There is a relentless assault on educators underway in this country. No other profession is as vilified as ours is on a daily basis. Yes, people hate lawyers, too. But how many articles, discussions and blog posts have you seen this week aimed at demonstrating how evil, stupid and unprofessional lawyers are?
Educators can do nothing right in the public’s eyes. What’s worse, educators themselves absorb this message and happily make it their own. The week before last, everybody dumped on a Harvard professor because we all know a lot better than he does how he should teach his classes. Then there was another scandal surrounding a professor who breastfed a child in class. This week there is a hullabaloo about the hiring practices of the English Department at Colorado State. And every time when this non-issue du jour is turned into a major drama, we, the educators, join the pack that hounds our colleagues.
What we don’t want to realize is that our turn will come next. Today in class, at the committee meeting, in the office each of us might do, say or write something that the next irresponsible journalist or blogger will use to promote the idea that all educators are freaks, jerks, and hateful creatures. This is a message that sells very well nowadays. Crowds of ignoramuses want to excuse their grievous lack of intelligence by fostering the idea that they never learned anything because teachers are stupid.
I suggest that we stop participating in this vicious endeavor. Let’s stop lending our voices to the attempts to destroy education in this country. The teachers of Illinois are on strike right now, protesting the ridiculous decision by the Obama administration to force teachers to stop teaching and start training students to pass some meaningless standardized tests. Do you enjoy my posts about students who think that Latin America is a country and who ask in shocked voices, “Hitler is dead? When did that happen?” Prepare to see a lot more posts like those if Illinois teachers lose their struggle. Obama continues Bush’s policies aimed at destroying education in this country. This is the real issue we need to discuss.
Let’s stand in solidarity with teachers in Illinois, adjuncts, instructors, lecturers, graduate students, post-docs, tenured and tenure-track faculty, Visiting professors at colleges, Quebec CEGEPS, state universities, Ivy League schools, big research institutions, small teaching colleges. When the next round of manufactured outrage against a colleague comes on, let’s refuse to participate. Let’s give our fellow educator the benefit of the doubt.
Instead, let’s turn our attention towards issues that are really crippling our attempts to educate. The bad working conditions of school teachers, the idiotic standardized tests, the swollen administrative budgets, the exploitation of contingent faculty, the lack of tenure-track positions, the overblown athletic budgets, huge classes where nobody can get individual attention, poor school districts where teachers have to buy chalk and paper with their own money – this is what is destroying our education. These issues, and not a teacher who brought her kid to class once or a professor who punished students for cheating, are our real enemies.
Clarissa's Blog 
Love this post.And I agree. Obama has really disappointed me in regards to Education. I know that I have said this before but I think a strong and flourishing public education system (from Pre-K- through University) is the bedrock of the “good society.”
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I can’t believe that Obama is buying so heavily into Bush’s idiotic belief in these stupid standardized tests. They measure absolutely nothing! This is too Soviet for words. I cannot believe that I traveled to another continent to encounter the exact same failing system of education that I escaped from back in my country.
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They measure absolutely nothing!
Fun fact: My students took a standardized test today (compiled by our district). There was a simple math error on it such that NONE of the answer choices to a particular question were actually correct.
I told them I’d contest the question, but — *sigh.* I’m pretty sure that THE MAGICK TEST will be believed over me.
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“Fun fact: My students took a standardized test today (compiled by our district). There was a simple math error on it such that NONE of the answer choices to a particular question were actually correct.”
– So these standardized tests are also multiple choice??? God, what a waste of time, effort, and resources.
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Do you know about the big block hollywood movie called “Won’t back down” which debuts at the end of the month? The plot is basically two courageous parents of public school students take on the evil teacher’s union and gain control over their school under a parent trigger law where public schools that fall below a certain standard (as measured by standardized tests) can be privatized. The film was paid for by conservative-leaning billionaire Philip Anschutz.
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Oh Jesus. This is just what we needed, for “Liberal” Hollywood to step in and denigrate teachers even more. And “the evil teachers’ unions”, seriously? Do rational people still buy into the ridiculous hatred of teachers’ unions? I’m appalled.
Don’t support this garbage with your hard-earned money, folks. Please don’t.
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With Maggie Gyllenhaal? What the *(!&*^# has happened to her?
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This makes me want to puke. I deplore everyone involved with this movie.
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Good God. This needs to be picketed. Students should picket it. Boycott everyone involved. Etc.
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Well put.
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Clarissa for Secretary of Education!
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I completely agree with this! I work with special needs preschoolers and am a 1-on-1 with a little boy who has Down’s Syndrome. I’ve actually had people tell me that I am wasting my time with him and that he’ll never do anything and why am I wasting my life being a teacher, apparently us teachers just sit on our asses and scream at the kids *rolls eyes* And our idiot governor once called special needs programs and preschools babysitting, like kids should just stay at home in front of the idiot box so mommy can’t be bothered. (If this offends any mothers, I’m talking about the sort of housewives who stick the kid in front of the TV so they won’t be bothered, sadly some of my relatives are like this)
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My theory about why teacher-hatred is so widespread is that it captures people’s imagination more easily. Everyone has had contact with teachers on a daily basis as authority figures, which breed resentment. Everyone has had some teacher or professor they hated for giving them a bad grade. It is easy for people to imagine their least favorite teacher as a representative of the hated class.
On the other hand, few people have had persistent contact with members of other professions. How much contact has the average person had with doctors or lawyers or policemen, unless of course, they are a member of the same profession themselves?
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I’m sure you are right. This is, in part, a misplaced teenage rebellion. Most people’s psychological age never exceeds that of 12 years, unfortunately.
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That last paragraph seriously kicked ass. *applause*
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You might find this blog by teacher X, a chicago school teacher on strike, an interesting window into the current situation in Chicago.
http://chiteacherx.blogspot.ca/
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A very good blog, thank you.
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Interesting post by Math babe on the Value added Model used to evaluate teachers in Chicago today.
http://mathbabe.org/
It’s about using dodgy math models with no predictive value to impose political control on educators – an end run around tenure based on objective (?) and science based (?) procedures.
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