Respect for Good Teachers

Photo by selma90

If  you’re a teacher, my condolences go out to you at the beginning of this semester.

With the nation polarized concerning just about any issue, the hate- and fear-mongers have pounced on teachers with a sick, perverted glee.

You may have the misfortune to have your local newspaper publish an alleged “comic” strip (an odd name for a propaganda-strip devoid of any comic relief at all) that will go unnamed here. No need to publicize the hate-filled, malevolent ravings of a malicious maladroit. If you don’t know the one I mean, I wouldn’t dream of sending you to his reactionary website, but you can see a copy of an offensive cartoon at http://cartoonistsgroup.com/store/add.php?iid=51181

For years, that malcontent has been spewing venom about how teachers are the bane of modern society because of constructionist education reforms.

A typical case of the debate around education reform is the “Math Wars.” The Math Mojo Chronicles have tackled this issue a bit in some of my posts about the math wars.  In those writings I’ve tried to be open minded, and not lay blame at any one group’s doors. We’re all culpable to some degree. But to blame teachers for the things they have no control over is more than a little wrong, yet that is exactly what that foul creature does.

Alas, many people, like the questionable cartoonist, prefer simple answers to complex questions. They apparently never learned to think beyond scapegoating the easiest target, even if it’s the wrong one. It is apparent that they had bad teachers. Something has to explain their lack of logical thought. It’s a typical logical fallacy to assume that even though you are poorly educated and suffer from a lack of critical thinking, that everyone shares your ignorance because they had bad teachers, as well, but that is where this odd duck is at.

Let’s put it bluntly – teachers are up against some terrible odds today. They are expected to be babysitters, lawyers, nurses, bean-counters, crisis-negotiators – anything but teachers. They are often stuck with class-sizes that are over the legal limit, and can’t do anything about it. They deal with some parents who spend no time on their own children’s education, yet expect every teacher to be Annie Sullivan (“The Miracle Worker”)

Then along come some lobbyists for different curriculums and textbooks, both traditionalist and reform-minded, that fight for the administration’s budget (your tax dollars) and want to inculcate your kids with their ideology.

It is a canard that teachers are at fault for this. Teachers are more at the mercy of a treacherous industry that is bound by a bottom line that the student’s welfare plays no part in.

Administrators are held hostage to a high-stakes testing strategy that makes no sense, and a sardonically misnamed “No Child Left Behind” act that handcuffs them to standards that are haphazard and unenforceable, and will change as often as the wind. In turn, they hold the teachers responsible to “make it work.”

Ignorant people like to blame teachers and/or their unions. I think these people are under the impression that teachers unions are behemoths that wield impressive political power, and are responsible for everything from the fact that many schools need weapon-detectors at the door to the the 9/11 bombings, to, what the heck, the fall of the Roman Empire.

If you’re a teacher and need protection from asinine school-board decisions or administrative abuse, you’ll soon find out that teacher’s unions have about as much clout as a crepe paper shillelagh club. Teachers are routinely overworked and undervalued, and forced to fill out useless form after form about “student achievement” and IEPs that will be ignored by the people who have to make decisions about how to help that student along in the future, because of “budget restraints”. If schools don’t meet the “academic standard du jour,” the administrators will look to pass off any culpability on the teachers, first. The buck stops “down there, with them.”

The money may go to put air-conditioning in the superintendent’s office, or go to a new football scoreboard more than it will to actually effective teaching supplies. Then the teacher will have to shell out his or her own money to equip the class. Or the PTA will hold a bake sale. How would you like to have to bake cookies to have your employer be able to give you the supplies you need to do your job?

How would that propaganda-pushing caricature of a journalist like to have to educate some kids who come from homes that have never had a real book in them? Or maybe kids who only know abuse at home and cannot behave in public?  Would it be the teacher’s fault to have a class with kids who have an intelligence span wider than that of the cartoonists’ core audience, yet have to have all of them meet a one-size-fits-all standard?

Families move more often than in the years of “Leave it to Beaver.”  A class may have pupils from school districts with entirely different standards than that class. The teacher has to make up for all the discrepancies that he/she had nothing to do with, yet that teacher will be responsible for the grades of children that may have come into the class woefully ill-prepared, because the children may have come from one or the other doofus-districts.

Teachers are hampered by exactly the type of ignoramuses who insist on “standards” that the ignoramuses themselves do not understand, and could not enforce. It’s easy to set up well-meaning (if naive and ineffectual) criteria for other people, and through wishful thinking and some notion about “tradition” expect others to live up to your unreasonable expectations even as you pull the rug out from them and disrespect them.

Scapegoating is the oldest, meanest, and dumbest propaganda tool in the simple-minded person’s playbook. Scapegoating the lowest man on the totem pole is the cheapest shot one can take.

If you really want to find who is responsible, look for the person who’s assigned the closest parking spot to the building (besides the handicapped spot – the disabled are picked on enough) and keep looking up from there. Anyone who’s saying, “… but we’re doing the best we can…” and who’s not speaking out for the rights of students and teachers first, is, in the words of a true cartoonist and journalist who actually stands for something meaningful (Doonesbury), “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”

It needs to be pointed out that I am not re-assigning blame to all administrators. There are those who are fighting the good fight. I actually met one recently. It was refreshing and sobering. Those ladies and gentlemen need encouragement, just as the many good and great teachers out there.

If you have an administrator who is in trouble with the school-board for standing up for his or her teachers, support that person. If you have school-board members who are trying to shake up the establishment by standing up for administrators who support teachers, shake their hands. Buy their cookies.

As for the status-quo, unimaginative, bean-counting functionaries who take up office space and never deal with students or parents directly, let’s have the courage to stand up against them. Speak up at meetings, inform yourself as to who is running for school board member, and then go vote. Write letters to the editor. Don’t jump to conclusions.

And as for the propagandists who only put false words into speech bubbles and attribute them to people they attack, and draw unflattering pictures of people they don’t like or understand (just like when they scribbled nasty graffiti and malicious stick figures of the teacher on their school desks when they were children), well, there’s no need to fill more space concerning them.

Here’s to all the teachers who love their mission but are hampered by their jobs. You’re the best! (Along with the school librarians!)

Check out these other sites that have notices the same thing about that mindless strip:

http://duckcover.blogspot.com/

This one is great: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/mallard-fillmore-makes-me_b_38124.html Here’s a quote from it:

“Mallard Fillmore” is an actual disgrace. Reading it is like watching the loneliest creep at the gun show try to pick up a waitress by quoting George Will, throw up on himself, and cry.

It goes on to point out that the strip repeatedly attacked Ted Kennedy for driving drunk in the Chappaquiddick incident, then shows the mugshot of the cartoonist when he was arrested for driving drunk, himself. If it walks like a hypocrite, and quacks like a hypocrite…