Post 4: Undervalued Teachers

Before becoming a teacher, I was a lawyer for three years. Lawyers are almost universally hated by the public. Some if it is deserved, but, of course, their are plenty of good, honest lawyers, too. But why do people undervalue lawyers? Because they feel lawyers have too much power, too much influence and they abuse it to make the system work for them.

I think some of this insight can help us understand the devaluation of teachers. Teachers are not despised in the same sense as lawyers are. In fact, teachers get a lot of condescending comments like, "It's a noble profession," which means it's a low paying job no one else wants to do. Teachers are not respected and they are largely not trusted.

I see the undervaluation of teachers as a nexus of a number of factors, all tying back to the concept of neoliberalism. There are a number of players in this drama -- Politicians, parents, education corporations, and teachers themselves.

Teacher's require the trust of parents. Parents leave their kids in our care for most of each day. They make it our responsibility to educate them and, in part, to raise them. Parents often don't know what we are teaching their kids. They don't have time to pay close attention to the material their children are being taught. They also often do not realize that teaching methods and understandings of certain material have changed since they were in school. Parents sometimes see the work their children are doing and if it doesn't bear some resemblance to what they learned in school, twenty or thirty years ago, they are suspicious of it.

Politicians have seen an opening in this and have dived right in. Politicians have realized that is they can turn teachers into enemies and then attack them, parents will support their reelection--it's a simple equation. First, parents want to know what their kids are being taught and want some control over it, so politicians advocate for standardized tests and rigid curricula -- and call it "teacher accountability."

This has the effect of putting knowledge into a preconceived package. Children don't learn what they need to be intelligent, informed citizens -- they learn what politicians want them to learn to make them compliant, obedient cogs for the corporate machine. Politicians sell parents this view of education -- the "agreed-upon facts" theory of history, for example, and it bears a resemblance to what parents learned as students, so they buy this bill of goods -- it gives them a feeling that they are in control.

Once teachers are being evaluated along these lines, teachers find themselves in a dilemma. they can either, conform, teach to the test, and become a part of the system that turns out uninformed consumers; or they can resist it, but fall into the trap, when their students can't pass the standardized tests.

Once politicians have defined the terms, and gotten parents on their side, they can begin phase two. If some teachers aren't willing to fall in line and teach to the test, then maybe they need to be taken out of the equation. So politicians have the opportunity to throw open the door to their favorite ally, corporations. It's the traditional neo-liberal response, create a problem, and then turn to the market to fix it, thereby simultaneously destroying a public institution, and erecting a money-making system in its place.

Education companies put together literacy and other educational systems -- sold to schools at a profit, and guarantee success -- success defined on their own terms. The conundrum of these tests is summarized by Patricia D. Irvine and Joanne Larson in Literacy Packages in Practice, "Standardized tests are a key tool in this political process, especially if they measure competence in the skills promoted by the materials... the assessments that accompany these systems are tautological: They provide their own justification and confirm it in the form of test scores." (2007, 68).

They use the term "teacher proof" to advertise how their programs remove teachers from the process, so now corporations are in the business of educating their own consumers, in the perfect cycle of profit. Parents too often, have been conditioned to trust the promises of a product, over the abilities of people -- that is a biproduct of neo-liberal capitalism.

But I don't want teachers to come across as helpless victims in all this, because we are at fault too. Lawyers are hated because they exercise too much power -- teachers do not exercise enough. And teachers do have power. They have the power of better avenues of communication with parents. Teachers need to use this. We need to be in constant communication with parents, about our lessons, our philosophy and what we are trying to do for their children. We must educate them about the issues that affect their children. In this way, we can turn them to our side. If parents understand that "literacy is a much more complex social practice than mandated instructional programs and assessments can address," (Osborn 2007, 186), they will start calling for change and politicians will have no choice but to listen.