Mallory, education is the silver bullet.  Education is everything.  We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes.  Schools should be palaces.  The competition for the best teachers should be fierce.  They should be making six-figure salaries.  Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position.  I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.

— Sam Seaborn in The West Wing, Season 1: Episode 18, “Six Meetings Before Lunch,” written by Aaron Sorkin

Teaching is the most important profession in the world. 

I understand one could say that doctors, soldiers, law enforcement officers, and firefighters all save lives, and that saving lives is more important than standing in front of a room full of kids talking for several hours a day.  They’re all certainly more important than making sure a 6-year-old is wearing her coat before she walks home on a winter’s day.  Astronomers are discovering the secrets of the universe.  That’s infinitely more important than lunch or recess duty.  Members of the clergy are, many people believe, saving souls.  That makes vastly more difference than grading essays.  How can I say teachers are more important than any of these people?  Has my arrogance at having been one for 29 years finally exploded into narcissistic nonsense?

No.  I don’t think so. 

No profession exists without teachers.  Until we abandon public education entirely, every profession exists because someone taught its practitioners to read and write, to calculate, and, to a greater or lesser extent, to deal with other human beings.

By Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States – 210225-D-WD757-1523, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106298519

Eugene Goodman, the police officer who redirected rioters on January 6, quite probably saving the lives of the Vice President and many members of Congress, began his career in 1985 when a kindergarten teacher, probably in Southeast Washington, taught him to sing the alphabet.  The doctor who delivered me into this world started in a one-room schoolhouse, filled with children from 5 to 15 years old, in Hampton, Nebraska at the turn of the last century.  The first responders on 9/11 were taught how to put out fires, ascend dozens of flights of stairs carrying heavy equipment, and treat injuries by hundreds of others, all of whom sat in classrooms all across this country.  Teachers made all this possible.  And they made frighteningly little money for their efforts. 

It can certainly be said that public education is failing.  If test scores are any indication (and I don’t think they’re remotely valid), we are doing very poorly indeed. 

Better evidence of its failure can be seen in the ever-growing number of people who are willing to believe things that make no sense.  Some estimates suggest that fully a third of the country’s population believes that the 2020 election was stolen, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Anywhere from 4 to 15% of Americans believe QAnon’s conspiracy theories are reasonable.  There are as many as a million Americans who honestly believe the Earth is flat, or that’s it’s a disc beneath a dome. 

This is a failure of critical thinking.  It’s the fulfillment of a desire to believe that nothing is as it appears to be, and we are, therefore, not responsible for the bad things that happen to us.  And while I agree that we are often not responsible for the bad things that happen to us, it’s unreasonable to believe there is some cabal of pedophiles in a pizza shop that is. 

This could have been stopped before it began.  One of the tools we could have used was the actual literature that is now being banned from schools more and more frequently.  Reading books that require us to look at things from more than one angle allow us to use those skills in the real world.  One cannot read To Kill a Mockingbird without recognizing that Tom Robinson is innocent, that Boo Radley is not a monster, and that racism and prejudice are dangerous and difficult-to-defeat diseases of the mind.  Reading Sherlock Holmes teaches us that the truth is rarely as simple as it seems, and that we need actual evidence before we can accept, as facts, conclusions that are hastily reached based on assertions that cannot be verified.  Steinbeck teaches us empathy.  Salinger teaches us to reject the superficial. 

Simply reading these books, however, is often insufficient.  One needs a great teacher to help us to understand what is happening.  It is in classroom discussions that the enthusiasm to analyze, to understand, and to express our feelings about what is happening grows and flourishes.  You can’t just assign the books, give multiple choice tests, and sit at your desk.    You must get the students excited to find out what happens next.  You need to make them disappointed that reading time is over.  This isn’t something that just anyone can do.  It’s a talent, a skill, a craft, and an Art.  It requires a deeper understanding of the material being taught.  It requires an imagination. 

Why is public education failing so badly? 

Teachers need to quit complaining.  They knew how much the job paid when they signed their contracts.  They get three months off every year.  If they don’t like it, they should do something else.  I’m not putting any more of my tax dollars into supporting whiners. 

That’s a big part of why we have a teacher shortage.  Words are powerful. 

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.  Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”

 – Albus Dumbledore (J. K. Rowling)

When I started teaching in 1987, teachers were treated with at least a modicum of respect.  That respect has dwindled to the point that it’s all but imperceptible now.  The beginning of the modern end of respecting teachers began with No Child Left Behind.  Nearly twenty years ago, I wrote the following in answer to President Bush’s program:

Teachers, Administrators, School Boards: Lend Me Your Ears!

Leaving no child behind is an honorable and achievable goal.  Teachers are used to overcoming the enormous challenges put before us daily.  Where once we were responsible only for the students’ academic skills, we are now in charge of teaching them the values of cultural diversity, sexual responsibility, and drug awareness.  And just as we have met these challenges with overwhelming success, so, too, will we meet the challenge that all students will reach the destination of our President’s Educational Train, leaving no child behind.

Arriving at the Station

The first requirement for learning to take place is that the students must attend school.  Following the president’s metaphor, this would mean that the child must first arrive at the station.  I feel sure that my school is not alone in its ever-increasing population of students who miss more than 40% of the standard school year.  Sometimes students are chronically and suspiciously ill (especially on Fridays), sometimes they are suspended, and, all too often, they simply tell their parents they don’t want to come today, and they stay home and play video games.  There is little the school can do to combat this problem.  At more than one Pupil Evaluation Team (P.E.T.) meeting I have heard the Team recommend a bus be sent directly to the child’s doorstep to help her get to school.  The bus is sent, but the child never boards the bus.  A child who never makes it to the station cannot help but be left behind.  Nevertheless, leaving no child behind is an honorable and achievable goal.

If the students won’t come to the school, the school must come to the students.   We could hire teachers who travel from home to home to teach these students between sessions of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 for Play Station 2.  The cost of these extra teachers could come from school bake sales, or perhaps from having students go door to door selling candy.  The students might even sell some of their candy to the teachers who are working in the homes they visit.  On those days that these students do attend school, we can assign some of our Educational Technicians to assist them in catching up on the work they have missed while they were playing video games.  To leave no child behind is clearly an honorable and achievable goal.

Boarding the Train

Assuming the child arrives at the station, it is next necessary that she actually boards the train.  If I understand the metaphor correctly, this would be the equivalent of actually engaging the work that teachers set out for the students in order to help them learn.  While many students do come to class regularly, there is among them a population who does no more than breathe the air in the room.  Certainly, modifications can be, should be, and are made to assist these students.  Educational Technicians work with them individually when the staffing makes it possible.  Special procedures are put in place to help spark the student’s interest, encourage participation, and reward effort.  For many students, these interventions are indeed effective, but not for all of them. 

There are those students who, regardless of the best efforts of the Teachers, Educational Technicians, Administrators, Counselors, Social Workers and Parents, simply will not make an effort.  There is, in the final analysis, nothing that can be done to force someone to try if she doesn’t want to.  While the student may arrive at the station, she won’t necessarily get on board the train.  Nevertheless, leaving no child behind is an honorable and achievable goal.

In order to meet the needs of those who won’t make any effort, we must determine why they won’t try.  They may have lacked success in the past.  There may have been emotional traumas which make it more difficult for her to put pencil to paper.  In order to solve this problem, it is only necessary to conduct a thorough and searching investigation using all the tests we currently have, developing new ones, and bringing in social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, family doctors and, if need be, psychics who will determine what needs to happen in order for the child to begin to engage the work.  The funding for all these professionals could be found in school dances, talent shows or bottle drives.  Will this be enough?  If not, we can assign some of our Educational Technicians to assist them, because, as we know, leaving no child behind is an honorable and achievable goal. 

Making the Train Safe for All

There is an additional population that keeps our train from moving safely toward its destination.  This group is made up of those who do attend school, and who can often learn, but feel the need to disrupt.  It is difficult to blame most of these students for their behaviors.  One of my colleagues recently made the observation that he would, under no circumstances, trade lives with some of our students.  We have an ever-increasing population of those who are frequently arrested.  We have some who are using drugs.  There are others who are dealing with different forms of abuse at home, and have parents who are too drunk or too stoned to give them any sort of guidance or help.  If parents do impart their values to their children, the values thus imparted are frequently in direct conflict with those we are called upon to instill in our students.  It is all but impossible to convince a student whose father is in prison and whose mother is usually unable to communicate through her drug or alcohol induced haze that the multiplication tables have any relevance to her life, or that putting a period at the end of a sentence is an important part of communication.  Our train, however, being a public train, is required to transport all those who board it, and we will find a solution to this problem as well.  After all, leaving no child behind is an honorable and achievable goal.

For the students who are on board the train only to disrupt its travels, it is possible simply to send them out of the classroom, so that we can teach the rest of the students.  Of course, these students will miss out on what we are trying to teach, and their high-stakes test scores will show that.  Since this won’t do if we are to leave no child behind, we could have special classes, made up exclusively of these students, with a highly trained and qualified set of teachers who work just with this population.  Although my school’s current staffing makes this impossible, our Special Education Director has assured us that these students are manageable if only we will use the staff we now have more effectively.  Since there is neither the funding for specialists to deal with these students, nor the space for them to have a classroom if such teachers could be found, what we really need to do is just what the President’s plan suggests: replace the teachers who are not being effective. 

If a veteran teacher can’t handle students who yell out in class, bully other students, sell drugs in the hallways, or stand on the desk singing, then we need to get rid of the teacher.  Teachers with many years of experience cost way too much anyway, so the obvious answer is replace them with the vastly superior first- and second-year teachers that are coming out of our colleges in record numbers.  After all, with all of its rewards, many students in college today must certainly aspire to be teachers.  Surely, teachers with no experience, but well-armed with all that can be taught in modern Methods Classes will be perfectly equipped to handle the problems that students in this population present.  If these teachers require additional assistance to help with these students, perhaps we can have our Educational Technicians take these students in the hall and help them to learn there.  See what an honorable and achievable goal it is to leave no child behind?

Serving Our Passengers

Having made arrangements for those who rarely attend, those who make no effort, and those who are a threat to the learning and safety of the rest, we are left with a smaller population who show up on time to meet the train, get on board, and are ready and eager to travel down the tracks toward our destination.  Among this population are those who, despite their best efforts, cannot seem to grasp some of the material.  These are the students that most of us want most to help.  Teaching is, after all, a “helping” profession.  We are, all of us, here because we want to help others.  We are all more than willing to do anything and everything possible to help those who really want to learn.  All that is necessary for the success of those students who do not qualify for a Special Education program, but who still can’t quite figure it all out, is some time and attention.  The solution for this group is simple.  In Middle School, we have Educational Technicians who are experts in serving just this function.  Although in a class of thirty, with 47 minutes to teach them all, a single teacher may not be able to spend the appropriate amount of time with each of these students, our Ed. Techs are ready, willing, and able. 

Of course, there is the difficulty of locating our Ed. Techs.  Many of our Ed Techs are working with those students who are way behind because they have missed school so often.  Others are assisting those students who won’t put a pencil to paper.  The remaining Ed. Techs are being used in the hallway to assist those students who are only here to disrupt.  What does that leave us to help the students who really want to learn, but just need that helping hand?  Well, perhaps these students aren’t all that important anyway.  After all, they’ll probably pass the high-stakes test, even if their scores aren’t as high as they might be.  They can read, write, and do basic calculations.  They’re here in school, they try their best, and they behave well.  These students are by no means achieving all that they might, but they certainly aren’t being left behind.  And, of course, what is most important is our honorable and achievable goal of leaving no child behind. 

Final Destination

Finally, we need to see where we will arrive, once we have gotten all of our students there.  It would seem we will arrive at a place in which ALL of our students have at least some minimal skills.  They can read, if by this we mean that they can decode words and find at least a superficial meaning in written language.  They are certainly capable of comprehending the pop-up ads on the internet, and the advertising in magazines and on billboards.  They are probably not ready to comprehend great literature, but, after all, what difference does the writing of a lot of dead white guys make anyway?

They can write well enough to send e-mails and conduct online chats.  They know that the word “you” is more properly spelled “u.”  It saves time, after all, to write it this way, and we need to have as much time as possible so we can use our writing skills to send vitally important messages, like, “Sup,” (which I am told means, “What’s up?” – a vitally important message itself), and to communicate with others on the same intellectual level.

Certainly they can solve simple mathematical problems, and possibly balance their checkbooks.  They may not have the ability to do any real problem solving, or to examine alternatives and choose the ones most likely to bring about desired results, but how important is that really, anyway?  Our students can now get jobs, respond to advertising, and use the money they earn to buy the products advertised on TV, the internet, and in magazines, and keep our economy healthy. 

Certainly these are the intended outcomes of public education.  These are the lofty goals to which I, like all teachers, aspired when I became certified.  We should all be so proud to have met such an honorable goal.  Congratulations, fellow educators.  We have left no child behind.

Fred Eder

Biddeford Middle School

Twenty years later, we’ve decided teachers don’t even need degrees to teach.  Anyone can do it.    In some states, including Arizona and Florida, a veteran, simply by virtue of having served in the military, is now considered a qualified teacher.  If that’s true, I’m qualified to coach The Phoenix Suns because I saw a basketball game once.  I’ve seen a couple of seasons of ER, so I’m almost certainly qualified to perform open heart surgery.  Or… is it just possible that we need more than that to be qualified to do something? 

Unqualified teachers are likely to be as effective as I would be fighting a war.  I need both hands to stand up.  I need to nap after I vacuum a single room and I’m out of breath.  And the thing is, everyone knows that.  Why would we want to have unqualified teachers?  What is the advantage of that?

The advantage is that we will have a population that can’t think.  They are more easily manipulated and distracted.  We can have a President incite an insurrection while people are busy yelling at each other about whether helping others is Socialism, which most people don’t understand anyway because no one ever taught them to think critically.  It’s easier to convince them of the value of fascism, it’s easier to keep them from the ballot box, and they can be made to accept authority without question.  This keeps the wealthy in power, and it keeps the rest of us content to be wage slaves. 

To further this agenda, more restrictions are being put on teachers because those in power know that teachers are the most vital part of society.  Not only are they not allowed to teach any real literature, they are also banned from teaching any history that is less than flattering to The United States. 

One of The People On The Porch sent me a video the other day in which an economist explained how one can predict what is going to happen in the stock market by means of examining history.  Empires, he posits, go through certain cycles that are predictable because they have been repeated over and over from Ancient Rome, up through The Dutch and The East India Company, the rise and fall of Great Britain, and all the way to America.  America reached its peak after World War II, and we’ve been declining since.  And much of this has to do with education because education breeds the innovation that keeps an economy strong enough for its currency to be the Reserve Currency for the world.  The dollar currently has that slot, but China is closing in on it.  When the yuan (Chinese currency) replaces the dollar in this position, America will lose much of its power.  I’m not an economist of any sort, but the video made sense to me.  Perhaps the author is incorrect.  I really don’t know enough to have an informed opinion. 

The point is that there is an advantage to those in power that we don’t know all of our own history.  It’s easier to be fiercely loyal to a country that you believe has done nothing wrong.  America’s history is filled with immoral and inexcusable behavior.  If all we learn is that George Washington told his father he chopped down the cherry tree because he could not tell a lie (and that story isn’t even true, by the way.  It was invented by Parson Mason Weems.) how could we think badly of our country, and why should we try to change it?

Heather Cox Richardson, whose work I read nightly, summed it up this way:

And now, in 2022, we are in a new educational moment.  Between January 2021 and January 2022, the legislatures of 35 states introduced 137 bills to keep students from learning about issues of race, LBGTQ+ issues, politics, and American history.  More recently, the Republican-dominated legislature of Florida passed the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop WOKE) Act, tightly controlling how schools and employee training can talk about race or gender discrimination. 

Republican-dominated legislatures and school districts are also purging books from school libraries and notifying parents each time a child checks out a book.  Most of the books removed are by or about Black people, people of color, or LGBTQ+ individuals.

Both sets of laws are likely to result in teachers censoring themselves or leaving the profession out of concern they will inadvertently run afoul of the new laws, a disastrous outcome when the nation’s teaching profession is already in crisis.  School districts facing catastrophic teacher shortages are trying to keep classrooms open by doubling up classes, cutting the school week down to four days, and permitting veterans without educational training to teach—all of which will likely hurt students trying to regain their educational footing after the worst of the pandemic.   

This, in turn, adds weight to the move to divert public money from the public schools into private schools that are not overseen by state authorities.  In Florida, the Republican-controlled legislature has dramatically expanded the state’s use of vouchers recently, arguing that tying money to students rather than schools expands parents’ choices while leaving unspoken that defunded public schools will be less and less attractive.  In June, in Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court expanded the voucher system to include religious schools, ruling that Maine, which provides vouchers in towns that don’t have public high schools, must allow those vouchers to go to religious schools as well as secular ones.  Thus tax dollars will support religious schools. 

In 2022, it seems worth remembering that in 1831, lawmakers afraid that Black Americans exposed to the ideas in books and schools would claim the equality that was their birthright under the Declaration of Independence made sure their Black neighbors could not get an education.

Heather Cox Richardson Newsletter, August 21, 2022

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-21-2022?utm_source=email

Are we actually interested in solving The Teacher Shortage?  If we are, then there are several things we can do. 

First, pay teachers enough to make it worthwhile for someone to do the job.  I taught for 29 years, and I live today in a state just North of Abject Poverty.  I can make ends meet only because I have so much help from others.  The idea that someone is going to take on enormous debt to go to college to become properly qualified to teach is unthinkable if a teacher isn’t going to make any money. 

Second, offer to forgive teachers’ student loans if they stay in the profession for 3 or 4 years.  Burnout is incredibly high among teachers because the job is infinitely more difficult than it appears from the point of view of students, parents, or what you see on television.  Give teachers an incentive to stay.

Third, give the teachers the resources they need to do the job properly.  This includes not only the books they want to teach because they have a passion for them, but the staff they need to help them.  These aren’t just the Ed Techs discussed above (I believe they’re called Paraprofessionals now), but also the technology necessary to teach students to use computers efficiently, space in which to work, and secretaries to handle the tasks that don’t require special training.  Teachers waste enormous amounts of time in the copy room. 

Finally, give them the respect they deserve for doing a job that no one wants to do anymore.  Remove the restrictions on teaching history, trust them to do their jobs properly, and let them apply the Art of teaching instead of forcing them to prepare students for high stakes tests that prove nothing and distract from real learning.  Value their time by freeing them from pointless meetings.  And, instead of criticizing them, thank them for doing the most important job in the world. 

Education is, in fact, the silver bullet.