The Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA) posted a great article today, “The Teacher as Soldier,” addressing statements by public figures about recruiting an “army of teachers” and questioning what war, exactly, these teachers are fighting. The author presents the troubling paradigm of, “Generals and leaders – Administration and the government; Privates/Soldiers – teachers; Civilians/those to be “aided” – students ([...]the group that needs to be fought for – to have things done for them because we don’t see them fit to achieve for themselves) [...] = The War for Education.”
Teachers as low ranked soldiers in a battle (against whom?) to educate passive, helpless student learners; administrators and politicians as detached leaders of a battle in which they aren’t even getting their hands dirty. Not a pretty picture. Not a picture the author enjoys. Is it really that far from the truth, though?
I think public education has become a combat scenario, to some extent, but it’s not a war for education. I’m not sure it’s a war for anything. It’s a skirmish between players with little vested interest, like politicians with children in private school. It’s a battle between Republican tax cuts and the systems that are now so underfunded that they can’t let staff into the building until the day school starts, leaving schedules unfinished, classrooms not set up, curriculum not set in stone. It’s a conflict between the few teachers who are genuinely invested in the success of their students and the administrative status quo that is focused solely on test scores. In this scenario, students are not the citizens being helped, but the friendly fire casualties of a large system floundering and firing randomly, hoping to hit a target they can’t even agree upon.
This is a pretty bleak picture of public education. It’s not an accurate portrayal of every teacher, school, administration, or system. There’s no denying that there’s a strong element of this in public education as a whole, however. Our own experiences in public education certainly point to that. No one was fighting on Captain Science’s behalf but us, and it was a fight we were well aware we shouldn’t have to fight: a fight for him to not be bullied by a teacher who felt threatened by gifted students, a fight for him to spend his days doing something other than worksheets, a fight to have any expression of creativity not squashed out of hand.
Parents have to fight with teachers and administrators to have their children’s most basic educational needs met, and while we’re doing that fighting, more and more funds are diverted away from the children who need them most. It’s obvious who the administration values — not the gifted students and not the special needs students. For the parents of those children, public education can be a constant battle.
The author of the IDEA piece writes, “Learning is not a war, it is an adventure. While it can be used as a tool to equip oneself with the awareness necessary to achieve justice, learning overall is discovery and an intriguing challenge.”
She’s right. Learning is not a war. Education, however, is most certainly a battlefield.
I agree with fighting teachers and administrators who fear gifted kids and inundate then with dittos and extra work. We did it for four years before we had enough and started our homeschool journey this year. I’m really enjoying your blog and look forward to reading more
Our second year in public school was so bad, it’s really taken a full year to pull Captain Science out of his funk and get him truly engaged in learning again. I was always a big advocate for public education, because I do think it’s important to have that available, but it’s a system that fails many children.
I decided to think about this for a while before replying. What a thought! LOL.
I am saddened by the metaphor, but I think it works to a point. It definitely creates a conflict where one should not exist, but isn’t that true of real war also? Too often administrators/DOE are viewed as the out-of-touch politicians; teachers – the foot soldiers; parents – the enemy; and children – the prize. Or maybe I should say tax dollars are the prize since the bottom line is that children equal money in our current educational system. Only the soldiers in a war fight for a cause. Everyone else is fighting over resources.
I don’t think throwing more money at it is going to fix the problem though. I’m more inclined to tackle it the same way I’d want to tackle a useless war. Take the politicians and generals, stick them in a room together, and let them kill each other. Then the foot soldiers and the perceived enemy can look at each other and say, “I don’t hate you. This war is stupid. What to grab a beer?”
Parents and teachers working together to education children without the interference of resource-greedy politicians. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
Of course, that only works if ALL the teachers have the students’ best interests at heart. There are a lot of teachers who teach because that’s the job they could get, or the degree was fairly easy, or because they were out of the workforce for a while and it’s all they’re still qualified to do. I mean, tenure is a nice security blanket, but it really causes problems when teachers aren’t accountable for how they teach.
True enough. Though I tend to think most teachers started out for the right reasons. The teaching field requires a lot of education for so little pay. Most teacher I know did’t choose it just for the tenure and the paycheck. BUT there are a lot of teachers that just don’t care anymore. They just punch in and punch out. BAD teachers need to be weeded out, but unfortunately until the system changes, more will crop up.
Accountability is a huge issue. The problem is that districts want to keep teachers accountable by just looking at some test scores (whether standardized or benchmarked). True accountability is going to require a principal to actually spend time watching his/her 40+ teachers teach (something not being done now b/c so many principals are dealing with non-stop behavioral issues & district hoop-jumping). It is going to require peer review, parental feedback, and a professionalism that has currently being replaced by a stack of score cards.
I think a lot of teachers just coming out of school chose early childhood ed or elementary ed because the majors are considered easy. The result is a lot of sweet young things that quit after two or three years.
Jon agrees. He says there is a major disconnect between public university education programs and the actual classroom, especially in the last 10 years. These college students are ill-prepared for what they will actually experience in the classroom. Many of them couldn’t even pass the joke-of-an-entrance exam on the first try. He doesn’t get it. He had over 2,000 hours of direct classroom experience before graduating with his BA from a private university. Most of the student teachers he is supervising have less than 150 hours. That is telling, imo.
Vanderbilt’s ed program isn’t easy, but they were explicitly preparing us for graduate school, not teaching; they expected all of us to go grad school, if not immediately, then eventually. I think that did us a disservice in its own way.
I learned more working in daycare than I did from many of my ed classes.
Most of our local ed programs are a joke, filled with blonde bubbleheads who are more interested in a MRS than a MS!