MORE ENGINEERS THAN CLINICIANS

Now take the curriculum approach I just described in the last posting, the managerial approach, and make it more formal, more organized, more of a give and take between components of the educational organization in question, and you have the next approach to curriculum, the systems approach.[1]  A product of the theoretical work of the 1950s and 60s in the social sciences – the work, let’s say, of Talcott Parsons in sociology, David Eastman in political science, and others – this view emphasizes, at the risk of oversimplifying, the interactions of an organization’s components.  The entailed social action is based on symbolic recognition and manipulation through its mechanisms of communication.  Such social activities strive for equilibrium as the organization deals with the challenges it confronts.  In doing so, it must satisfy certain systemic functions, such as production or maintenance, to some minimum degree, in order to keep on doing its work.  The theory gets quite involved, but for our purposes, let me just point out that this approach is concerned with how the different cells within its structure interact.  The cells of a social system are the individuals who occupy the various roles that make up its structure, both individually and in collectives such as departments.  When one is considering a school district of any size, the cells, their relations, and their relative levels of influence and power tend to be formally defined, although the approach does recognize informal power relations as well.

When applied to curricular issues, therefore, the practitioners who apply this approach engage in using charts and diagrams, flowcharts and organizational charts as they speak of stages of development and implementation of curricular planning (usually sequence is important:  development, design, implementation, and evaluation).  This is focused on the processes by which curriculum is formed instead of any content or scope.  All this is organized by use of systems’ language.  Terms such as subjects, courses, unit plans, and lesson plans have become the terms that that language uses.  As with the behavioral approach, an approach that has had quite an influence on the systems approach, the adoption of systems by businesses has influenced how schools and school districts have gone about their operations.  In addition, its prevalence in the military has also had an effect.  Some would claim that its application has made large organizational arrangements possible by providing the theoretical wherewithal by which to devise the necessary structural and procedural elements a large organization demands.  For example, the contribution of the Rand Corporation and its Planning, Programming, Budgeting Systems (PPBS) have introduced ideas about how to organize and carry out essential processes which large bureaucracies need to perform in order to establish and maintain order.  Levels of organizational complexities have characterized many larger social arrangements and, in the end and to varying degrees, have functioned successfully enough to proceed with their activities.  Therefore, the application of the systems approach is deemed essential for national and transnational corporations to work.

A pioneer in this field who has had a large impact on the question of success and how it is defined, observed, and accounted for, is Ed Deming and his 14 points, known as total quality management (TQM).  This innovation placed great emphasis in regarding clients’ (in the case of school districts, students’) priorities.[2]  Some consider the work of Deming and his contribution as a paradigm shift.    Keep in mind, “customer” satisfaction is easily lost if the entity under consideration, be it a business, an industry, the military, or any government bureaucratic division, is of ample size.  Deming’s work has pointed out that to be “satisfying” to the client, the organization has to be in possession of “profound knowledge.”  That is, knowledge that is based on systemic thinking, theory of variation, theory of knowledge, and knowledge of psychology.

Systemic knowledge is more of a disposition to appreciate how complex the system is.  The system is made up of many cells (actors) engaged in many interacting actions in a dynamic setting(s) in which functions are either satisfied or in the process of attempting to be satisfied.  The theory of variation is acknowledgement that those actors are individuals (or collectives of individuals) with varying motivations, emotions, viewpoints, and the like, which again, adds to the complexity.  In order to function, levels of respect and civility must be maintained.  The theory of knowledge is a recognition that expertise is necessary and that any actor needs to be able to identify it, give it its due, and learn to work with it in a collaborative way.  And knowledge of psychology simply refers to the need for each participant to not underestimate the human needs of each actor, including him/herself.

In terms of schools or school districts, all of these qualities are utilized in the development, design, implementation, and evaluation of curriculum.  The good news is that Mr. Deming’s work brings the systems approach close to what I would consider a federalist view.  If implemented, I would consider the resulting organization an association, one in which the actors would consider themselves in partnership with every other actor within that organization.  In such an arrangement, each entity defines his/her (or their) interest(s) as mutually advanced or obstructed by what happens.  The problem, though, is that the tone of systems’ thinking does not lead to such a view.  Systems’ thinking, I believe, is too compartmentalized to engender the level of collectivism it demands.  By collectivism, I am not referring to socialist arrangements in which individualism is sufficiently disregarded.  Instead, I mean a collectivism in which each individual fully consents to the formation or the joining of the organization in question and is allowed and encouraged to function as Deming proscribes.  And, in addition, the possibility of such an arrangement is, as presently manned and organized, beyond the realm of possibility when it comes to the majority of schools or school districts.  While I believe this, it does not mean schools and districts cannot take steps toward the Deming ideal.  The paradigm shift that needs to take place exists not only in the theoretical field, but also in the hearts and minds of those who fill those systemic cells.

And what’s the likelihood of that happening?  To have it happen, one needs a united view of curriculum; the strategic plan of a school or school district has to have enough of a coordinated plan to be subject to the type of systemic product which Deming assumes.  Let me share a bit of inside information.  On our academic campuses, those who argue for the benefits of a singular academic field of curricular studies make up a small minority.  Most academics who deal with curricular questions see their provinces of concern to be a particular subject area, such as social studies education, and look with disdain upon those who suggest a curricular field of study and research that would cut across subject areas.  Therefore, I don’t see where academics or, for that matter, their “off springs,” the resulting teachers and administrators the academics have trained, adopt the disposition that would view the national educational arrangement as the kind of system in which Deming’s ideas could take hold.  In general, I would further say that systems theory or approach as it is used, is still more of a mechanical view than an organic one, seeing organizations more as machines than as organisms.  Therefore, its use is more of an engineering effort than a clinical one.

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[1] Again, I will base most of the factual accounts of these approaches on the work of Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins.  See Ornstein, A. C. and Hunkins, F. P.  (2004).  Curriculum:  Foundations, principles, and issues.  Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon.

[2] My small editorializing here is that the true clients of a public school system make up the total populous of a given school jurisdiction of which the student is but a part (but that is an issue for another time).

YES, SIR/MADAM

With this posting, I want to pick up on my presentation of the various approaches to curriculum.  I have been basing my reporting on one account of such matters, that of Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins.[1]  To date, I have described the first of their listed approaches, the behavioral one.  This posting will look at the managerial approach.  This, along with the behavioral approach, is considered as one of three technical/scientific approaches.  Here, we have an approach that emerged from a behavioral view, but does not have that approach’s penchant for particular curricular content – such as the 3Rs.  Instead, this approach places its emphasis on the bureaucratic authority of managers such as principals and curriculum supervisors or specialists, both at the school site and at the district offices.  The idea is that curriculum should be the product mostly of the work of those who have the authority and expertise to make curricular decisions.  It also places a lot of reliance on scientific findings which emanate from those scholars who study curricular issues.  While this reliance is present, followers of this approach do not see themselves as theoreticians, but instead feel comfortable with the role of practitioner.  They are the ones who actually work in schools and with teachers and other staff members.  Yet, in actuality, most of the work this approach produces often comes down from district offices.  By and large, most of the innovations that these folks have developed and initiated come from “downtown.”

Usually, such efforts are noted for their issuance of a plan which is noted for stated, rational principles and a procedural component of logical steps.  Implementation counts on authority.  Unfortunately, funding does not often have sufficient monies to conduct needed training or gather sufficient information that would reveal the level of support such innovations demand.  This, by the way, is my personal observation of such efforts based on my years of working for the Miami-Dade school district, which Wikipedia ranks as the fifth largest in the nation.

This does not mean that the managerial approach does not necessarily seek and solicit input from teachers and other lower ranked employees.  As a matter of fact, since much of their literature produced by those who scholarly produce studies in this vein point out the importance of such input, many of these practitioners do seek such information as they develop their plans.  They are told that they need to take into account cultural factors that will affect their ability to successfully accomplish their plans.  But I must write that they seem to underestimate how important it is to solicit such input in an organic fashion.  They may ask through surveys what underlings feel, but these other staff members are not an integral part in planning and evaluating what is developed.  At least, that was my experience with such efforts.

During the early 1990s, Miami-Dade embarked on a plan – concocted downtown – known ironically enough as School Based Management/Shared Decision-Making.  The essence of this plan was to institute at each school site a governing cadre of teachers to devise particular policy for their school.  There was a lot of hoopla and, despite ample cynicism, the program began with some in-service training and a lot of encouragement.  What was missing was enough definitional clarity:  what were the authoritative boundaries of such cadres?  Each school had the option of participating and each participating school submitted a model of the structure it was going to put in place.  My school did participate and I was heavily involved in both devising my school’s model and then later in providing leadership.  I ended up chairing the main governing committee for two years – voted in each year.  About a third of the way in my second year, I realized that we were not in a position to institute a modest curricular change that had to do with the sequence of our courses.  Why?  Because it would not be in congruence with the other schools of the district, even though the change would have been in sync with the rest of the state.  Oh well.  This shared decision-making can only go so far.  The whole effort lasted four years.  Final verdict: it was a failure, although certain benefits were derived.

Of course, the above example is only a sample size of one; therefore, people cannot make a comprehensive conclusion from such a limited experience.  Perhaps the plan was good and we were not up to the challenge.  My point, though, and it is bolstered by what Ornstein and Hunkins write, the managerial approach tends to shift authority to ever higher levels of authority.  They report that the states’ bureaucracies are taking over ever more levels of control when it comes to innovation and change.  Of course, within our federal system, the state governments are the ultimate sovereigns when it comes to school issues – not even the central government can tell the states what to do as long as the state is not violating constitutionally sanctioned federal law (that includes US Constitutional provisions).  This gives the state a lot of leeway, if it wishes to exercise such power, in determining school policy within its public school systems.  Historically, many such prerogatives have been left to the local districts, but with increased clamor for improvements, there has been political pressure for the state governments to exert more control and this includes issues involving curriculum.  Consequently, this approach to curriculum does not seem to be abating any time soon.  The only change is that more of the decisions – plans – will probably be emanating from state capitals as opposed to local, downtown offices.

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[1] Again, I will base most of the factual accounts of these approaches on the work of Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins.  See Ornstein, A. C. and Hunkins, F. P.  (2004).  Curriculum:  Foundations, principles, and issues.  Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon.

AN ORDERLY APPROACH TO CURRICULUM

If you recall, when I reviewed the four main curricular philosophies, I arranged them from the most conservative to the most liberal or transformative.  That list was perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, and reconstructionism.  In this posting, I will begin my review of the approaches to curriculum development.  They tend to be somewhat arranged from conservative to liberal, but they are better thought of as being arranged from the most technical/scientific to the most humanist/artistic.  The approaches I will identify and describe are behavioral, managerial, systems, academic, humanistic, and reconceptualist approaches.  So, let us begin with the behavioral approach.[1]

The origin of this approach starts in the 1920s at the University of Chicago and the person most identified with its initial development is Franklin Bobbitt.  To get a sense of its early appeal, one needs to remember that the prevailing perception among the professional classes of the time was the then inspiring marvels that were being created by the industrial plants around the nation.  Not only were they producing the great mechanical wonders that were beginning to enter even the home by way of labor saving appliances – for example, washers, refrigerators, and automobiles – but they were also being produced with increased efficiency – the assembly line, time and motion studies, etc.  What developed, according to Raymond Callahan, was a “cult of efficiency.”[2]  This movement, if you will, had repercussions throughout the professional world including education.

At the base of this movement was a reliance on science and technology.  In terms of production processes, the ideas of Frederick Taylor became highly influential.  His innovative ideas concerning time and motion, cost cutting, and reliance on quantitative measures revolutionized how things were produced.  The effect on education was pervasive.  The schoolhouse began to be viewed as a production facility, a factory, in which raw materials were brought in and worked on and shipped out as finished products.  In a school, what was the main raw material?  Students.  They arrived relatively ignorant and they left relatively educated – the final product.  The question became:  how cheaply – how efficiently – could that production process be conducted?  Several practices were introduced that are now considered as just the way education is done:  from the bells indicating when production processes began and ended, to specialization according to subject matter and teaching skills, to increased teacher-student ratios, to lower salaries for teachers.  This is just a sampling of these educational innovations that were institutionalized during this period.

While all of this is part of curricular concerns – remember, curriculum is the strategic plan at a school that affects what and how students learn – those aspects of schooling that directly and overtly affected the planning of learning experiences were also changed.  Here, a string of curricular pioneers began a series of innovations; they include the aforementioned Franklin Bobbitt, W. W. Charters, Ralph Tyler, and Hilda Taba.  From the early part of the last century, Bobbitt and Charters introduced into the curricular language such concerns as goals, objectives, and measured outcomes which were to be demonstrated by observable behaviors.  We began to speak of units of instruction – and later modules – which broke down what was to be taught into manageable segments of material.  The language was also more definitive as these learning segments were made up of clear and precise activities that the students performed in order to accomplish desired behaviors, be they answering questions on a test or successfully accomplishing some skilled task.  An early published work by Bobbitt had over 800 objectives accompanied by clearly stated activities designed to accomplish those objectives.  The plans were the “means” by which identified, stated “ends” were to be attained; that is, measurable behaviors.

As you might have guessed, much of this approach is based on behaviorist psychology.  And like the development of behaviorist psychology, it has mellowed in its ideas through the decades.  The thinking within this approach originally saw learning as just one illustrative example of the stimulus-response view that behaviorists such as Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner advanced.  Today, this view of psychology has changed by incorporating findings of other schools of thought, such as those of the cognitive tradition.  The current field of behavioral economics demonstrates that transition – a field that has much to offer education and change theory.

Through the years, this original orientation of technical proficiency has also softened through the works of Tyler and Taba.  Tyler, in the late 1940s, developed a curricular development model that still has significant influence in the curriculum field.  His model took into account more localized, social factors that affect the learning process.  His three origins of curriculum: the student, the social environment, and the subject matter, and his “screens,” social philosophy and learning theory, took a large step toward humanizing the curriculum development process as conceptualized by the behavioral approach.  Taba’s work was more influential in how educators viewed instructional development.  Both took into account more psychological aspects that are unique to individuals that affect their peculiar learning process, but maintain much of the rigor that this approach introduced to education.  Both still saw learning as a rational development, albeit not so orderly as originally conceived by the earlier proponents of this approach.  While I do not consider myself a behaviorist, I do appreciate the ability of identifying those aspects or factors that one needs to address in curriculum work that is offered by the Tyler model.  And I try to view curriculum as needing to take into account the fact that students are individuals with their own cognitive functions and who lead their lives within varying social contexts.  As such, I agree with Ornstein and Hunkins; the behavioral approach will not only survive, but will also continue to be the one approach by which others will be compared.

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[1] Again, I will base most of the factual accounts of these approaches on the work of Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins.  See Ornstein, A. C. and Hunkins, F. P.  (2004).  Curriculum:  Foundations, principles, and issues.  Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon.

[2] Callahan, R.  (1962).  Education and the cult of efficiency.  Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press.

A CONTEXT FOR CURRICULAR APPROACHES

This blog is going to, with this posting, take a bit of a turn.  I am going to place more emphasis on the notion of change.  I have already addressed this general concern quite a bit.  My aim is to share what I know about instituting change at a school site or any organizational setting.  My reason for this shift is that I hope my promotion of federalist theory might motivate some out there to seek a change in their local schools toward this approach in civics education.  Another reason is that what I know about change overlaps, a great deal, with federalist thought.  So by writing about change theory, I am addressing two issues at once.  I have delved into change theory and have posted a significant amount of material.  I even offered a model of what a change agent might encounter in terms of the individuals he or she encounters in a change effort.  This posting will begin to address the target of a relevant change project; that is, this posting will look at curriculum, per se.  After all, my overall aim is to have federalist theory be the construct that guides curriculum developers and curriculum workers – from teachers to national curriculum professionals – in selecting the content for government and civics courses of study at the secondary level.

In my general comments concerning curriculum, let me identify my main source of general curricular information.  There are a number of books that provide introductions to the topic of curriculum and curricular theory.  I will be primarily using Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues by Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins.  This introduction is in its seventh edition.  As for my treatment of curriculum, I will not be about making you a curriculum expert.  My more modest endeavor is to share with you those aspects of curriculum that help a parent or some other interested citizen in instituting a change in the curricular offerings at a local school.  I might also include the average teacher as a potential audience for this “instruction.”  Teacher preparation programs do not expend a lot of effort in teaching their students about curricular theory.  The idea is that the average teacher is charged with implementing the existing curriculum, not with questioning or meddling in what the curriculum is, either in its entirety or in part.  As I have pointed out in this blog, for the average teacher, the curriculum consists of taking the provided textbook and “teaching it” from cover to cover.  That teacher does not question or even think to question why the particular textbook was chosen or if the subject matter could be taught in a different way or for different aims and goals.

In this blog, I have already addressed other aspects of curriculum.  I have, for example, distinguished curriculum from instructional plans.  The former is more the strategic aspect of planning and instructional plans the more logistical application of the curriculum.  I have critiqued what I view characterizes most curricular efforts in our nation’s schools, particularly curricula that are in place concerning civics education.  I find it appalling how little effort is made to make sure curricular decisions by the state or the school district are made to ensure that regular teachers are either understanding of, loyal to, or abiding by those decisions.  Most teachers are out there with little direction about what options are available or are engaged in little discussion as to curricular issues.  Please, don’t interpret this as my belief that we have a teacher corps that can be described as a bunch of mavericks.  As I just pointed out, most teachers simply follow the textbook that is chosen by a school’s administration from a limited number of approved titles.  Teachers might have a say in which text will actually be chosen, but the options available pretty much mirror each other in content and organizational structure.

I also addressed the different curricular philosophies – I called them educational philosophies – that exist.  They are perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, and reconstructionalism.  This description is a good lead into what I want to next address, curricular approaches.  Most treatments of this material begin with the curricular approaches that are out there and later describe the different prominent philosophies.  I feel it is best to reverse that order.  Philosophies get at motivation and, for me, that is always helpful to know before getting into the more specific aspects of what people are doing.  Therefore, initially getting a grasp of curricular philosophies provides useful foundational information.  If it is helpful, let me point out the postings that looked at the different philosophical traditions.  The titles and dates of these postings are A Socratic Interlude (2/19/16), No Nonsense Education (2/23/16), Live and Learn (2/26/16), The Ideological Leftists (3/1/16), and The Heroic Self (3/4/16).  If you did not catch these postings, they are available; just click the archives feature of this blog.  Those postings are arranged so as to describe the range of philosophies from the most conservative to the most liberal.  With that view of motivational orientations, one can look more confidently at the different approaches that curriculum developers utilize. 

I will point out that the field of curriculum, as Ornstein and Hunkins describe it, is a quarrelsome field.  This level of disagreement ranges from definitional issues to developmental issues to issues of implementation.  That’s right; the professionals in this field can’t even agree on what it is they are doing or what their responsibilities are.  But be calm; this debate is in academia.  For the rest of us, the field is about what is taught in our schools in terms of subject matter and its structural elements.

I noticed on TV that there is a commercial college, one that specializes in the field of management and employs an experiential instruction strategy.  This choice reflects a curricular issue and, in turn, a curricular or educational philosophy.  So if you are not satisfied with merely putting a degree on the wall, but want to bust the walls down, that’s the place for you – so I’m told.

So, my next efforts will be to convey the different approaches to curriculum.  Ornstein and Hunkins inform me that there are two basic types of approaches, the technical/scientific and the nontechnical/nonscientific types.  Under the technical/scientific there is the behavioral approach, the managerial approach, and the systems approach.  The academic approach and the reconceptionalist approach comprise the nontechnical/nonscientific type. 

If most schools are immune to the issues all these options represent and if most teachers just follow a textbook, why take the time to deal with these issues?  Because, one, being introduced to this material will provide context for what is going on in the school with which you are concerned; two, being knowledgeable of the material can be a source of ideas for what is possible or desirable in terms of curricular choices; and three, being aware of the material provides you with a language by which to discuss and, if need be, argue the related issues that curricular change entails. 

CLASHING IMAGES

We’re in it again, the presidential election season.  You might say we’ve been in it for a while.  Yes, people have been running around the country and saying vote for me for over a year.  Trump announced his candidacy a year ago last June 16^th.  I maintain that Clinton has been running for four years.  Evidence?  Did you happen to see the video that was produced when she left the State Department which featured a long list of foreign leaders who provided testimony as to her effectiveness as secretary?  I felt then that she was running for the highest office in the land.  But now we have entered the time when the average citizen will take note of what is happening as it pertains to the upcoming election.  The conventions are, for many, the first conscious attention they expend on the question:  whom will I vote for come November?  This election, more than most, brings to the fore a theme I have been writing about since this blog began in 2010: the upgrade of the natural rights construct as our prominent view of our government and politics.  For those new to this blog, let me briefly summarize that view.

The natural rights perspective is a view that places its highest priority on the rights of the individual.  This priority is based on a moral claim that each individual has the right to determine his/her own sense of what is good and evil, what his/her goals in life should be, and that the government is a service agency that exists to meet his/her needs in a competitive arena with other citizens.  The only proviso is that the acts in which one citizen engages do not directly hurt other citizens.  For them, this defines liberty.  In everyday language, it says “I have a right to do what I want to do.”

This view of government and politics replaced in the late 1940s a more communal sense, a federalist sense which places much more emphasis on the communal nature of government and politics.  And here, in this election, we have each of these perspectives being emphasized.  As a matter of fact, this distinction between the two sides is a bit heightened.  It is a distinction in messaging that I, for one, underestimated.  Apparently, as one of the TV pundits, Michael Steele, pointed out, given the economic hardships that many Americans are experiencing, their focus is on their own individual challenges and, in turn, they are looking for a president who is promising to address those needs and wants.  Of course, that refers to Mr. Trump’s message.  On the other hand, we have a candidacy that is promulgating a “stronger together” theme.  The latter message is a more federalist one; it is more communal.  Steele’s point is that the Clinton campaign is at a disadvantage with this message.

I agree.  I generally agree because of this nation’s proclivity to harbor the natural rights construct.  When confronted with federalist ideas and ideals, they react, mostly at a subconscious level, with a sense that what they are hearing is a naïve, soft, unrealistic, and weak position, a position unviable in an atmosphere when voters are confronted by such daunting demands.  This is particularly true in states that were at the core of our manufacturing industry that have lost so many jobs over the last number of decades.  Instead, there is a candidate who in message and in style communicates an image of strength.  That, in a nutshell, is Trump’s advantage especially as it pertains to the swing states, such as Ohio, in the Midwest.

Does that mean Trump is going to win?  No.  There are a lot of factors that go into a campaign.  This is something civics teachers should convey to their students.  One problem we have is that when we are rooting for a particular candidate, we hear what we want to hear, and when the candidate does not win – if that is the case – a sense of cynicism is likely to take hold.  With cynicism, legitimacy issues arise.  In terms of this election, one factor affecting the outcome is most citizens’ sense of what is appropriate behavior and demeanor for an eventual president.  In this, Trump has a disadvantage.  That is but one factor and there are many others.  But I will be interested in how an individualist presentation will do in competition with a more communal presentation.  I will not be surprised if the Clinton side diminishes its communal messaging and hits on another theme.  I remember her husband, in his run for the presidency, early on used the term, “new federalism.”  This was quickly dropped in his campaign.  In any event, Betty Davis’s “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” is an apt sentiment for the upcoming campaign for president.  I hope that whoever wins does so in a way that allows him or her to legitimately govern when the smoke clears.

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.