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teachers should accept that tenure has outlived its usefulness?

Last week I went shopping in our small rural hometown, where my family has attended the same public schools since 1896. Without exception, all six generations of us — whether farmers, housewives, day laborers, business people, writers, lawyers, or educators — were given a good, competitive K-12 education. But after a haircut, I noticed that the 20-something cashier could not count out change. The next day, at the electronic outlet store, another young clerk could not read — much less explain — the basic English of the buyer’s warranty. At the food market, I listened as a young couple argued over the price of a cut of tri-tip — unable to calculate the meat’s real value from its price per pound. As another school year is set to get under way, it’s worth pondering where this epidemic of ignorance came from. Our presidential candidates sense the danger of this dumbing down of American society and are arguing over the dismal status of contemporary education: poor graduation rates, weak test scores, and suspect literacy among the general population. Politicians warn that America’s edge in global research and productivity will disappear, and with it our high standard of living. Yet the bleak statistics — whether a 70-percent high-school graduation rate as measured in a study a few years ago by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, or poor math rankings in comparison with other industrial nations — come at a time when our schools inflate grades and often honor multiple valedictorians at high school graduation ceremonies. Aggregate state and federal education budgets are high. Too few A’s, too few top awards, and too little funding apparently don’t seem to be our real problems. Of course, most critics agree that the root causes for our undereducated youth are not all the schools’ fault. Our present ambition to make every American youth college material — in a way our forefathers would have thought ludicrous — ensures that we will both fail in that utopian goal and lack enough literate Americans with critical vocational skills. The disintegration of the American nuclear family is also at fault. Too many students don’t have two parents reminding them of the value of both abstract and practical learning. What then can our elementary and secondary schools do, when many of their students’ problems begin at home or arise from our warped popular culture? We should first scrap the popular therapeutic curriculum that in the scarce hours of the school day crams in sermons on race, class, gender, drugs, sex, self-esteem, or environmentalism. These are well-intentioned efforts to make a kinder and gentler generation more sensitive to our nation’s supposed past and present sins. But they only squeeze out far more important subjects. The old approach to education saw things differently than we do. Education (“to lead out” or “to bring up”) was not defined as being “sensitive” to, or “correct” on, particular issues. It was instead the rational ability to make sense of the chaotic present through the abstract wisdom of the past. So literature, history, math and science gave students plenty of facts, theorems, people, and dates to draw on. Then training in logic, language, and philosophy provided the tools to use and express that accumulated wisdom. Teachers usually did not care where all that training led their students politically — only that their pupils’ ideas and views were supported with facts and argued rationally. What else can we do to restore such traditional learning before the United States loses it global primacy? To encourage our best minds to become teachers, we should also change the qualifications for becoming one. Students should be able to pursue careers in teaching either by getting a standard teaching credential or by substituting a master’s degree in an academic subject. That way we will eventually end up with more instructors with real academic knowledge rather than prepped with theories about how to teach. And once hired, K-12 teachers should accept that tenure has outlived its usefulness. Near-guaranteed lifelong employment has become an archaic institution that shields educators from answerability. And tenure has not ensured ideological diversity and independence. Nearly the exact opposite — a herd mentality — presides within many school faculties. Periodic and renewable contracts — with requirements, goals and incentives — would far better ensure teacher credibility and accountability. Athletics, counseling and social activism may be desirable in schools. But they are not crucial. Our pay scales should reflect that reality. Our top classroom teachers should earn as much as — if not more than — administrators, bureaucrats, coaches, and advisers. Liberal education of the type my farming grandfather got was the reason why the United States grew wealthy, free, and stable. But without it, the nation of his great-grandchildren will become poor, docile, and insecure.

Public Comments

1. First of all, you blame the teachers for the downfall of American education when in fact it is the administration and the school districts themselves who plan the curriculum. The teacher is completely taken out of the discission making. So please, please, please, learn the facts of the matter before you start pointing fingers at the teachers again. The No Child Left Behind program of testing is making the situation even worse. Again, the teachers had nothing to do with making this program and they have nothinig to do with it's curriculum. But they are forced to teach children how to take a test. That's not education. That's not teaching critical thinking. That's teaching them to memorize and that isn't education. As soon as you raise the amount of money that are paid to teachers, you will attract the best and brightest minds to teaching. Why can't you people get that through your heads? Do the major corporations pay their engineers, scientists, doctors, computer analysts, financial analysts, designers, artists, and other professionals crappy wages like the school districts do? NO they don't. They pay the best because they want to attract the best people. They also offer them major perks and great health plans etc. Also, if you look at many public schools today, teachers are always having to study and mentor other teachers to improve their methods and their teaching abilities. I agree a good liberal education is the best type, but that's not what our kids are getting today and it isn't the teacher's fault and I wish you people would stop blaming the teachers.
2. I would argue the opposite of this. To remove tenure is to remove one of the main things that also draws and keeps good teachers as well. The district my children used to attend had some excellent teachers in it but also had a nasty habit of driving those teachers out before they hit the tenure mark One of the problems that we have run into is that all of the available budget money is being poured into making sure that the schools meet standardized testing standards. With the sudden and drastic focus on teaching only math and English, several of the classes that help break up the day like drama, athletics and music, classes which teach the discipline needed in order to succeed in those classes. It was no fluke that the top 10% of my high school graduating class were almost all comprised of musicians, drama kids and actors. We had an outlet that demanded that we use time management at a young age and excel in the classroom and on stage. Frankly, without music, I wouldn't have made it through school. If I had to just listen solely to teachers like Mr. Codemo, who would give fire and brimstone lectures about the evils of not understanding trig without knowing that I could do music composition the next period, I would have gladly dropped out of school. So many skills are lost by our focus to just teach the basics. Our aim for the middle has pushed even the best and brightest off of their game. Today, if a child wants to do music or dance or in some cases athletics, their choices often take them out of school. Many of these children would then rather not even think about school, instead wanting to spend that time plugged into their Ipod.