A Profession Is Calling

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 (4^th grade, 8^th grade, 12^th 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!