Anyone Can Teach

by Ruth A. Sheets

I must say “thank you” to the teachers of Chicago for standing for the kids and for themselves.  During the past few years, teachers and public schools have been the target of all kinds of folks who “know” about education and are sure they “know” exactly what to do about it.

According to standardized tests, our children are doing so poorly that it is amazing we are still a “first world country.”  We are in an education crisis, say those who claim to know. 

As so often happens when America faces difficult situations, we want to turn the problem over to private for-profit entities who, for a price, will make things all better.  There is a lot of money in education, and the for-profits want as big a chuck of it as they can get.

Do these folks know anything about education?  Does it matter?  Since everyone has been a student sometime in their lives, they are automatically experts on education.  That’s like saying “I’ve been a patient, therefore I know everything about medicine.”

Trained educators know that there must be some type of accountability and that there should be an effective system of evaluating teachers and how they are doing.  Subjectivity, not objectivity, however, reigns in the evaluation process.  Standardized testing is the tool of people who think that “one size fits all” in determining success.  It’s easier than actually trying to figure out how to help kids learn more effectively and teachers to teach more effectively.

So what do we do in the face of poor test scores?  We respond to anyone who comes in with the promise of making things better.  We Americans have always been vulnerable to snake oil salesmen.

“Give me a school and I’ll fix it.  Make sure you give me a lot of money too, tax-payer money that is.  We’ll make the school day longer, pay teachers less or better yet, make their pay tied to how well their kids do on tests.  Pay for the computers the students need and we need more money for trips and air conditioning for the school.  We’ll show you!

"Accountability, what’s that?  The students didn’t do well this first five years because we are trying to clean up after those awful public school teachers who ruined the kids and it will take at least another ten years to see any progress.  I know what I am doing."

The parents believe that this charter school is better than the regular public schools, so, OF COURSE, IT IS.

This nonsense is what the teachers in Chicago are fighting.  Everyone thinks they know what students need.  Everyone thinks they can teach and that when kids don’t score well, THERE must be a bad teacher INVOLVED SOMEWHERE. 

People like Mayor Emmanuel love standardized tests and are so sure that these tests tell EVERYTHING about the students tested, that they would tie a teacher’s salary to the scores.  They hand over “charter” schools to anyone who comes along promising miracles.  A few of these charter schools are doing better, but not many.

What does happen, though is union busting.  It is about trying to destroy one of the few unions with any power left in the United States TO STAND AGAINST CORPORATE GREED.  Usually, it is Republicans who run this racket, but lately, some Democrats have gotten on board.  That’s too bad because it leaves so few people out there standing for us teachers and our students.

If our nation really cared about our children and how well they do in school, we would be actively addressing the issues related to poverty.  It is no accident that the schools where children are performing poorly are in poverty-ridden areas. 

If our leaders were as well-educated as they would like us to think they are, they would have noted the connection between poor schools, poor performance, poor communities, and poor children.  Where were these leaders when their teachers were showing them how to make meaningful connections, back in the day?  They were probably daydreaming about all the money attendance at their exclusive private school would bring them.