantage might be getting rid of No Child Left Behind and other bureaucracy to free teachers to actually teach and allow real discipline again -- a distinct advantage of private schools now. But then how would you would keep the politicians from still meddling and demanding accountability for taxpayer's money (just channeled differently)? Because private schools now siphon off the better students and more supportive, often richer, parents, how do you prevent the new schools from diluting the better achievement scores of the current private schools?
And costs? Organized religions can't possibly subsidize thousands of more private schools, so the real costs savings would be marginal even if those evil teachers unions were gone. Business theory would suggest that competition among so many schools could actually drive up teacher's wages. Wouldn't that be nice! -- for the private teachers, but maybe not for those taxpayers who think 'private' means lower taxes (dream on!).
Yes, completely privatizing K-12 education is such an wonderful alternative, especially because it avoids having to deal with the root causes and issues. And so convenient to propose in debates, because it cannot possibly happen.
I'm tired of hearing that
Tue, 04/20/2010 - 01:59 — Omaha Teacher (not verified)I'm tired of hearing that private schools do a better job. This claim and the current ideas for measuring 'teacher quality' have the same problem. Public schools and teachers have no control over the quality of the raw materials they start with.
A private school - being private - can exclude students who can't or won't follow the rules - public schools have to take everyone. We teachers have to deal with students who want to disrupt the class AND teach the others.
Holding a teacher accountable for how well their students learn is another example of trying to shoehorn education into a business mold. Teachers have no control over who will show up in their classrooms. Take an average high school class of say 25 students. Some are on IEPs and require special accommodations for their lessons, assignments and assessments; some are ESL students and require a little bit more of the teacher's effort so they can follow the lessons. Several will read at levels 1 - 4 years below their grade level.
A manager of a 'real business' would fire their suppliers to get better raw material - teachers and schools can't.
How do you set up a fair system for evaluating teachers when you are going to have some working in upper-middle-class neighborhoods teaching students whose parents value and support education and other teachers in neighborhoods where the demographic is a little different?
In any society, expectations
Sat, 04/24/2010 - 10:49 — Jim Stennett (not verified)In any society, expectations are that tomorrow will be better than today. This puts demands on tax dollars from all aspects of government. Until the population realizes that money spent on interventionist foreign policy is NOT money spent on priorities at home, teaching, and many other institutions we take for granted, will continue to be eroded.