Problems in American Education - Part 13: Teachers and Unions
I always enjoyed teaching the American system of checks and balances in my social studies classes. I find the topic facinating and I am awed by how effective that system has been over these two plus centuries. Kids, however, have some difficulty understanding just how widespread checks and balances are used in the social fabric of our country. They get the part about the legislative, executive, and judicial, and they even appreciate how the concept is extended to federal, state, and local. They begin to scratch their heads, however, when we begin to look at some of the ways the concept is spread in ways that could be considered as extra-governmental or not governmental at all. The merit of checks and balances is held highly by most Americans, so it is only logical that something that works so effectively would find its way into many areas of American life. It is one of those extensions that I will consider here in an effort to explain the mixed results it has achieved in our schools.
As representing the second generation American in a Portuguese immigrant family, I learned very early in life that there were several things you did not challenge - the Catholic Church, F.D.R’s Democratic Party that got us out of the Depression, and the unions that had protected my parents and grandparents against the excesses of the “rich people” in the factory system that put bread on our table. When I started courting my wife, also second generation, but from an Italian immigrant family, the same values were pushed, but even harder. No members of either or our families would consider anything other than Catholicism, voting for only Democrats, and they would never, never cross a picket line, especially my father-in-law. These were the values handed to me and there were to be no variations allowed from this path.
Happily, when I went to college and then graduate school to study American history, I came to the same conclusions on my own - especially about the Democratic Party and unions. My study of history told me that the liberal orientation of those two institutions were necessary to support the downtrodden, the lower class with whom I identified and who needed whatever help they could get in fighting their way up the American ladder of success.
When I started my career in education, the importance of the union movement came particularly into focus. Education was one area in which the pendulum had not swung adequately far enough in favor of teachers. When I started in the late ‘60s, teachers were paid very poorly and their contracts were weighted heavily in favor of the school districts. I saw the need to get involved and did so in my local “education association” as a building representative, vice president, and then on to president of the association.
Perhaps it was my close proximity to the decision-making process during negotiations, or the continuing process or maturity, or maybe even a bad taste in my mouth that developed as I saw events unfold; but it was at about that time that my feelings about unions began to change and I began to feel that the word “association” was simply a euphemism. Let me explain.
I have a big personal “thing” about educators being considered as professionals and thinking of themselves as professionals. I started to notice that, as the years rolled by, teachers were thinking less and less that they were professionals and more and more that, to be successful in balancing the onslaught from the community, they had to think of themselves as workers, just as Gompers had insisted in his philosophical orientation for the American Federation of Labor. Now keep in mind here, I am not suggesting that teachers should have maintained an elitist position. As mentioned earlier, I proudly came from a family of factory workers who worked very hard to achieve whatever they could for their immigrant families. I also did believe, and still believe, that, at the time, the pendulum needed to be swung a good deal more in the direction of the teachers. That point of view has made great gains last couple of decades, and that is a very important advance.
What I am suggesting is this - teaching is a profession, and, as a history and social studies teacher, I love to hold the old definition of the word in high esteem. I also believe that the word itself holds great power over the success or failure of the endeavor. A professional professes himself or herself to a commitment to children. If that is lost in the struggle to gain equity, the baby goes out with the bath water. One of the turning points for me occurred when I started to see teachers look disdainfully at the word “professional.” In the bitterness of the fight they would contend that, if they were really professionals, they would be treated as professionals. This, of course, gave them an excuse to stop acting like professionals, and, from what I could see, childishly begin to withhold some level of professional service when they did not get what they wanted or to seek unfair advantage under strict interpretation of contracts that more and more became instruments of less than professional performance. To me, at the time, this meant the beginning of the end in regard to professionalism in teaching. Unfortunately, I believe that I was right. There are still many teachers, maybe most, who treat their calling as a profession and consider themselves to be on-call 24 hours a day, but there could be just as many who now will not lift a finger unless they are contractually obliged to do so. I always argued that, no matter what my personal views of the Boards of Education, I did not work for the Boards of Education. I worked for children. That was all that made my labors worthwhile. I did not make friends in making that assertion.
Many teachers find very convenient reasons to disagree with what I just wrote and find themselves in an evolving position in which they become more and more bitter and confrontational about what they are doing. This cannot support a healthy learning environment, and it most assuredly has not.
I spent most of the last five years of my career as an administrator, but don’t make the mistake of believing that reality colored my opinions. They certainly reinforced them, but the opinions already existed before I went into administration. The current situation in education is one in which teachers are protected by non-sensical tenure laws that allow them to pretty much do as they wish after the first three or four years in a teaching position. Administrators are caught in a “Catch-22” in which they do not want to eliminate young teachers because they are obviously still in the growth phase of their profession. When it becomes obvious, however, that they have plateaued at less than an acceptbable level of proficiency, the same administrators still can’t touch them because of the fact that it is virtually impossible to eliminate a tenured teacher. There are terrible teachers teaching in our schools because of this and there is virtually nothing that can be done about it.
In addition, as the pendulum has now swung fully in the other direction, there are teachers who have taken on an attitude that they will just get away with what they can, resting assured that not much can be done if they make the minimal effort to cover their tracks. I always believed that reciprocity should be one of the essential ingredients in a healthy organization. In education, however, courtesies have become mostly a one-way street. I remember one conversation I had in which teachers asked for a small favor that was normally extended. I made the point that I certainly did not mind extending that small favor as long as teachers realized that it would nice for them to extend small favors in return. The words were no sooner out of my mouth than another word surfaced - the word was “contract.”
This is where, in my opinion, we have gone wrong. Children need to know that they are being led and instructed by a committed group of professionals who put the needs of the children even ahead of their own. Thankfully, there are many of those who are still around; but there are also many others who come out of a new tradition for teaching, that of the teacher as a private agent who negotiates each and every move he or she makes. What was once a sense of learning community is now quite often compromised by this phenomenon.
As representing the second generation American in a Portuguese immigrant family, I learned very early in life that there were several things you did not challenge - the Catholic Church, F.D.R’s Democratic Party that got us out of the Depression, and the unions that had protected my parents and grandparents against the excesses of the “rich people” in the factory system that put bread on our table. When I started courting my wife, also second generation, but from an Italian immigrant family, the same values were pushed, but even harder. No members of either or our families would consider anything other than Catholicism, voting for only Democrats, and they would never, never cross a picket line, especially my father-in-law. These were the values handed to me and there were to be no variations allowed from this path.
Happily, when I went to college and then graduate school to study American history, I came to the same conclusions on my own - especially about the Democratic Party and unions. My study of history told me that the liberal orientation of those two institutions were necessary to support the downtrodden, the lower class with whom I identified and who needed whatever help they could get in fighting their way up the American ladder of success.
When I started my career in education, the importance of the union movement came particularly into focus. Education was one area in which the pendulum had not swung adequately far enough in favor of teachers. When I started in the late ‘60s, teachers were paid very poorly and their contracts were weighted heavily in favor of the school districts. I saw the need to get involved and did so in my local “education association” as a building representative, vice president, and then on to president of the association.
Perhaps it was my close proximity to the decision-making process during negotiations, or the continuing process or maturity, or maybe even a bad taste in my mouth that developed as I saw events unfold; but it was at about that time that my feelings about unions began to change and I began to feel that the word “association” was simply a euphemism. Let me explain.
I have a big personal “thing” about educators being considered as professionals and thinking of themselves as professionals. I started to notice that, as the years rolled by, teachers were thinking less and less that they were professionals and more and more that, to be successful in balancing the onslaught from the community, they had to think of themselves as workers, just as Gompers had insisted in his philosophical orientation for the American Federation of Labor. Now keep in mind here, I am not suggesting that teachers should have maintained an elitist position. As mentioned earlier, I proudly came from a family of factory workers who worked very hard to achieve whatever they could for their immigrant families. I also did believe, and still believe, that, at the time, the pendulum needed to be swung a good deal more in the direction of the teachers. That point of view has made great gains last couple of decades, and that is a very important advance.
What I am suggesting is this - teaching is a profession, and, as a history and social studies teacher, I love to hold the old definition of the word in high esteem. I also believe that the word itself holds great power over the success or failure of the endeavor. A professional professes himself or herself to a commitment to children. If that is lost in the struggle to gain equity, the baby goes out with the bath water. One of the turning points for me occurred when I started to see teachers look disdainfully at the word “professional.” In the bitterness of the fight they would contend that, if they were really professionals, they would be treated as professionals. This, of course, gave them an excuse to stop acting like professionals, and, from what I could see, childishly begin to withhold some level of professional service when they did not get what they wanted or to seek unfair advantage under strict interpretation of contracts that more and more became instruments of less than professional performance. To me, at the time, this meant the beginning of the end in regard to professionalism in teaching. Unfortunately, I believe that I was right. There are still many teachers, maybe most, who treat their calling as a profession and consider themselves to be on-call 24 hours a day, but there could be just as many who now will not lift a finger unless they are contractually obliged to do so. I always argued that, no matter what my personal views of the Boards of Education, I did not work for the Boards of Education. I worked for children. That was all that made my labors worthwhile. I did not make friends in making that assertion.
Many teachers find very convenient reasons to disagree with what I just wrote and find themselves in an evolving position in which they become more and more bitter and confrontational about what they are doing. This cannot support a healthy learning environment, and it most assuredly has not.
I spent most of the last five years of my career as an administrator, but don’t make the mistake of believing that reality colored my opinions. They certainly reinforced them, but the opinions already existed before I went into administration. The current situation in education is one in which teachers are protected by non-sensical tenure laws that allow them to pretty much do as they wish after the first three or four years in a teaching position. Administrators are caught in a “Catch-22” in which they do not want to eliminate young teachers because they are obviously still in the growth phase of their profession. When it becomes obvious, however, that they have plateaued at less than an acceptbable level of proficiency, the same administrators still can’t touch them because of the fact that it is virtually impossible to eliminate a tenured teacher. There are terrible teachers teaching in our schools because of this and there is virtually nothing that can be done about it.
In addition, as the pendulum has now swung fully in the other direction, there are teachers who have taken on an attitude that they will just get away with what they can, resting assured that not much can be done if they make the minimal effort to cover their tracks. I always believed that reciprocity should be one of the essential ingredients in a healthy organization. In education, however, courtesies have become mostly a one-way street. I remember one conversation I had in which teachers asked for a small favor that was normally extended. I made the point that I certainly did not mind extending that small favor as long as teachers realized that it would nice for them to extend small favors in return. The words were no sooner out of my mouth than another word surfaced - the word was “contract.”
This is where, in my opinion, we have gone wrong. Children need to know that they are being led and instructed by a committed group of professionals who put the needs of the children even ahead of their own. Thankfully, there are many of those who are still around; but there are also many others who come out of a new tradition for teaching, that of the teacher as a private agent who negotiates each and every move he or she makes. What was once a sense of learning community is now quite often compromised by this phenomenon.
posted by Friar4 at 10:20 AM
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