A Letter From The Teacher, #18: Who Gets The Blame?

Anytown High School, Any State, USA

To: Mrs. Collins
From: Mr. English Teacher
Re: Who Gets The Blame?

Dear Mrs. Collins:

Thanks so much for your donation of Kleenex! At this time of year, it's a lifesaver! Lauren's handwriting is improving. All she really needs to do is slow down a bit. As to your other question, I'll do my best. It's pretty complicated.

As you know, we're fortunate to have a good school and a good school district. Most American schools are solid institutions that provide a good to excellent educational opportunity. There are certainly bad schools and even bad school districts, yet despite what critics of public education would have us believe, they're in the minority.

Even so, we do have our problems and now it's time to pass out blame. Is it reasonable to blame teachers for our systemic problems? For the most part, no. Teachers have almost no authority to make policy and usually, very little influence over it. They don't hire or fire, they don't supervise, they don't determine how money is spent or how or when buildings or other facilities are built. In some districts they have virtually no say in the curriculum they teach.

But what about teacher's unions? As you know, we're a right to work state; we have no unions. In unionized states, there can be many problems related to the mere existence of unions, but remember that contracts are negotiated by union bosses and school boards. Union bosses care about money and political power above all. These days, unions are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democrat party, or perhaps, vice versa. If a local school board gives away the farm to unions, teachers do get some small portion of the overall benefits at the expense of the kids and public, but again, they're not at fault. Teachers or the other lowly workers represented by unions are just about the last people union bosses consult or hear.

The people who deserve the most blame for everything wrong with public education are the public. I'm sorry, but even though I'm a member of the public, I can't blame myself. No one listens to teachers, and the fact that I'm a teacher makes me essentially a non-person to my bosses and school board where policy is concerned. In fact, some school boards consider teachers to be direct threats and treat them accordingly. Oh, I can speak up, and at best, I'll be ignored. At worst, people with the power to fire me will hold grudges. Such people tend to have few scruples and long memories, so the burden falls to you—to the non-teaching public.

Amazingly enough, school boards and school administrators in many places do fear and/or respect the public. They know that school board elections may be lost by a single vote or a handful of votes. They know that local word of mouth may be very swift, powerful and unforgiving. You see, in a very real sense, we get the schools we deserve because they are what we make them, on purpose or through neglect.

Consider, for example, that our local school board adopts a policy that prevents any child from being held back for a year in the lower grades. Perhaps they did it with the best intentions because they fear that children will become discouraged if held back, or perhaps they want to pretend that all of our kids are above average or that none of them ever fail. Regardless of the board's motivations, there are consequences to such policies, including kids who reach high school barely able to read or write on any level.

Say our school board adopts a 50% grading policy. For doing nothing at all, every kid will earn 50% on their report card when grades are due. Perhaps it was done because they worry that when kids fall behind by more than 50% it's impossible to catch up. Perhaps they want to encourage kids, to let them know they'll have a safety net. Perhaps they really don’t know that the kids will game the system and recognize that the policy will allow them to do nothing and to pass at the end of a grading period by simply doing a bare minimum of mediocre work at the last minute. Perhaps they don't want failing kids on the books—even though we always will have failing kids—and perhaps they want every kid to graduate from high school whether they've actually earned a diploma or not.

What if we spend huge, disproportionate amounts of money on athletics, particularly football, blathering on about how everyone reaps immense benefits when a group of about 30 high school boys is pampered like perfumed princes and subjected to ego stroking that might embarrass even Barack Obama? Surely athletics are worthwhile, particularly when the entire student body is actually involved, but primarily when athletics are treated as truly secondary to the educational mission of the school. When parents and other members of the public want luxurious stadiums for Friday night games and don't give a thought to the disruptions of teaching time caused by pep rallies, unannounced peppy visits to classrooms and the constant absences of student athletes and everyone involved with those programs, there are consequences.

"These programs are the only thing keeping some kids in school," athletic boosters claim. "If we don't have them, many kids will drop out." So teenagers are holding us hostage? "Give us multi million dollar football programs or we'll punish you by dropping out?" Well, don't allow the doorknob to abrade your polished posterior on the way out! When parents don't make kids go to school and achieve—for their own sake--when schools use such lame excuses to justify their preferences, or when they're naive enough to really believe that line of "reasoning," there are consequences.

When we allow all manner of outside organizations, no matter how potentially worthy, to take hour after hour, day after day of teaching time, who benefits? Kids love to get out of class; that's a given. But the real beneficiaries are the adults pushing abstinence only programs, traffic safety programs, anti-drug programs, sex-ed seminars, Christian strong man displays, anti-bullying programs, self-esteem programs, you name it programs. These people are probably well intentioned and believe they're providing a valuable service for teenagers, but the hour or day added to the hour or day of someone else's valuable program added to all of the other lost minutes and hours and days imposed within the school itself over the course of a year add up to a considerable and frankly shocking amount of lost teaching time.

Nothing is more important to teachers than their precious class time. Administrators are constantly—and properly--demanding that teachers plan and use every minute of instructional time, yet are constantly interrupting and taking away that time. They interrupt and steal those precious minutes for hundreds of well-intentioned reasons that they convince themselves are necessary, more necessary than learning. Sometimes it’s not their choice; their bosses impose programs. Johnny can't read as well as he should? Suzy didn't do very well on the mandatory high stakes test? Could it be that all of the absences and interruptions of the very opportunity Johnny and Suzy had to learn might have been a factor? Teaching time lost is never regained.

Believe me when I tell you that if the public were truly aware of all of the teaching time lost in a school year, they'd be appalled…or maybe they wouldn't. If the public doesn't stand up and speak out for the solid, educational values I've mentioned, if it doesn't demand that schools spend their scarce money where it best supports learning, if it doesn't demand that administrators stop wasting teaching time and encouraging kids to be lazy and irresponsible, is it unreasonable for teachers to conclude that the status quo, as sometimes trivial and wasteful as it can be, is exactly what the public really wants?

I used to truly believe that if most of the public knew what was wrong, they'd rise up in righteous anger and set things straight. Anymore, I'm less than sure of that. Too many people like sitting in that grand stadium, or don't want little Johnny held back a year for any reason. Too many people think having Christian strong men bend and break things for Jesus is more important than writing. Too many people think they have something to contribute that kids just can't do without and they don't give much thought to what the kids are missing when they get access to a captive audience. I'd like to think I'm wrong, that I'm just getting cynical, but the evidence is pretty strong.

Please don't get me wrong: I don't believe for a minute that teachers are uniformly virtuous superior beings. After all, we have to recruit from the human race. But for all our faults, remember that we have almost no say in the running of our schools, nor does anyone really listen to us.

The simple truth is, for better or worse, the public is responsible for school quality. If the public is too busy to pay attention, if it pulls students out to send them to private schools rather than fixing problems, does it have reasonable grounds to complain?

I hope I've adequately addressed your questions. Please let me know if I can be helpful in the future, and thanks again for the invaluable Kleenex!

Yours,

Mr. English Teacher