Spring Break!

Spring Break

Public Education Matters

3.22.10

I realize that it’s been awhile since I last posted. I hope you’ll forgive the lapse. It certainly is not because there were not things in education to write about- the talk over the re-issuing and change of NCLB for one. And well, I’m still so very hung up the Rhode Island teacher firings and the President’s response to it.

In fact, I was so upset about Obama’s response that I was having a lot of trouble staying behind his healthcare concerns as things moved toward the House vote last night. Because while I do seriously believe that something must be done with healthcare, I can’t help but worry that if Obama is THIS messed up about education and is standing behind Arne Duncan’s policies and praising the Rhode Island firings, well then he can’t really be doing a good job with healthcare either. I know that’s a rather visceral reaction and there is no real reason to think that Obama’s healthcare policies are similarly misguided.

Somewhere down the line in this blog, a commenter called me a liberal communist and socialist. To be honest, I’m not really hurt by this characterization even while it’s not altogether true. I do not really consider myself to be a true liberal or a communist. I do perhaps see myself as being a bit of a socialist, but I don’t really think that’s a bad thing.

The truth is that I will willingly pay taxes because I want things like roads, and police, and firefighters, and affordable access to healthcare, and YES, indeed, I want there to be public education for ALL children not just those children who have parents who care. I believe in having those things quite sincerely and I do not believe that anything comes for free. I’m more than happy to pay for these things with my taxes. If that makes me a socialist, then so be it. If that makes me less than a free trade capitalist, then so be it. I don’t really think that this is a bad thing. I think it makes me a concerned, and socially aware and caring individual.

So here’s my problem with Arne Duncan and his plans and with President Obama’s endorsement of the teacher firings and with my governor’s educational cuts- All of these things are rather capitalist responses to social concerns and issues. There is a great belief out there in the business world, almost “Randian” in nature that if you just let people play out their capitalist endeavors and let competition rule the day- that everything will sort itself out eventually and everyone will be the better for it.

My problem with this brand of thinking is that it pretty much ignores the reality of how people really are. In education, it ignores the reality of how children really are. One of my commenters on an earlier post gave me a link to something quite interesting. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

This man speaks about how even the business leaders do not really get “it.” Science is telling us that incentives and competition do not motivate people to be better in 21st century tasks. In fact it has the opposite effect, it makes us perform worse. But this is apparently not what business people and legislators and even our educational leaders want to believe. It seems easy to me to connect the dots here and see that incentives such as Race for the Top only narrow our focus and won’t work and won’t have the intended consequences of improving anything in education. But somehow the people in charge are either just not listening or they just don’t really care. It’s hard to decide which it is.

Because, as I watch the struggle for healthcare reform it strikes me that adherence to capitalist and competitive principles left millions and millions of people without the ability to afford or attain healthcare and it’s created a shortage of primary care physicians, partly due to a decline in their wages, and the only people it’s really benefited were the insurance companies and perhaps trial lawyers who litigated malpractice suits. So I have to wonder why on EARTH we’d want to apply those principles to fixing education.

The teachers in Rhode Island weren’t a bunch of bad teachers. I’m willing to admit that there were probably some who were less than stellar, given that you’ll find these everywhere, given that we truly haven’t addressed teacher education and teacher hirings correctly ever. But, what they mostly were, however, were people afraid of giving in to what seems a very slippery slope. You give in here at this point and where does it stop? And who does it stop with?

The problem is that in healthcare it stops with sick people and in education it stops with children. They are ultimately the ones who pay the cost. I’m just really curious why President Obama would think that there are going to be teachers lining up to fill the void left by the fired teachers and even if initially they can find people, please tell me how long they are going to be able to keep it up, when the reality of the day-in and day-out problems of an economically depressed school system hits them where they live.

Just as the healthcare crisis has driven physicians out of the primary care field, I expect eventually this to happen with teachers. I certainly know I would not encourage anyone I love and care about to go into a field where they can’t expect to make a living and they can’t expect to have any respect for their work and their opinions, let alone expect any respect for the findings of behavioral science.

Another disregarded behavioral science finding is that people feel empowered to achieve and perform, when they have a sense of belonging- when they feel as if they are a valued part of something bigger than themselves. I could provide you many a link here, but there is such a preponderance of evidence on this, that it would be hard to pick just one or just a few, so I’ll leave you to do your own research on this. After all, it is Spring break for many of us and you shouldn’t just be sitting around watching the healthcare votes or anything.

At any rate, I still find it hard to understand why no one understands the link to teachers being disenfranchised by their administrators, by their state leaders, and by their national leaders and the fact that we can’t seem to fix or transform or reform education.

To be honest, I’m quite glad to be nearing the end of my career and well, I honestly have the arrogant belief that I’ve been one of the “good ones” throughout most of my career. I know I have always been striving to be better. But you could not even pay me enough now even if I “earned” all the merit pay you could gather, to go into this field where both science and children are completely disregarded in deference to politics and business interests.

Here is a link to one of my less jaded and younger colleague’s blogs. This also is good Spring break reading. Even while she is not as old and defeated and jaded as me, she raises interesting and relevant concerns about our field, while being highly amusing. It seems to me that she is the kind of person we want to remain in the educational field. I only hope that she isn’t chased out by educational reform movements or she isn’t fired for standing up for her beliefs. http://itsnotallflowersandsausages.blogspot.com/

Enjoy. And moreover- THINK!