Madame:
First, let’s make sure
everyone knows what tenure is: it is a
legal contract that a non-probationary teacher can only be let go for certain
specified reasons and by due process. Tenured
teachers are public employees whose generally meager economic remuneration is not
supposed to be in yearly danger, barring certain things, as those teachers try
to balance many competing priorities and demands from the public and the
system.
Like judges,
particularly federal ones who have the judicial equivalent of tenure, public
teachers are supposed to be shielded from the insistent, parochial demands of
multitudes who would not only attempt to be their masters, but tear them in a
hundred directions. In theory, this
allows the knowledgeable teacher to balance and cool those demands in favor of
what is best. In practice, this does not
always work out well, but the alternative can be worse. Teachers may not do WELL under tenure (for
all the reasons and more of what I listed last week), but they would likely do
worse without it. Meager pay, high
pressure, few benefits, and no job security?
Fast food education would loom.
The firing process for
bad teachers has become embroiled in the defensiveness that constantly being
under attack has made a lot of teachers’ unions, clouding discernment in a
number of cases. Attempts at getting
teachers unions to properly police their own ranks have become stillborn
because of the generalized attacks on the unions and teachers themselves. There’s
also the contributing atmosphere of the general litigiousness of a disconnected
society (and one with a large number of lawyers).
A student in a public
system with no tenure runs the risk of the teacher being bullied or cowed by
the meddling and the overbearing, not to mention the truly economically or
politically powerful, and all that would mean for a skewed “education.” Teachers are also supposed to be not just a
profession, but a calling. That calling could
get completely impossible if respect sank even further than it has now—and the
lack of tenure would signal that.
Do we want our teachers
to live in yearly fear of their jobs in addition to all the other things? Do we want our childrens’ instructors to be
nervous wrecks, anxious to please and not knowing which faction, which week,
needs pleased the most urgently?
Well, stop-gap measures
probably aren’t going to change much, but perhaps they can arrest some of the
deterioration. One of the prime ones is
for us to quit telling teachers HOW they should teach, and give them some
flexibility on WHAT to teach. Guidelines
(references can be often useful), not requirements, should replace much of the
strictures now in place. The standards ,
if such are necessary, should be measures of success much less crude than “test
scores.” Measures such as the following might be better: community
satisfaction, employers’ satisfaction, civic leaders’ satisfaction, higher
institutions’ satisfaction, and, perhaps most importantly, the “5/10/20 year”
satisfaction marks of the student. That
is, how well the student rates his or her education 5/10/20 years after each
milestone (4th grade, 8th grade, 12th
grade). This latter piece would not only
increase constructive engagement of the society into the system, but provide
reflection that is too often missing from this culture.
Another measure would be
to present success stories—both domestic and international—to teachers and
schools, and let them tailor to their own local situations (or justify why they
disagree). One of the readiest is to get
teachers in front of some of the best teachers (and most innovative thinkers
and practitioners), and let them be inspired—especially if a broad range of
styles and personalities are presented so that each teacher can find a model
they can learn from.
Of course, in all this,
removing many requirements and other bureaucratic weight is a must. Teachers simply cannot do a great job under
that pile. Getting the freedom to try to
do what they think is best will re-awaken teacher energy that has long been suppressed
or deadened by the present system. For
instance, what if a teacher, instead of having everyone read the same thing,
had an hour every day where students brought whatever they liked to read to
class and read to themselves some, read aloud to others some, or even just talked
about THEIR material some? With no judgment since it is the love of reading and
the enthusiasm of sharing that is being emphasized.
Naysayers of the above
paragraphs might be reminded that it is hard to imagine a WORSE system because
of it. Criticism is justified when a
better set of ideas are proposed!
Obviously, from how much
I’ve written this week, this is a subject of endless windbaggery from me! :) Keep
us informed about how the split in your local school system results!
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