Without critical staff, schools are danger zones
Constant attack on teachers puts U.S. on fast track to disaster
Why do so few want to become teachers anymore? As the brilliant Alan Moore said in “V For Vendetta,” his graphic novel, “... if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.” It is hard to be told that it is your fault. Harder still when you have taken no action to deserve such admonishment, thrown no tantrum at your local board of education meeting, nor accosted any public servant. Still, it is time to accept your share of the blame in this. Why you may ask? Simple. You have done nothing to stop it.
Edmund Burke remarked once that “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one.” Though not everyone attacking public service should be considered bad, it is important to understand that their approach to concerns is malicious and deleterious. This nation needs teachers. Moreover, we need great ones and constantly questioning their judgment, their intentions and their professionalism has put us on the fast track toward disaster. Where are the voices that believe in the work we do? As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Consider what this nation asks of our educators. Public schools were once expected to teach reading, writing and arithmetic. The remainder of the rearing of a child was done at home and within the community. Is that the case today? Do parents expect schools to do a great deal more? If your local school cut back to those old basics, would you be satisfied? There can be healthy public discourse on the role a school in shaping of the moral judgment of a child. Accusing schools of indoctrination, using coarse language, threatening violence and becoming violent because the school has attempted to teach some moral lesson isn’t a solution. It is giving birth to a whole new problem.
Schools are not built to be echo chambers for the beliefs of individual parents. It is wholly unreasonable for parents to expect their children will not be presented with dissenting viewpoints. It is also disingenuous to assert that schools are not supposed to change the way a child has been taught in the home. In fact, that is the cornerstone of public education — to expand children’s minds. Or rather, to give children the ability to continue to expand their minds. Schools do not exist to tell children what to think, but to teach them how to think. When that thinking no longer complies with a parent's wishes, it isn’t some great evil, it is a natural outcropping of a growing mind.
Whether it is masks, critical race theory (which is not taught in K-12 public schools, despite what certain people would have you believe) or a renewed effort to ban certain books, the acrid tone toward educators is taking a toll that the nation will soon have to reckon with. Even as the pandemic and lockdowns have illustrated just how important schools are to our economy and to the lives of parents and children, enrollment in teacher prep programs has been declining. Some states have tried to loosen the requirements for becoming a teacher.
Imagine the honest advertisement for a prospective candidate: Want a fast-paced career in which you’re underpaid compared to others with similar degrees and will never have enough time or funding to do your job? Be expected
to solve the ills of society while parents blame you, politicians draft laws to attack you, and children feel entitled to challenge everything you say or do. Your evaluations will not be based on your work, but on the success or failure of the students you are randomly assigned, regardless of socioeconomic status, neglect or abuse. Summers off to continue your education at your own expense in order to get a small raise or maintain the certificate you earned, all to get treated like a villain in the eyes of the community you are seeking to help.
Gee, where do I sign up? Unlike in business, without critical staff, schools don't just risk the inability to complete a critical mission, they become dangerous. In some areas around the country, public schools had gone to a four-day week or half days even before the pandemic. It is naive to think those things cannot happen here.
Every vitriolic comment left unchallenged, every school board meeting full of acrimonious voices assailing educators doesn’t feel like your fault. But silence is acceptance and the community will pay the price.
To the teachers and staff of our community schools, thank you. Thank you for caring enough to stick with our kids, despite our failure to fund you, keep you safe or meaningfully reward you. To the parents who volunteer, run for school board and engage with their children, keep up the good work.
To those who say they are too busy to do anything about all this: You are not really too busy, just too busy to care about the people who care for your kids. It’s hard not to grow bitter with that taste in your mouth.
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