I didn’t always do well in school. Sometimes I would stay up late and occupy my teenage mind with some extracurricular distraction – music or video games, usually – and put off that important paper until the very last moment, or, in some cases, not even bother to do it. Naturally, my grades suffered. And naturally, my parents, who themselves did not attend university and only wanted me to get there, would get pretty upset with me come report card day. I always had a quick answer (at least for the first few instances of this happening) – it was somehow the teachers’ fault that I hadn’t done an assignment. Never mind the fact that I was one of about three kids – out of an average class of 30 – who had gotten poor grades on either a particular assignment, or overall for the semester.
I’m seeing this same accusatory behavior in the modern “education reform” movement that is advocating for things like for-profit charter schools and the dissolution of the teachers’ unions.
It’s the teachers’ fault that kids are getting a poor education nowadays. The unions are preventing real competition and promoting laziness in educators. And besides, they’re obviously too highly paid for their position as employees of the state. No Child Left Behind failed because of socialism, naturally.
You know what we need? We need a more efficient system that pays teachers “competitively” (less than the pittance they’re making now), gives principals more autonomy (the ability to fire people on a whim, you know, like good capitalism) and operates on the guiding principles of the free market, and even more importantly, a system that provides “choice” for parents regarding which schools they go to because you KNOW we just have to get little Johnny into the BEST school so he can get that football scholarship.
Never mind that teachers are workers, or even more simply, that they’re people like you or I. They’re there to SERVE us, not demand petty insignificant trifles like workplace rights. They don’t call them public SERVANTS for nothing, after all. Am I right, or am I right? Ugh.
This kind of belittling attitude on the part of our state and our nation’s political leaders is demeaning to anyone who has either been a teacher or who has come to respect teaching as a profession.
Right now, there are nearly 750 pieces of legislation circulating in nearly every state that either severely limit teachers’ workplace rights or cut them entirely. According to the Oklahoma Education Association, this state’s primary teacher union, 17 such bills exist and are currently making their way through various committees and one, Oklahoma House Bill 1380, a bill that eliminates due process for teachers seeking reparations from school boards in federal courts, is currently being considered by Governor Mary Fallin.
Yes, the education system is deeply flawed. But subjugating teachers is not the way to fix it, nor is turning education into a for-profit business venture. We need to institute some real, curricular changes, and we need to do it now. Otherwise, the system is going to crumble, public or not.