Recess

I will be away for a few days, but I hope to resume this series in early August.

Problems in American Education - Part 16: The Current State of Subject Matter

There has been an unfortunate blending in education over the last half century between two mutually attracted phenomena whose questionable marriage does not receive nearly enough attention.

People have correctly believed for many years that teachers are the most frustrated professionals. Intelligent people, almost by definition, many teachers either consciously or subconsciously feel that they are underemployed, that they are capable of more than just explaining watered down versions of their subject matter to children on a level well below their personal understanding of the material. They think back to their days in college or graduate school and harbor dreams about what it would be like to get really immersed in their subjects and become college professors.

Human nature being what it is, this frustration exacts a creeping toll in school programs over the years. On the high school level it means that there is a great temptation for teachers and curriculum designers to bring college level work down to the high school. In the middle school, where teaching is the most difficult of all the grades, many frustrated teachers seek to prove their worthiness to teach high school (the big status issue in American public education) by actually teaching high school level courses in the middle school. Naturally, it also impacts on the elementary level, although less so, with teachers in the higher elementary grades teaching material that used to be thought of as appropriate only for adolescent students.

So this is the first of the two tendencies that has evolved almost unnoticed over many years, and inclination to juice up the curriculum beyond what is traditionally thought of as appropriate for age and maturation levels.

The other has to do with pressure from the outside (particularly from parents) that dovetails very nicely in feeding into the teacher frustration cited above. There is a consistently increasing pressure from parents to intensify the curriculum (as the parents define curriculum) to gain early advantage for their children. The motivation is to get children into college, and, most preferably, into the “best colleges,” whatever that may mean.

These two orientations feed on each other and help to create a reality in our schools that is dangerous because it “seems like” a win/win situation. Actually, it is a win/win situation for the teachers and the parents. The high school teachers get self-fulfillment by feeling like college professors when they are not and middle school teachers feel like high school teachers when they are not, etc. Parents feel satisfied because they enjoy seeing their children “challenged” and advanced to a point where they are certain to get into a top-notch college. The race is on, so to speak, and these two interest groups just keep pushing to pile it on.

The problem here is that there should be a third part in this equation, the children themselves; and it is my feeling and observation over the years that this unholy marriage of motives puts many of them in a “lose” situation. Clearly, the obvious pressure related to these trends tends to promote grouping practices in the lower grades to create classes of brighter(?), mored competitive students who are able to learn on higher levels, a problem I addressed many installments ago. Other students, you may recall, are then forced into lower ability groupings, ostensibly to give them a more individualized opportunity to learn at their own level. The segregation process begins. Of course, the fact that research shows that it is impossible to determine ability levels until grade 9 is totally ignored. That fact does not fit what many teachers and parents want, so it is just not considered. Students are labeled as early as fourth or fifth grade (even earlier in some places) and they are academically entitled or doomed from that point on as natural tracking entrenches itself into place.

My focus here, however, is to look at the effect on subject matter taught. The evolution described above has, over the years, inexorably pushed the teaching of skills and information, most notably in math (but also in other areas), further and further into lower grades. Many children were and are exposed to certain subjects much earlier than they need to be and, in many cases, at a time in their intellectual maturation when it may be counterproductive to their development. Certainly it is counterproductive to the overall development of social and interpersonal skills as it serves to segregate and categorize innocent children who do not know what is happening to them. At a time when middle school adolescents should be working on the natural, age-appropriate process of moving from concrete to abstract thinking, those who are perceived as more capable are directed into pre-algebra, first year algebra, and some pretty sophisticated levels of science and foreign language.

In order to understand the nature of this problem, it is important to stop and think about if for a while. Jimmy Carter called for “zero-based budgeting” when he was president, a procedure that required budget preparers to go back and start from the beginning, justifying the reasons for proposals from scratch. Let’s look at some traditional subject areas while remembering that learning, as it takes place in the brain, is not quite as compartmentalized; but that categorizing helps us to analyze.

Foreign Language

It’s odd to start with an exception, but this one may be an example of one that contradicts my assertion that we are teaching too much too early, that we are not letting our children enjoy a healthy maturing process during childhood. Studies do indicate that there are good reasons to teach foreign language at earlier ages. For some reason, the younger the child, the easier it seems to be to pick up languages. Foreign language study also promotes human understanding and tolerance in its appreciation for other cultures. Early exposure, therefore, seems like a good thing; and it certainly does offer children the bi-lingual opportunities that will be invaluable in later life as we see things developing in the 21st century.

There are some pitfalls, however, that I believe we need to monitor. For one thing, we still have some prejudicial tendencies that need to be examined. Spanish, for instance, should probably have an even greater role in foreign language study than it already does for some pretty obvious reasons. I have never understood why it should need to compete with French for exposure in our modern curriculum. I also do not understand why languages like Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, etc. are not studied more in a world in which far more people speak those languages than speak French.

I am also somewhat concerned about the traditional way foreign languages are taught in some schools in the earlier grades, although I do believe great advances have been made in emphasizing cultural orientation and immersion methods.

English

Schools, by and large, also do a pretty good job with the teaching of English, moving slowly through foundation skills related to grammar, decoding, vocabulary building, reading, and writing as discrete skills in the earlier grades and then on to the more abstract juvenile literature in middle school and even more abstract classic literature and advanced writing skills in high school. Over the years it has been my perception that the English program, at least among the programs considered to be part of the core curriculum, is probably the one that is most fundamentally sound in our schools.

Math

This is the big problem! More of that terrible ability grouping is done in the name of the needs of math than any other subject. I have never understood why. Actually, that is not truthful; I do know why. Just read above.

Math is perceived by both parents and math teachers as the practical subject, the one that can actually make money for students when they enter the world of work. What is not taken into account is that only a very small percentage of all students actually need advanced math in later life; yet that small group of students is used as an excuse to mangle schedules, especially on the middle school level. My argument with math teachers over the years met with a rationale for grouping that cited the fact that some middle school kids were ready for algebra and other advanced math and that they should not be held back. Of course, they would be condescending and say that other subjects could be populated with mixed grouping, but that it was imperative that math students be challenged.

While I cannot deny that some middle school students can handle more advanced math, I have to respond with a very loud, “So what?” Why do we have to disrupt the whole schedule of a middle school in a manner that is counterproductive in so many ways in order to accomodate math preferences? This disruption is especially seen in smaller schools where an ability grouped math program forces other courses to put up with de facto ability grouping in their programs. If all the “higher level” students are grouped together for accelorated math, for instance, it stands to reason that they are not mixed in with other students in what are supposed to be mixed groupings offered during that period. In other words, the laissez-faire beneficence shown by the math department on this subject is clearly a ploy to make room for their priorities.

In addition, of course, the late bloomer is once again ignored. What many educators fail to realize is that slower maturation does not imply less ability; it just implies a slower pace that may or may not reach the same level in the near future. If accomations are to be made, they should be made by math educators in pacing their programs in such a way as to give middle school students an opportunity to catch up, not in employing “nuclear options” that foreclose future options for many, many students.

The counter argument to my position on this subject has to do with math readiness - that when a student can do a certain level of work, he or she should be allowed to do it or you run the risk of boring that student and keeping him or her from moving consistently ahead. The fallacy in that argument is that it fails to recognize a problem and an opportunity in the entire path marked out by the math curriculum. There are many high schools across the country that will tell you that most students cover all the math they will need for later life and to get into college by the time they are juniors. Senior year, it seems, tends to be a wasteland that many schools fear because of the need to find things for students to do. There are a few students who use the opportunity to take very advanced calculus or solid geometry courses; but, again, they are a vast minority, not a group who should dictate an entire curriculum in many subject areas so that they can start their advanced math studies at a very early age. The honest reason for this anamoly in scheduling is that the purpose for advanced math classes in the early years is political pressure from parents, not that there is a serious need. The opportunity is there to allow almost all students to catch up in middle school, but it is not taken.

Now, you may ask me what those students should be studying in middle school math if not advanced material. There is a very good answer to the question that relates to that concept of zero-based budgeting. If you look objectively at what modern students need in grade 6, 7, and 8, you can definitely come up with some very challenging subjects that do not require slower learning math students to deal with levels of abstraction that may be a year or two away. Computer math related to organization, spreadsheets and simple programming comes quickly to mind. Another underexposed area that could benefit all students would be consumer math. In other words, there are very worthwhile and “challenging” things all students could do that would mean progress while not requiring segregation and destruction of a mixed grouping schedule that would be a great advantage for all students during developmental years.

Social Studies

Please note well that I refer to my old discipline as social studies and not history. That is a significant distinction. There are traditionalists and “back-to-basics” conservatives who prefer to say that we should teach history. Some teachers in the discipline, especially those who are the would-be college professors if they had the chance, also like to refer to themselves as history teachers. Sounds a little more elite, if you know what I mean. Hey, actually, I was an American history major myself in graduate school. The problem here though, is that the use of term history is inaccurate and silly in most classes that deal with this discipline. History is one of the social sciences, along with subjects like geography, political science, and economics, to name a few. At the basic level where we find virtually all public school students, it is important for classes in this area to encompass all of these subjects in an attempt to help students understand the complex subject of interpersonal and social human relations. Social studies needs to be taught as social studies. It’s as simple as that. History professors belong in college.

Other than that little dispute in orientation, social studies, like English, is one of our more solid subjects. It is probably the one that is most favorably grouped under a healthy mixed environment unless distorted by the de facto deference shown other disciplines. Actually, I was always proud of the fact that social studies, almost by the nature of the discipline, sought to promote a mixed grouping in its classes in order to represent and promote a microcosm of society in the classroom.

My only complaint about the social sciences is that one of its pieces is not emphasized enough. More geography needs to be taught in our schools. As a matter of fact, I think it belongs right up there with the other core subjects that are thought of as foundations of life. That may seem like an extreme position for a subject not normally put in the pantheon of important studies; but, as with some other points I have made, I think that the importance of the study of geography is something that needs a new, fresh, and logical examination. We live in an ever more complicated world, and young people desperately need to psychologically ground themselves as they mature into adulthood. No one would deny the importance of the “three R’s” in this process, but I think we have neglected the subject that really puts children into context with the rest of the world, a world that is shrinking ever more quickly and becoming more and more accessible to all.

Many thoughtful analysts of the learning process believe strongly that children learn from the inside out, from what is very close to them to a gradual realization and understanding of what is more and more distant. That is exactly what the study of geography serves to do with the young mind. It substantially helps children to come to an understanding of the world around them, first the world that they can perceive with their senses and then the ever expanding surroundings that are more and more distant. It helps children to solidly perceive their world in expanding context, giving them a psychological grounding on which to establish their paths in life. When you pair this theory (actually, I think it is more than just a theory) with the erosion of geography education and knowledge that we have seen over the past half century, you can see how important it is to take a much closer look at our priorities in this area.

Science

I can’t make as big a case with science as I did with math, but science fell into a similar path to math back in the mid-20th century when we were concerned with the space race and keeping up with the rapid growth of technology. As with math, there is no doubt that the study of science is important for all students; but we cannot fall prey to over-emphasis if it means that we sacrifice the education of the whole child and all children in payment for the emphasis. A very small number of students become “rocket scientists,” and we should not distort our programs to focus on the needs of that small group at the expense of the vast majority. There is time enough for moderate specialization in this area in later high school for those with the aptitude and desire. We do not need eighth grade chemists.

Other Subjects

All subjects, including those that we consider as subjects in non-core areas (whatever that means), need to be examined closely for how they fit into the needs of children in an ever-changing society. My perception is that we have made great strides over the past few years in areas like physical education, health education, art education and certainly in computer education, while we have fallen behind, to some extent, in what used to be called home economics, consumer education, industrial arts and in a few other areas.

My overall suggestion is that we keep comprehensive education in mind for the public schools. K-12 education should not be designed to promote premature specialization. To do so is to forget that children mature slowly and that they need to taste the fruits of liberal arts early in life so that they can make sound decisions later once they are in a position to make good choices. We will examine more about curriculum design in future essays; but suffice it to say in summary of positions stated here that future success in educational programming will depend on flexible curriculum that allows children to be children and to taste numerous offerings while building strong foundation skills.

Problems in American Education - Part 15: Education: Art or Science?

I think that I once lost out on an assistant principalship because of this question. The superintendent was on the interviewing panel and he asked me whether I thought administration was an art or a science. I could tell that he had an orientation in mind, but he disguised his preference well in asking the question. That didn’t matter anyway, if I could boast a little here, because I never was the kind of interviewee who tried to shape answers to fit what I thought the panel wanted to hear. I’m kind of big on being yourself and letting the chips fall where they may. That way you don’t have to live up to a false image later on.

The one thing you always wanted to do though in an interview was to at least sound decisive in your answers. It was a tough question and I knew that my answer was going to sound “wishy-washy” if I went with my instincts in responding to the question. Well, I was right. I told them what I thought and it did sound “wishy-washy.” Needless to say, I did not get the job; and, for some reason, that question stood out in my mind as a turning point in the decision-making process.

As you may have guessed by now, the truth, in my opinion, for both teachers and administrators, is somewhere in the middle. That is obviously not a bold statement to make, but it seems pretty clear to me that you need both the left brain and the right brain to work well with children in today’s schools. I list this as one of my “problems in American education” because I think that we sometimes forget how clear it is and because we can also let loose of the need to balance the two sides of the equation if we are not careful in the sometimes overwhelming environment in education today.

Edgar Allen Poe had much to say on this subject - not directly of course - but as a recurring theme in his writing. Poe’s characters in his poetry, his horror stories, and also in his ratiocinative mystery stories often found themselves in trouble when they moved away from that balance between heart and head. In the case of Roderick Usher in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” insanity was the ultimate result. In “The Purloined Letter,” Poe’s wondertully spun mystery tale about the location of a hidden letter, the mastermind detective who solved the case was able to do so by understanding both the logic and emotion of his adversary. His balanced approach provided the insight necessary to move to the core of what was reality.

It’s the “ying” and “yang” of human life; so, quite naturally, it is also a key understanding that needs to be applied when working with the youngest of all humans, our children.

When I think of science in our endeavors in education, I think of logic and, most of all, organization. As I believe I have established in my earlier essays, working as a teacher or administrator today is no simple task. You need to answer to many masters and numerous skills, from interpersonal to record keeping to grade computation to scheduling to computer, are required. If that superintendent who interviewed me was thinking that administration was more of an art, I think he was missing something. You can’t survive today in this field if you are disorganized.

Later in this series I will address computer assisted instruction, but here I will only indicate that computer literacy is also very important, actually essential, for educators today. I would no sooner hire a computer illiterate educator than I would hire an educator who had reading, writing, or computation problems. We are well past the day when computer literacy was an option or a decision based on the personal style of the educator. As a minimum, today’s educator must show a mastery of word processing, spreadsheets, some computer graphics, and definitely the Internet. Database, presentation software like Powerpoint, and publishing software use are also somewhat important and helpful. In other words, today’s educator needs to be able to manipulate, process, and produce data quickly and efficiently, and the computer is the only way to do it in an environment that is becoming more and more competitive. You just can’t keep up with all you need to do and all you need to know to be a good teacher or administrator if you do not have these skills.

Having said that, I also believe that the right brain is at least as important in balancing the equation in today’s schools. This gets back to what I wrote in an earlier essay about teacher evaluation. When the “back to basics” movement started those many decades ago, it was part of response to the Sputnik generation, an attempt to simplify what we were doing under a “less is better” mentality that implied that we could do better promoting the American cause by teaching children foundation skills and teaching those skills with great intensity and repetition. The softer disciplines (social studies, literature, the arts, etc.) were thought to be overdone at the time and more conservative elements wanted to see more rigor and challenge with an emphasis on math, science, and the “three R’s.”

Underlying this argument were some hidden prejudices against the teachers who were believed to be promoting the soft and less challenging curriculum. Not coincidentally, this was about the same time that teachers were just starting to make more money and putting more pressure on the tax base in doing so. Some resentment among the taxpayers was bubbling up in response to that change, and there were those who wanted to find a way to make the teachers pay a price for their increased benefits and salaries.

Taxpayers, and, particularly, parents wanted accountability from educators in return for their tax dollars and they started to attack the perceived suspicious and abstract processes that they did not understand. This created a new plan to prepare teachers and keep them under control. So called “teacher proof” materials and methods were promoted, a movement that insulted teachers by implying that they needed recipes to do what society wanted them to do and what society wanted to require if they were to make the kind of money professionals were supposed to make. Artistic interpretation, creation, and application were frowned upon and many teachers came to feel that, while they were now paid like professionals, they were not trusted to make professional decisions on their own.

The major mistake in all of this is that it unknowingly attempted to take the art out of the equation. Again, as noted earlier, I have found that some of the best teachers I have ever observed and evaluated fell far short when measured against some kind of prescribed textbook recipe for what a teacher was supposed to do. What separated them, however, was that they had the ability to inspire children to learn. You can call it charisma or you can say that it had to do with some kind of “Gestalt” that they were able to create in their classroom; but it was as real as could be when you watched the effect on the children. Some people just seem to have that knack of working with children. About the only way I can explain it in terms of a common denominator is to observe that all those I saw who had it, in its many forms, seemed to have a deep and abiding affection for children. Somehow this affection was perceived as sincere by the children and their appreciation for it normally translated into attention and hard work. Read those two words as definitive prerequisites for learning.

That is why art is so important in education. Yes, you can teach an educator valuable skills, but something also needs to exist in the heart if you are to approach excellence in instruction. This is not something that is discussed enough in educational circles. I think that is because most of us are naturally somewhat envious about the kind of raw talent we see in those very special educators. I know that I was. I had some of that spark, especially as a young teacher; but it was somewhat fleeting, and I have to admit that most of my career I met with success through old fashioned hard work more than through charismatic artistry.

I particularly remember one man I worked with for a good number of years. If you matched him against the teacher methodology textbook, he was terrible. He did most things “the wrong way;” but that man could teach. The kids loved him and chose to ignore his idiosyncrasies because they knew that, despite some of his odd approaches, he had their best interests at heart and that reality came through. Other teachers were envious of him and critical of his methods; but I think they knew in their hearts that he was reaching children who they were unable to reach.

It may have been an extreme position, but one department head once told me when I was a young teacher that she did not care what I was teaching as long as I was teaching. The idiosyncratic teacher mentioned above was always teaching and the medium became the message. It made him special, and, quite frankly, kids related to that more than they related to mechanical or pedantic process.

So, what’s the moral of this story? I think it is that Poe was absolutely right. A good educator, whether he or she be a teacher or an administrator, needs to be a balanced person. Organization and skills are key elements, but so are heart and emotions. Educators must always remember to put themselves in the children’s seats and imagine what those children are perceiving. Subject matter is important, but I believe that children learn more from their teachers as they perceive them as role models. Subject matter tends to be digested and internalized, but children more directly remember who taught them and whether or not that person was a complete human being. To whatever extent we can, educators need to consciously remember that when they plan for their presentations to those children. It does not go unnoticed.

Problems in American Education - Part 14: Teacher Evaluation

One of the things we try to do as human beings is to simplify problems in order to make them more manageable. This has definitely been the case with our efforts to improve the process of teacher evaluation, and that idea does have some merit; but, when coupled with pressures brought to bear by the teacher unions, the combination has created some very counterproductive results.

Evaluating teachers is, at best, a very complicated process, especially when considered in light of the tenure laws that protect teachers after their first few years on the job. For some reason, and I think it has something to do with that pressure from the unions, the tradition in most school settings is to evaluate teachers largely on the basis of what is observed by an administrator in the classroom several times a year while classes are being taught. While that may seem like a common sense approach and one that satisfies those who would reduce teaching to a very mechanical and measureable practice, it is my contention that such a practice falls far short of being effective in determining whether or not a person should be a teacher.

Further complicating the question is the legitimate question of why you evaluate teachers. Is it simply a hire/fire process or does it have something to do with improvement of instruction? I like to think that it is the latter that we should emphasize; but I cannot deny that there is also an underlying question about the suitability of the teacher in question to pursue his or her career. My feeling is that the unions, in protecting teachers from the vagueries of more abstract criteria, have sought to keep the criteria simple and almost strictly confined to classroom performance. The states, ironically, have also sought to simplify the process in order to apply clear minimum standards during the early years of a teacher’s career. The Beginning Educator Support Training (BEST) program in Connecticut is a very good example of this. It is a very good program in that it puts a strong working emphasis on young teacher preparation during their first few years and it insures that certain mechanical standards and supports are maintained.

Such programs, however, do have serious drawbacks associated with their application. The BEST program, for instance, takes the concept of accountability and stretches it to a rather demanding level when it expects so much from young teachers in their first couple of years on the job. While most of these young people are just trying to get their feet on the ground as rookies and second-year professionals, they are faced with very demanding bureaucratic hoops they must navigate through in order to maintain their certification. I had to wonder on some occasions whether this process was as much professional at it was political under the umbrella of the level of accountability for teachers demanded by society.

My much bigger question, however, has to do with whether or not we are measuring the right things when we evaluate teachers. When an administrator visits a classroom to observe a teacher, he normally is confronted by a plethora of distorted situations. The teacher (especially if he or she is very young), of course, is very nervous. Not a good thing for determining the competency of that teacher in a normal situation. The teacher normally knows the administrator is coming (sometimes there is a contractual requirement that the teacher be told the administrator is coming) and, therefore, prepares a “very special” lesson designed to impress. Human nature, but not in the best interests of objective evaluations.

The kids in the class also tend to act differently when the principal or other administrator is there, further slanting what is being observed. Sometimes the kids rally to support a teacher they like, realizing that the teacher is being evaluated. Other times, kids will actually try to undermine the plans of a teacher they do not like. This may say something in itself, but it does not help the administrator in getting a clear perception.

The point, of course, is that a truly objective, and, very importantly, a truly comprehensive evaluation of a teacher through classroom observations is practically impossible no matter how much pre-planning and post-conferencing go into those observations.

Actually, I will go one step further. I even question whether such a process even attempts to emphasize the right things in really determining the value of a teacher. I first became suspicious about the credibility of the traditional teacher evaluation process when I noticed that there were numerous occasions when teachers who I knew were great teachers, who really reached the kids in many different ways, did not really measure up when it came to “good mechanics.” Conversely, I saw teachers whose mechanics were outstanding, but who were not very effective. Admittedly, this perception is somewhat subjective; but that is my point, you sometimes need to use more subjective criteria to understand what makes a good teacher. As an administrator, my feeling was that part of my job was to make a reasoned number of subjective judgements about such things; but, when an administrator followed that philosophy, he or she would often be confronted with problems from the teacher unions.

One example of what I mean by all of this kind of evaluation. I had a student teacher a number of years ago before I went into administration. He was terrific. He was a friendly, “big-bear” of a young man who had a sincere affection for children and who could relate to them. He loved them and they loved him. As a result, he was effective and got the most that was possible out of his students. In addition, it was clear that he was very commited to teaching and he always showed it in the very professional manner he conducted himself.

One day, a woman who worked in our district, and who was a BEST coordinator, offered to do me a favor. She offered to observe John (not his real name) and give him some pointers about what he would need to do in order to do well in the BEST program once he started to work as a hired teacher. I agreed, and she went about her business, observing John in a couple of his classes. I was shocked by what she said after the observations. She came to me and said that John had serious problems, that he was not following the prescribed methods required by BEST and that he would definitely run into trouble during his first and second years of teaching.

I debated the issue with her, explaining that he was one of the best young teachers I had seen; but she insisted that he had to realize that major changes were needed. I felt I had a responsibility to go over the results with him, but I assured him that I did not agree with them and that I thought he would be a fine teacher. To make a long story short, I ran into John about three years later at a conference. He was proud to tell me that he had just been named as his district’s “Teacher of the Year.” I do not believe that he had changed his approach measureably as a result of the criticisms, but I was not at all surprised that he had met with such great success.

The lesson in all of this actually has three conclusions associated with it. One is that you cannot replace administrative judgement and experience with any foolproof mechanical system when evaluating teachers. The second is that there is much more to look at in what makes a good teacher than you can observe in a limited number of classroom observations. The third is that a good administrator needs to look beyond the classroom in determining what makes a good teacher. You cannot tell much about a person’s heart by watching them perform before kids in a very artificial environment. Actually, you can probably tell much more by watching the same teacher as he interacts with kids in the hallway and with colleagues on an ongoing basis during the school day and after school. You can tell more about a teacher by observing his or her obvious commitment to education than you can by simply looking at cold, hard data.

Over a very long career in education, I interviewed hundreds potential teachers. This process, in itself, is closely related to projecting whether or not you believe an individual will be a good teacher in your school. There are many different theories about what you should look for and consider when hiring. My ultimate conclusion, and the thing I would emphasize whenever I hired a teacher, was to look for evidence of character. As one central office administrator once told my wife, who is an elementary school principal, he would only look for one thing. Did he think the person being interviewed was a nice person? “You can teach the rest,” he concluded.

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.

Problems in American Education - Part 12: What is Curriculum?

I have a feeling I am going to get some disagreement on this one, especially since my position is going to sound very liberal; but I have gotten at least one question about it in the comments sections, so I think it is time to address the subject.

The word, “Curriculum,” refers to what is taught in schools. I don’t think too many will argue with that. It’s when you go beyond that simple definition that you get into trouble with people, especially at a time when liberal interpretations are considered part of the problem rather than accurate definitions. When the “back-to-basics” movement started nearly half-a-century ago, the idea was to strip down what schools offered to children in order to get at the core essentials. A closer look at what happened showed that there was also a basic distrust implied in regard to what schools could and should be expected to do - what parents and others wanted them to do.

The conservative base that subscribed to “back-to-basics” indicated that they did not want teachers messing with the values of their children and that the way to insure the kind of teaching they wanted was to strip away the opportunities for that to happen. It was a freedom-of-choice argument once again that suggested a subtle but strong desire of proponents to keep the “softer” disciplines more in the hands of parents and less in the hands of teachers and educators in general. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, in the opinion of these people, were the only legitimate courses of study and they asserted that the others, with the possible exception of science, should be soft-pedaled if not eliminated altogether. As a self-proclaimed social studies (as opposed to history) teacher, people like me were particularly seen as targets representing what was wrong with education. These people defined “curriculum” as simply a course of studies and they wanted to severely limit the number of those core offerings, especially when the list went beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic.

We used to debate this issue endlessly when I was in graduate school studying curriculum design, my major course of study. I argued then and still do now that the definition implied above is terribly shortsighted and that it does more harm than good in stabilizing school program offerings. It’s a cliche, I know, but children are like sponges. They soak up everything that comes into contact with all of their senses when they go through the learning process. So much of that process, of course, takes place outside of school, but to say that we should ignore the comprehensive nature of the learning process while they are subject to the schoo environment is, to me, irresponsible.

My definition of curriculum is not just the published program of studies. It is all learning experiences that take place under the umbrella of the school environment, from the time kids get on the buses in the morning until the time they get off in the afternoon, and sometimes more. While schools can control the various parts of this field in only varying degrees, I believe that we are still responsible for everything that happens to children while they are under our care. What happens on the bus, in the hallways, in the cafeteria, and even in the lavs is part of my definition of curriculum. Why? Because children are constantly learning while in those places. We must pay close attention to them and see to it that they are the healthiest possible learning environments they can be.

This is clearly a whole-child interpretation of the purpose of education and I don’ t shrink from that label. We are accused of trying to be all things to all people, and that criticism is somewhat accurate; but it is hard for anyone to deny that such focus in the support of our children is necessary in the complex society in which we live. If not the school, who else will attempt to deal with the whole child. Absentee parents and single parents are sometimes not in a position to do so. Social agencies are overwhelmed and underfunded. Churches seem to reach a smaller and smaller percentage of the population. You can say that these situations should not exist, but that simply avoids the question. They do.

Before I am accused of writing something I did not write, I want to explain that I am not pushing for a particular slant on what is taught. Quite to the contrary, I steadfastly believe the the school has no right to propagandize a particular moral, ethical, or social position in its curriculum offerings. I do have strong personal opinions, but I take great personal pride in the fact that I do not believe students ever really knew what they were. Instead, they were given the tools to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions with ever greater maturity of approach as time passed. Sure, they made mistakes in logic and, in some cases, even in common sense, but those tools they were offered helped them to do a better and better job as they learned how to think.

That process of thinking cannot be taught simply by emphasizing the basics. One of the key goals in middle level education, for instance, is to challenge students to move from the concrete thinking of a child to the abstract thinking of an adult. Yes, this can sometimes be aided by the teaching of good literature, but there is much more to it than that - and sometimes an effective process aimed at that goal takes place in the cafeteria, the hallways, the social studies classroom, or even as part of a disciplinary action in the office of the principal or assistant principal.

Problems in American Education - Part 11: Mission

There is a continuous battle waged in education, though quietly and unnoticed by most observers, between pragmatists and philosophers. This essay will be written from the philosophers’ point of view because I believe that they are somewhat ignored in the overall scheme of how most schools are run. You can make a pretty educated guess as to where I place myself on the spectrum between the two extremes.

Working in the field of education is hard work. Many people not in the field don’t realize how difficult it is to work with kids all day and hope that, by the time you reach dismissal, you have accomplished something. Constant pressure from the outside in the form of parents, higher administrators, Boards of Education, state requirements, etc. compound that difficulty, making the profession very complicated and draining. It takes vast amounts of energy, both intellectually and emotionally, to be an effective educator. Many taxpayers don’t believe it, but when an educator gets to June, he or she really does need a summer off. I don’t know of any other line of work, with the possible exception of air traffic controller, that requires such consisten intensity of focus and precise planning for such a prolonged period of time and under such large doses of pressure. That is just the way it is at this time in the history of the profession.

This means that each and every day is a struggle in our schools. Both teachers and administrators immerse themselves in daily schedules, hour after hour, and period after period, in which they must concentrate on getting through the day safely and productively. This is why pragmatism is so prevalent in the way educators think and act. Particularly in administration, there is little time to step back and take a look at the big picture. Many administrators habitually and inevitably are forced to fall into the habit of emphasizing short term management over creative long term leadership because they evolve into the belief that such a posture is a necessary survival skill. The seasoned veteran administrator often becomes cynical and gets to the point where he or she starts to look at philosophical educational issues as idealistic, ivory tower wastes of time. The here and now take control, and that is very understandable when an overwhelmed administrator is repeatedly besieged with questions and issues related to budget preparation, budget defense, school maintenance, staff development, parent pressure, bus schedules, class schedules, ancillary duty schedules, lunch supervision, endless administrative meetings, night work, and, of course, discipline. Pragmatic positioning in the face of all that is certainly understandable. The problem is, however, that it is not acceptable.

Any institution, if it is to be effective, needs to have a clear mission - a set of principles that guide the institution and that are referred to often as the institution progresses through time. The medium of the mission becomes the message of the institution and gives life and purpose to that institution. An institution cannot be effective in what it is doing unless it knows what it is doing and why it is doing it.

I once argued with a someone about this point. The person contended that having a mission is like putting on your clothing. It becomes habit, a standard operating procedure. With all due respect, my feeling was that the person's position was like those that say you write your mission statement and then put it away somewhere in a drawer, secure in the understanding that you gained by simply going through the process of creation. What this fails to recognize is that such practice does not insure adherence to any kind of positive direction on a daily, weekly, monthly, etc. basis. You are driving a car without any idea about where you are going.

The school’s mission, in my opinion, needs to be a intensively researched, developed, and communicated; and then it needs to be used as a living document that is consciously on the minds of all who apply it on a daily basis. Leadership is the key in getting that done. Every school needs a resident philosopher, usually the principal, who insures that constant application of mission is something on the minds of all members of the staff at all times. Absence of such leadership almost certainly insures a much more chaotic school subject to frequent changes of direction, inefficiency, and confusion over what is being done and why it is being done.

The obvious implication is that the person who leads a school needs to not only promote its mission, but he or she also needs to be a thinking person with ideas and passions that override the clatter of daily survival. This person will be effective because he or she, through the passion for thinking, serves as a focal point for others. Efficiency and economy of effort become positive by-products in such a school, but the real benefit is that the school has confidence and direction. Despite the abstractions involved in this position, It is a common sensical approach to what ails education today; but it is amazing how infrequently this notion is promoted or even explored.

Problems in American Education - Part 10: The Problems Related to Leadership and the Career Path for Educators

I feel very shakey on this one, so please bear with me and accept what I have to write here as an observation rather than a solid opinion based on clear evidence. I also want to warn you that there is some self-service in what I am about to write, so I run the risk of having my observation colored by the way I would like to see things in reference to my own career.

Leadership is important in any human endeavor, and education does not even approach being an exception. Someone once said that change is the only reality that we can count on being true in everything that happens under the auspices of the human condition. If change is to be in a positive direction, I think it follows that creative and imaginative leadership is important. My observation in this blog is that I have seen precious little creativity and imagination in education over the years, and I have a thought as to why that might be the case. Please keep in mind that I have also seen some very notable exceptions to what I just asserted, men and women who see both the forest and the trees, but my general impression has been that personality types other than creative thinkers tend to rise to the top of the educational hierarchy and that they have a natural tendency to be more interested in maintaining the status quo.

The career path in education, I think, offers precious little opportunity for creative thinkers to rise to positions of authority as change agents. I know I may make some enemies by writing this, but it has been my observation that most teachers are not risk takers and that they like to play their cards close to the vest, maintaining what they feel has kept them afloat during the earlier years of their careers. Teachers have been subjected to attacks from parents and the public at large for so long now that it is no wonder that they tend not to be aggressive in pushing new and different ideas. In a future post, I will also argue that it has been drummed into them by various agents that they are no longer thought of as professionals - another factor that keeps them from thinking of themselves as capable of creative change and innovative thinking.

What this means is that our pool for leadership tends to be filled by many people who are afraid to lead. Yes, some are lured or cajoled to apply for higher positions, but the qualifications perceived to be the ones necessary for those positions are not what you think of as oriented toward creativity and innovation. Whether it is right or wrong, every young teacher walking into his or her first classroom either consciously or sub-consciously does so with the idea that their success will be perceived in relationship to the ability to control that classroom. Ironically, the public thinks that discipline is a major problem in our schools (and it is in many places); but the perception of teachers is that maintaining that discipline is priority #1 in his or her attempt to be perceived as a good teacher. Sure, there are many other things that are perceived as criteria, but every young teacher knows that none of them mean very much if administration sees said teacher as unable to maintain a quiet classroom. Young teachers believe, with some degree of accuracy, that discipline is the key political reality for most administrators and that they need to show that they can handle kids before attempting to suggest innovation in the classroom.

As time goes on, this culture of control grows in the eyes of young teachers and in the culture of the teaching community, including the thinking process among decision makers. As vacancies arise, especially in school administration, the key career area required for advancement to all other areas in education, a tremendous amount of weight is put on the abilities of individuals to maintain discipline. It is seen as the one prerequisite that cannot be ignored. If you want to aspire to a higher position in education, you almost always have to serve an apprenticeship as an assistant principal because that is where you can prove that you have the strength to control a school. When I was in the role of assistant principal, I would even argue with people who wanted to call me “vice principal” because I believed that the second title, at least under the old junior high school model, had an even greater orientation toward being “the enforcer” in the school. I hated being thought of only in that context; but that was what the school community wanted to exist in that office.

You may have guessed by now that I did not like the idea of being the big disciplinarian in the school, not because of any disregard for the importance of discipline; but because I believed that I had more to offer than just chasing students down hallways. Nevertheless, that role and its place in the steps thought necessary to rise is widespread in education. Creative thinking and imagination may be nice at meetings or in the faculty lounge, but most educators are so concerned with discipline that they feel that it is the only thing that is really essential. Everything else is in the “nice to have” category. I may be overstating the case to some degree; but again, this has been my observation.

What this means in educational leadership is that those who rise to positions where decisions are made tend to be strong disciplinarians, but they also tend to be efficient, organized, and pragmatic in their approach to problem solving and school change. Philosophers need not apply, or at least I haven’t seen many who get to the point where they can offer signficant and substantial ideas to the process. School administrators put great emphasis on practical matters and quite often get caught up with daily issues. There just isn’t all that much time to lean back and reflect about the direction of education in America. I guess that’s why I waited to retire before I could start writing these essays.

I sincerely believe that a reflective and philosophical mind is important in fostering progress in education, but you seldom see those kinds of minds get a chance to impact the process. Many never get far enough into the hierarchy to effect change or even offer their ideas. It’s hard to formulate and pass a budget when someone wants to talk about whether the school’s mission is appropriate for students in this particular decade. I have never known pragmatism to offer a primary drive for philosophical inquisition, and my observation is that pragmatism, not new ideas, is the major motivation in American schools today as they defend against the many attacks they see against the institution. That does not promote growth and that is worrisome to me in an age when our schools are so much in need of enlightened leadership. I will write more about this when I get to the role of mission in schools.