Teaching

I used to think that teaching was an easy job until I did it.  Even without the threat of death, teachers face a formidable job.  They must engage each of their students on a moment-by-moment basis throughout the day.  While this is not a life-ending engagement, it is every bit as difficult to accomplish academically and psychologically, and occasionally just as terrifying.  Students bring their psychological problems into the classroom: bus or schoolyard fights, jealousies, home problems, resistance to education, prior failures or successes; racial, sexual or personal prejudices; anger, malice and rages or loves and crushes; unfinished homework; supported or unsupported study environment, etc.  Throughout the entire day, the teacher must engage all of these at the same time with several children at once and deliver an education package.  Then, they get to go home and grade papers.  Some teachers must also teach evening classes in sports and athletics: it’s called coaching.  Teachers have little time for their own families.  Teachers are grossly underappreciated, under respected, undervalued, and definitely underpaid.  Teachers accomplish all these undefined tasks while being self-administered and self-supervised.  They are highly trained professionals who know how to do their jobs, mostly by themselves.

 

The abuses in the system lie in the field of administration.  Much administration is simply unnecessary.  Much of it is also misguided.  Administrators pontificate about the job, but don’t have to do it.  Top-level administrators, the kind that spew out national-level education policy statements and theory, cannot know what they’re talking about; they are full of hot air.  Yet these administrators decide which books are used, what test standards are, tell us what good education is, and otherwise manipulate the education system.  Even at the principal level, it is relatively simple for an administrator to fire a teacher, in spite of union and other opposition.  Several of these do-nothing-constructive administrators are paid salaries in the multiple-millions of dollars.  They simply are unnecessary to a well-ordered education system, and equally unworthy of their wages.  Fire them all except for the local school principal.  Retain an administrative secretarial staff at secretarial wages to handle the paperwork.  Remove the power of principals to hire or fire and put it into the hands of a local teacher’s board established from the tenured teachers within the local school with outside members chosen from the PTA, the principal can serve as ex-officio chair.  Administrators are frequently the greedy moochers at the public trough, part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

 

Fundamental to the education problem is that utopian dream of many Americans that this problem should be fixed at the national level.  That idea is simply insane.  It is a tactical problem, not a strategic problem, and it needs to be resolved at the tactical level.  A strategic commander who overrides a tactical commander is a colossal fool, who needs to be eliminated from the system.  The focus of the problem is engagement of students within the classroom.  The teacher is the on-scene tactical commander.  The problem cannot be fixed at the national, state, county, or even large community level.  The problem must be fixed at the classroom level.  We do this by hiring good teachers locally, by putting the books and tools they want and need into their hands, by insisting that they engage, and by helping, supporting them in every way possible.  Give the local teachers the pay and respect they deserve.

 

When schools fail, it is a local community issue.  If your school failed, it’s your fault.  Are you, as a parent, engaging and supporting your children’s teachers sufficiently?  Are you, as a teacher, engaging and supporting your children’s parents sufficiently?  Are we, as a local community, really engaging and supporting one another sufficiently?  Or, are we just going about business as usual?  It’s a village team effort.  Don’t look to Uncle Sam to fix it, he doesn’t know how.