LET’S GET REAL ABOUT TEACHERS

In a past posting, Mr. Chips Ain’t So Bad (July 10, 2015), I reviewed some commonly voiced complaints against teachers in general.  The attacks, it is understood, are mostly leveled against public school teachers.  In general, my message in that posting is that teachers, as a group of professionals, are not “so bad.”  I want to pick up on that theme in this posting.  If you are interested in this topic, may I suggest you click on that site to review the points my previous posting makes.  As for this posting, I want to revisit the reporting that Dana Goldstein[1] provides.  She tells us that despite the general beliefs many hold as to the unwarranted advantages enjoyed by teachers regarding job security, the facts point to surprising realities.

One, around 50% of new teachers leave teaching within five years.  That is a heck of a turnover.  Goldstein informs us that studies indicate that those who leave teaching in those initial years are not the more successful teachers, but, by and large, are among those who don’t perform as well as those who stay in the profession.

Two, the evidence concerning whether teachers are anymore protected – characterized by low termination rates among teachers exhibiting poor performance – is difficult to find and interpret.  Goldstein cites numbers:  in 2007, teachers being terminated for poor performance amounted to about 2.1 percent among American public school teachers; among workers in companies of over one thousand workers (comparable to the typical school district), the termination rate in 2012 was 2 percent (this includes firings, resignations, and layoffs); and for federal government workers, firings for poor performance account for .02 percent of that workforce.  Therefore, the teacher, as compared with these other two employee populations, are the most apt to be fired for cause.

Three, much of our conversation about teachers and teaching is a bit unrealistic.  The tacit message is often that since what teachers do is so important, they should be as talented as the average doctor or lawyer, yet the resume of most teachers does not compare with that of these other two professions.  They, the teachers, often don’t have the academic credentials that characterize these other professions as measured by college admittance exams – such as SAT scores.  The lack of realism stems from a very important fact – one I have stated several times in this blog:  we need to hire many more teachers than doctors or lawyers.  How many more?  The number is roughly five times greater as compared with each profession.  There are 3.3 million teachers in the US; there are 691,000 doctors, and there are 728,000 attorneys.  Overall, four percent of all civilian workers are teachers.  This math dictates certain rates of availability in terms of talent.  Add to this the perceived inequitable levels of compensation one can expect among teachers, much lower than that for doctors and lawyers.  Teachers do not fare well in those comparisons.  Therefore, the costs to equalize the level of talent among teachers and other professions would be significantly greater than what is currently being spent and success is not guaranteed.

And four, there is little evidence that better resumes result in better teachers.  Yes, nations like Finland have instituted a teacher corps made up of “star” students; that is, they have put in place very high academic standards by which teacher hiring is conducted.  In addition, Finland does have one of the most successful systems among advanced nations.  Yet, in other parts of the world, there are instances where school systems have found ways to develop high teacher performance rates among average talented people.  Cited is the Shanghai system.  Shanghai has dedicated more time toward preparation and training best practices.  This has proven to be effective in producing quality instruction and impressive results in terms of student performance.  As for Finland, there are probably other factors affecting how effective its schools are, not the least a relatively unified approach to education among and within its schools.  So, given the potential costs, lack of any assured results, lack of agreed upon educational strategy, and the numbers of hires needed, we in the US should not hold our breath for significant upgrading in our hiring standards when it comes to recruiting new teachers. Goldstein observes that teaching for the foreseeable future will be made up of average folk.  She cites John Dewey back in 1895:  “Education is, and forever will be, in the hands of ordinary men and women.”[2]

While in this blog I am seriously critical of our efforts concerning civics education, I do not blame teachers, as a group, for these shortcomings.  As with any profession, there are those who should be doing something else for a living.  This, quite honestly, is going to be an unavoidable factor of life.  Yes, we can improve and we should dedicate reasonable resources to do so.  But teachers, in common parlance, have been overly blamed for our educational problems.  I would point out, with pride, that the reporting of the unfortunate and recurring accounts of tragic shootings and other tragedies from school sites seems to consistently describe the actions of those affected teachers in heroic terms.  The Sandy Hook Elementary School case is prominent in this regard.  When I hear of such cases, a sense of pride overtakes me when I know I was a teacher for most of my professional career.  Believe me, I do not count myself as being capable of such heroism, but to think that those who have behaved in such ways are of my calling provides me with warm feelings that include gratitude.  It is, therefore, with a certain amount of pain that I hear commentary that belittles our teacher corps.  Overall, I believe we should admire these professionals much more than we do and be more supportive of their efforts.

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[1] Goldstein, D.  (2014).  The teacher wars:  A history of America’s most embattled profession.  New York, NY:  Doubleday.

[2] Ibid., p. 9.

A “FIRST” WORTH HAVING?

We were introduced to Melania Trump last night – interesting potential first lady.  She would be a first in many ways.  She would be the first first lady who has posed nude in a national magazine.  It doesn’t make her a bad person; maybe it’s time for such a first.  Her introduction was a bit rocky.  In her speech to the convention, as you probably know by now, she is being accused of plagiarizing from the current first lady, Michelle Obama’s introductory speech to the 2008 Democratic National Convention.  That’s a first.  Another first is that she would be the first foreign born first lady since Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the US; perhaps this is a needed first.  When I think of Melania Trump, I don’t think first of her speech last night, but of how she is seen in the eyes of the Republican party’s base or part of that base, the religious right.  Why?  Because of what she represents – the urban, secular, sexually liberal view of life.  Whether she, in her personal views and dispositions is really that way is a question worth asking, given how first ladies represent all of us.  Perhaps some of us welcome such a symbolic image of us all, but I am sure this would not be, for many, the first symbol they would choose.  Oh, by the way, a first she is not is Mr. Trump’s first wife.

But there it is.  Let us review a bit of context to this by making a comment or two about religious rhetoric in our political discourse.  In a recent book, Christopher B. Chapp[1] identifies three forms of religious rhetoric:  civil religion, rhetoric emanating from particular religious groups (such as Roman Catholic rhetoric), and civil religious war rhetoric.  The first, expounded upon by Robert N. Bellah, basically refers to the general allusion to religious beliefs that public speakers use, as in John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address – “For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.”[2]  This, according to Bellah, is more than mere rhetorical shorthand; it represents an integral moral substance in how Americans generally see the role of religion within the political environment.  How distinguishable and coherent that sense is varies from time to time.  As for rhetoric emanating from a particular religion, this will capture the national attention only when a policy affects a particular religious group or a scandal arises within that group, as with the child abuse by priests scandal that befell the Catholic Church.  The last type, civil war rhetoric, usually concerns the evangelical or fundamentalist groups.  Oftentimes, this type of rhetoric is taken to be an attempt at expanding the numbers of believers, but according to Chapp, most of this rhetoric is dedicated as warnings:  God will seek retribution if we don’t live moral lives (morality defined by these groups’ views of morality).  So, for example, the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s was seen by many in the group as God’s wrath for same sex activities.  It is this last sort of rhetoric that pertains to Melania Trump’s background.

If you are instrumental in electing a man who is married to a woman who posed nude for a national magazine, are you inviting further degradation (in the form of legitimizing such a display of salacious material and imagery) and in turn, inviting the Almighty to cast some form of punishment for such an endorsement?  This, logically, would be a question that would occur to individuals who consider themselves evangelicals and/or fundamentalists.  Interestingly, while many of these Republicans did not vote for Trump, I don’t hear this kind of rhetoric from that camp.  But what I am seeing is a clinging effort from those people to fight till the end, if only symbolically, the nomination of Mr. Trump.  I believe that in their minds, this, at a fundamental level, is what is at stake.

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[1] Chapp, C. B.  (2012).  Religious rhetoric and American politics:  The endurance of civil religion in electoral campaigns.  Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press.

[2] Bellah, R. N. (1967).  Religion in American.  Daedalus, Winter, 96 (1), pp. 1-21, p.1.