We Don't Need No Education

In the immortal words of Pink Floyd, "We don't need no education."  For those in the know, this statements double negative actually suggests that education is exactly what we need.

I've been reading all the anti-teacher, anti-education, anti-knowing anything other than what the right wing wants you to know sentiment currently clogging the atmosphere, and it's taken me awhile to decide how or if I wanted to weigh in on the argument.  As a teacher, I'm personally tied to the conversation in a way that makes objectivity nearly impossible, and as a person who has loved to learn since I was a child, I'm definitely part of the touchy-feely liberal problem rather than the detached, bottom-line, money driven solution.  But, dear reader, if you know me at all, you know I wasn't going to be able to keep myself out of this cesspool for long, so this morning I'm jumping in.

There are two camps at the moment regarding education in this country: 1) those who believe teachers are a lazy set of union-thug represented 'those who couldn't do' slurping wages from the federal teat like Depression-era babies whose classroom effectiveness should be measured against how well students do on standardized tests (this group also tends to believe privatization, i.e. charters, is an effective solution to the money drain education places on state and federal budgets), and 2) those who believe that we are a country with a solid educational system (save the narrative we are being sold about it from the--predominantly Republican--legislative bodies that are seeking to vilify it in the name of balancing state and federal budgets).  Most of the folks in group 2 tend to think the answer to the problems in education--and we know there are problems--aren't going to come from cutting budgets, but by increasing them.  Provide technology in all classrooms at all grade levels to support students who are learning in a digitally advanced world, encourage students to participate in activities and projects not only in their community but in their state and nation so that they learn their actions and ideas have the ability to change the world in which they live, and pay teachers a wage that is comparable to what anyone with a professional degree in any other field earns.

First, I'd like to address the group 1 concerns.  I was a union member the first three years I taught but, after I divorced, I couldn't afford to pay the dues any longer.  I still value the work the union does in terms of bargaining for my right to have planning time built into my schedule, but I recognize that no collective bargaining body is ever going to be completely respected by people who do not need it to exist.  Just as the striking mill workers in Lawrence, MA asked for bread and roses in 1912, those of us who have relied on union representation understand we are asking for a quality of life to be protected from legislators who may not recognize that the nature of public service jobs can make those of us who perform said jobs fall patsy to the political agenda of a ruling person or body.

The idea that teachers teach because they couldn't do something else, well, I'm going to say that's true for some of us.  If I want to live a life in which I am fulfilled, enriched, and revived each day by the job I am paid to do, I couldn't sit behind a desk and answer phones, I couldn't punch numbers into a spreadsheet, and I couldn't proofread articles someone else had written.  I've had jobs that fit all three of those descriptions, and each morning when I woke to work I was as miserable about how I earned my paycheck as I was when I arrived home each night, brain dead and exhausted from monotonous work that meant nothing to me.  I couldn't do those things, but I can teach.  I can make seventeen year old boys excited about deciphering metaphor in The Great Gatsby which means I'm helping them sharpen critical thinking skills they can apply to other difficult situations outside of the classroom, and I teach sixteen year old girls that their lives are as valuable as the lives of their male classmates by showing them that Hester Prynne had a choice in The Scarlet Letter and she chose to stay in Boston and in so doing she was able to make a living and raise her child without being beholden to a husband.  And we talk about the consequences of the actions that led to that choice so that, when they are confronted with a situation in the future that seems to be instantly gratifying, they'll remember there are repercussions for making those choices and will perhaps think twice.

As for suckling from the government teat, I could break down the amount of hours I work each week (55 on average) and talk about the numbers of books I read and hours I spend each summer preparing for the courses I teach during the academic year, but I'm not going to be able to sway anyone.  I know that.  I'll just say that with my B.A. and M.A. in English and my teaching credential, I am qualified enough to earn $20-40k more per year than I currently do were I working, say, as a corporate trainer (which is just private sector code for what I already do: teach) but I choose to make less because high school students need impassioned and dedicated educators to prepare them for the world beyond structured academic walls far more than middle aged executives need me to train them on the selling points of some new needless product or sales technique.

Finally, the standardized tests as measurement for teacher effectiveness argument is bunk in about a hundred different ways.  Those tests are created by the same companies that create and sell expensive test-prep materials school districts buy to boost test scores which means the tests are designed to be ambiguous so the companies who created them can make more money on the aforementioned test-prep materials.  If the tests were accurate measurements of what students learn in a classroom--and I am only speaking about the reading and writing tests here as that is my only realm of knowledge--there would be items that required students to evaluate text, to think critically about why an author used a particular metaphor to describe a character and what that metaphor means in the greater context of the novel, to explain how setting functions to develop a story line, to analyze the use of the word 'belligerent' in place of 'angry', to distinguish between the protagonist and antagonist in a text where none of the characters are particularly likeable, and so on.  But, instead, our tests ask students to make value judgments, to regurgitate prefix and suffix meanings, to choose the best answer from among ambiguously worded multiple choice items without ever having to argue why they made said choice.  We ask our students, on tests, to spew back facts rather than to think for themselves and this is why measuring teacher effectiveness by test score is asinine: students only truly learn when they are willing to work on learning on their own and they are more inclined to do so when they are working on a problem to solve as opposed to memorizing arbitrary definitions.

Just as doctors who tell patients to eat healthy and exercise shouldn't be evaluated on how many of their patients follow their advice and lose weight, teachers cannot be measured by test scores because no matter how much we prepare students, if they don't do some work (that they feel is valuable) on their own, their scores will reflect their choice not to work far more often than they will reflect a teachers' work in the classroom.

Group 2, of which I am a fierce and vehement member, understands charter schools only work in communities with people willing to pay for them for all students, and we know that students benefit from one on one teacher instruction when possible which only happens in classrooms with a 25:1 or lower student to teacher ratio.  Which means money.  More teachers, smaller class sizes.  More salaries to pay, better student performance.

Group 2 sees the benefit of teaching students in a technologically capable classroom.  I'd love to see my students making film trailers of the novel we've studied in class, condensing the text down to the barest elements in 2-3 minutes of visual and audio representation to illustrate the major themes and how that book may best be marketed to the generation that will be reading it in my next class, but lack of money means lack of technology.

Group 2 knows students thrive in environments led by role models who look like them: people from the same ethnic group in leadership positions are proof of their own ability to rise above whatever hypothetical limits their culture or home life may have set for them prior to their ever setting foot in a school.  According to the 2009-2010 KSDE Report Card, 10% of the student population at my high school is African-American, but we have no African-American classroom teachers, and my students have noticed.  In a recent class discussion about race as it relates to the changing literary landscape in America during the Harlem Renaissance, one black student said, "It is weird that we talk all the time about how anybody can be anything he wants, but there ain't no black teachers in this school."  Indeed.  And the answer, sadly, comes back to money.  Non-white teacher candidates are a hot commodity in Kansas.  As the ethnic make-up of our schools becomes more diverse, so should our faculty, but unless districts are able to pay comparable wages, those sought after teachers will be smart and choose the district willing to pay them more.  Think I'm making this up?  A current open position for a certified teacher advertises starting salary as $34,780 in my district.  Up the road about 30 miles, starting salary is $38,583, and at another school within 30 miles it's $39,240.  Four or five thousand dollars may not seem like much, but when you're a new teacher paying off student loans, it can make al the difference in the world.

The last thing I'm going to contribute to this conversation is a quotation from an article by education historian Diane Ravitch.  Her comment--though far from ending the debate--seems to strike at the heart of what I'm trying to get at.  There are two camps in this country, but we all have the same goal: we want an educated populace.  How do we go about achieving that without dumbing down curriculum, vilifying an alienating teachers, or becoming a totalitarian police state intent on progressing an agenda driven by test scores rather than real thinking?  I don't know, but I'm willing to talk about it because it's the most important conversation any of us can be having right now.

Most Americans graduated from public schools, and most went from school to college or the workplace without thinking that their school had limited their life chances. There was a time—which now seems distant—when most people assumed that students’ performance in school was largely determined by their own efforts and by the circumstances and support of their family, not by their teachers. There were good teachers and mediocre teachers, even bad teachers, but in the end, most public schools offered ample opportunity for education to those willing to pursue it. The annual Gallup poll about education shows that Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s schools, but 77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the question was first asked in 1985.--Diane Ravitch, excerpt from The Myth of Charter Schools