Education: The Teachers’ Union

Years ago I sat around a table at a dinner party talking to professional people about their work. I encountered a businessman and father of three who was a contracted employee of the public school district for which I worked. His grown children were all graduates of the same district. The businessman had a very low opinion of teachers, he said, using some very colorful language, qualifying each of his statements with the requisite “with all due respect.” He had no respect for teachers or [especially] the teacher’s union. I was offended by nothing the businessman said; everything he said was true and none of it applied to me. When I told the businessman that I was not a member of the teachers union, he smiled and said: “Oh, you work for a living!”

Failed teachers are almost always very active in the teachers’ union. The union works to protect their jobs…regardless.

The closest thing to a political speech I have ever delivered went out to my co-workers at a faculty meeting. The president of the United Teachers of Miami-Dade, Pat Tornillo, had just been convicted of embezzling $650,000 of teacher union dues to finance his Caribbean vacations. [I was not one of his victims.] Furthermore, days prior to my appeal, a few teachers had led hundreds of our students in embarrassing public protests against the state’s new accountability test, the FCAT.

I don’t know if I made any friends that day.

An Appeal to the Real Teachers of
“My Miami-Dade County” Senior High

By Donn

Union stewards and active members of United Teachers of Dade are famous for giving young teachers the following advice: “Cover your ass.” This bit of “wisdom” is referenced so frequently, in fact, most times a whispered “CYA” is all one needs to say to stop a young creative. I’ve heard this advice from hundreds of people over the course of my 14 years in the classroom. I have ignored it as many times. Think about the message they’re sending here. It’s not, do the best possible job you can do, but rather, do the bare minimum. Or even worse, do nothing; just don’t draw any attention to yourself. The union tells you that you are powerless without them, that you need them to watch your back, that you are nothing, incapable of standing alone, that you have no value except as a member of the pack.

I understand many of my colleagues are disappointed in their union, presently. I imagine our stewards are among the most let down. Despite this embarrassing failure, I can assure you that UTD has kept its promises to you. It is because the union has kept its promises to you that we fail. With your dues they have worked hard and have succeeded in:
1. Stripping school-site administrators of any and all meaningful authority;
2. Protecting the paychecks of incompetent and failed teachers;
3. Destroying every effort made by parents and their elected representatives to reform this broken school system.

Do you wonder why our students take to the streets and protest the FCAT rather than cracking the books and passing it? It’s no wonder to me. They are doing what their role models have taught them to do: decline to look in the mirror, refuse to accept responsibility, unite with others who have failed, discover, invent, enlist, and promulgate excuses, secure their imagined self-esteem at all cost, blame someone other than themselves.

The FCAT is a test administered to individual students to test their progress. The test, like all work they will ever know in life, is their responsibility. If they pass the test, the credit belongs to them. If they fail, the failure belongs to them. Success in school is an individual effort, yet our school’s “F” rating was addressed earlier in the year by our leaders as a collective problem requiring a collective solution. The message to the teachers: WE failed last year. WE are all in this together. WE can solve this problem if we work together. WE must work hard and help these students pass the test. WE don’t want to be called failures. And to the students we said: WE believe in you.

Has it occurred to you that the students don’t believe in US? They see us as we are, as individuals. They know how to discriminate between the good and the bad. They know who is working and who is not. They can tell the science teacher who loves science, from the one who hasn’t read a science book [other than their high school textbook] since college. And they know who loves math and social studies and language arts, too. They know who’s earning their paycheck and who’s collecting one. They know who the cheaters are.

They’re smart. They can follow a lead. Many choose the easier road. They cheat. Ultimately they fail. Then they protest.

They protest their failure because they don’t know any better. They’ve been lied to year after year by their teachers. How is it that a student with a 3.5 average can’t pass the FCAT? Simple. Their 3.5 is a fabrication, a fantasy, letters and numbers given to them not for their accomplishments, but for the mere fact of their existence. Good grades are what our students have come to expect for showing up to class, for doing their work, for trying…Too many teachers don’t understand the necessity of telling their students: “I know you tried…I really read your work…It’s wrong…You failed… Here’s how…Now try again.”

Our students protest their failure for the same reasons teachers refuse to acknowledge theirs. They believe they have a right to a high school diploma just like you believe you have a right to your paycheck. Like your union president believes he has a right to your dues, your students believe they have a right to the unearned. Why? They follow your lead. Real achievement is not rewarded in this system you have created. You and your union think everybody’s equal. You think all opinions are equal. You think everybody deserves the same grade or the same paycheck regardless of effort, regardless of achievement. Your students, you and your union fail to understand that the opportunity of a free, public education is your right. A diploma is not. A diploma, like a paycheck, must be earned.

You protest any and all efforts to be held accountable for your failures. You hide behind your union lawyers who protect your job whether or not you’re doing it. Your contract makes it virtually impossible for school-site administrators to reward merit and punish failure. You say we’re all in this together, and you are. The most productive of you drag the least productive along, protecting them from the consequences of their failure. You do this and say it is right to do it because that failed teacher has a family, a house, a car, and bills to pay. Do you think you are right because you are compassionate? Your compassion for one failed professional costs 150 kids-a-year a proper and meaningful education. Is this your idea of a just sacrifice? Is this the goal of your compassion?

In 14 years I have never heard a union steward address the faculty with the message: Do your job! Amazing. You know, if you do your job, your ass is covered. Your students will provide all of the cover you need. If anyone approaches any one of them at any time and asks: So, what’s going on in Mr. So-and-SO’S class? The student—whether or not he or she is passing or failing—will answer TEACHING.

And that is what this profession is about. Fellow teachers, I ask you today to stand and be counted, and one teacher at a time, quit this fraud, quit this union. Let this be the first step in taking back our school.

Education: Management

I suppose there is some justice in the world after all: poor teachers generally have miserable days. Kids know who they are. They torture them, and rightly so.

For the benefit of my non-teacher reader, I should explain “management” is short for “classroom management,” which is an actual course of study taught at teacher colleges across the country. There are dozens of books and textbooks on the subject of classroom management.

According to Wikipedia: “Classroom management is closely linked to issues of motivation, discipline, and respect. Methodologies remain a matter of passionate debate amongst teachers; approaches vary depending on the beliefs a teacher holds regarding educational psychology. A large part of traditional classroom management involves behavior modification, although many teachers see using behavioral approaches alone as overly simplistic. Many teachers establish rules and procedures at the beginning of the school year. They also try to be consistent in enforcing these rules and procedures. Many would also argue for positive consequences when rules are followed and negative consequences when rules are broken.”

A lot of teachers’ lounge chatter is dedicated to the subject. War stories and vicious rants! Tales of unruly, outrageous kids…”Gotcha!”…doughnuts, coffee, vents and frustrations are all served up daily in the faculty lunch room. The poorest teachers are easily identified: They are the ones who complain the most.

To be fair to my colleagues I must say, young teachers generally have more problems than experienced teachers. It really does take time to figure it all out, classroom management. Young teachers with great potential have more discipline problems in their first three years of teaching than they will during the course of the rest of their careers. For poor teachers, each year is worse than the last.

Furthermore, it must be said, middle-schoolers and high school 9th-graders are probably the toughest kids to deal with on a daily basis; still, some middle school teachers are very successful, others are abysmal failures. The failures generally blame the kids.

Finally, most teachers are good.

In 1981 the US National Education Association reported that 36% of teachers said they would probably not go into teaching if they had to decide again. A major reason was "negative student attitudes and discipline". (Wolfgang and Glickman)--Wikipedia

So why were those nearly 40% still teaching? Once failed, why didn’t they “decide again?” Why didn’t they leave the profession for one better suited to their talents? When realtors fail to sell houses, they leave the profession to find a job that pays or they starve. When actors fail to get the part audition after audition, they wait tables. When politicians lose elections they become consultants. But, when teachers fail, they stay in the classroom.

They stay in the classroom for decades passing along thousands of kids who learned nothing in their classes. They call the kids stupid, unmotivated, rude, and disrespectful, as they assign mindless book work, twenty definitions, and ditto after ditto after ditto. Students receive passing grades for “doing their work.” Much of the work goes unread, while the teacher sits at their desk surfing the Internet, staying, collecting their paycheck, writing referrals, complaining September to June about how terrible kids have become.

Failed teachers demand respect, like Christian love, unconditionally. They offer their students no reason to respect them. When a student, feeling caged and bored and lied to, lashes out [as if to say, “You have nothing at all to offer me!”], his honesty is rewarded with a referral to the principal for discipline. He is suspended from school for three days for “insubordination.” Any understanding of justice he may have had is lost. Chalk up yet another word he can not define!

To be sure, there are as many management styles as there are teachers. Every excellent teacher I’ve ever met had their own management style and exactly one thing in common. They all relied almost entirely on their lessons, the quality of their curriculum, to manage the classroom.

Discipline is not punitive. Students engaged in real learning discipline themselves. Teachers should never demand respect. Like everybody else, they must earn it.

Education: Curriculum

Curriculum is the key to great teaching.

Across the country public school district administrators produce three-inch binders of curriculum guidelines for the teachers of their district. Each course offering is meticulously outlined, dissected into objectives, sequenced. Teachers are required to teach the objectives. Textbooks adopted by the district cover the objectives. State standards exams test the objectives. Students are required to demonstrate mastery of the objectives in order to earn credit.

Great teachers view the curriculum guidelines as guidelines, a starting place, a list of minimum standards, a skeleton. Great teachers review the guidelines and proceed to develop their own curriculum, building a course of study that embodies all of the muscle of their own advanced knowledge and the beating blood of their passion for their chosen subject. Great curriculum is as human as the teacher who creates it. It is the technology of great instruction. It is an offering of wings.

Poor teachers view the curriculum guidelines as the goal, checking off each district objective “covered” as one step closer to achieving their quota. For poor teachers the district guidelines are the curriculum. Of course, textbook manufacturers use the district standards to outline the course of study they release with each new edition of the text. A textbook can be a very useful tool in the classroom. Like a dictionary, thesaurus, or Wikipedia, a textbook is a resource. A reference book. An empty vessel, the poor teacher relies heavily on the text. The text is their curriculum.

The best teachers read great books. They study. They are life-long learners, people who never stop being a student [whether or not they opt to earn advanced degrees]. Great teachers are people who want to know everything for the sake of knowing and so that they can answer any question their students may pose. They are people who are not afraid to say—“I don’t know the answer to that question…let’s find the answer.” Great curriculum is often discovered right in the middle of a lesson…a discovery initiated by an insightful student. Poor teachers fail to see and to seize these opportunities.

The knowledge base of poor teachers is a static quantity, the sum total of everything they learned in college. Some even use their notes from college classes taken ten years ago to teach tomorrow’s lesson. Poor teachers fail to revise and amend, grow and extend that “knowledge.” They dress up their stale ideas with colorful Power Point presentations and believe themselves fresh and innovative. Their students copy notes. The unfortunate students of a poor teacher go home at the end of the day with sore hands. The students of a real teacher walk out of class each day with their heads spinning with ideas and possibilities.

Curricular malpractice I have witnessed first hand…

> Science teachers who hate mathematics [the language of science] and who deny the validity of the Theory of Evolution because it conflicts with their irrational faith.

> A science teacher who told her students that “we can’t be sure U.S. astronauts actually landed on the moon.”

> High school math teachers [regardless of what level they teach] who can’t do basic calculus. [Even I could do pre-calculus, once upon a time, and I consider myself a math-moron.]

> A history teacher who claims to be unbiased, never offers a view on a controversial issue, and then teaches Franklin D. Roosevelt as if he was the nation’s greatest president. [I think the socialist FDR is one of the worst on the domestic front.]

> An English teacher with a PhD who boasts that she hates to read…that she only reads “what they make me read.”

> An economics teacher who tells his students…”Well, if you don’t believe in God, that’s just stupid.”

> A social studies teacher who argued [in 2000] that Bill Clinton had not been impeached, frowned, and looked at me like I didn’t know what I was talking about.

> Our school library had a dozen books on Michael Jordan…one on James Madison. When I pointed out the problem to the librarian, she asked: “What’s he famous for?”

> English teachers who send out memos and e-mails with multiple grammar and punctuation errors.

> A high school government teacher who could not define Federalism.

Drugs, i.e. Dope: Part II

My government has a responsibility to protect me from people who would try to use government to:

>shield me from the consequences of my actions;
>force the dictates of their “commanded moral code” on me;
>demand any sacrifice of me to shield them from the consequences of their actions;
>tax my productivity so that my wealth may be redistributed;
>tell me what consenting adult I may sleep with;
>tell me what I can read or view;
>tell me what I can put into my body;
>force me to acknowledge their God.

People who call for “universal health care” appeal to needy citizens who see an opportunity to relieve themselves the burden of having to provide for their own health care. Because of government intervention in all aspects of the health industry, the cost of health care has skyrocketed over the past few decades. Economic liberals blame this phenomenon on capitalism, corporate America, greed…failing utterly to identify the problem: politicians in bed with the political entrepreneurs of the health industry. The problem is not free markets, but rather, the subjugation of free markets to K Street political patronage, cronyism, neomercantilism. Rather than advocating the extraction of political influence from the economy, economic liberals advocate a complete take-over of health industries by government.

Politicians and their patrons, powerful lobbyists, political influence peddlers, they claim, poison the health industry: Their solution? More poison. Hand over the entire health industry to the politicians. This is insane.

Putting aside for now the economic injustice of socialist health care schemes, there are some sinister side effects to placing our health choices in the hands of government officials that, I think, few people have even begun to consider. There are costs associated with universal health care that have nothing to do with "progressive" taxes or rationed health care services. The greatest cost is the loss of the right of individuals to choose their own life-style.

A universal health care system hands over to government the moral authority to determine what we put into our bodies…not a great leap from where we are today, where government claims the power to criminalize certain substances in the name of what’s good for us, where government claims the right to sample our bodily fluids [a clear violation of the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination], and where just last year Metro Nashville Public Schools issued a mandate:

“It is the duty of each local education agency to integrate a minimum of ninety (90) minutes of physical activity per week into the instructional school day for elementary and secondary school students. Opportunities to engage in physical activity may include walking, jumping rope, playing volleyball, or other physical activities that promote fitness and well-being” (TCA-PC 1001).

If government is covering the cost of your health care, then government has the power to determine your diet. They’ll begin as they have already in a few deep, blue communities in California and New York. They’ll ban smoking….first indoors and then out of doors. [Now, even tobacco states like Tennessee have legislated smoking bans.] Next, they’ll ban trans fats and begin to move against fast food restaurants. In time they will justify the authority to mandate exercise even for adults. “We’re paying for your health care. According to the Surgeon General, the best preventative medicine is healthy diet and exercise.” This decree will be followed by a long list of banned consumables: dope, tobacco, trans fat, whole milk, greasy burgers, ice cream…And the list will certainly grow.

I expect We the People will begin to acknowledge the monster we’re creating when the Health Police snap on the anklet to monitor our daily exercise.

Drugs, i.e. Dope: Part I

I can legally drink a gallon of Dewar’s Scotch Whiskey every day, destroy my liver, ferment my blood, pickle my brain and prematurely age every other organ in my body. I can legally eat a dozen Big Macs with fries a day, become obese, and die young in my own pool of fat and sodium. I can legally call myself a “thrill-seeker” and attempt to jump forty buses on my motorcycle, attempt to climb to the summit of man-killer Mt. Everest, or jump out of an airplane without a parachute. I can legally engage in all of these risky behaviors, but in America, I can’t legally smoke a joint.

I can legally ignore any symptoms I may be suffering, refuse to go to the doctor, refuse life-saving treatment and die miserably after a prolonged illness. I can legally drop out of high school and enter the workforce unable to read, write, or think. I can legally smoke four packs of cigarettes a day. I can legally engage in all of these risky behaviors because as a man, my life belongs to me. My body is mine to cherish and enjoy or to abuse and destroy. To argue that some drugs are illegal because they are a danger to the health of the user is a ridiculous argument given all of the risky behaviors that are legal in this country.

There is no place in the law, criminal or civil, that suffers questions of credibility more so than United States' drug law. The favorite drug of the politicians, alcohol, is legal. All of the others are illegal.

Or did you say these drugs are illegal to protect the children? A high school teacher for nearly 20 years, I think I have a few insights into what makes young people tick. What draws young people to experiment with drugs is not the promised high or the desire to escape reality, but rather, the mystery created by their illegal status. Teens are risk-takers. Forbidden fruit? It’s not the fruit that attracts them. It’s the “forbidden.”

Besides, protecting children is the responsibility of parents. Parents are responsible for teaching their kids to look both ways before crossing the street, “don’t talk to strangers,” and the dangers of unprotected sex. Parents, for the most part, teach their kids to avoid dangerous substances and with great success. I can’t remember the last time I read a story about some kids drinking Drano or Clorox. Parents can teach their kids about cocaine and crystal meth as well.

There’s no need [in fact it is a violation of our individual rights] to criminalize self-destructive behavior. Rather, adults should teach and model healthy behavior. As children grow into adulthood, their health choices are theirs to make. There is no legitimate role for government to play here. There is no crime.

Are all of these drug laws designed to protect us all from drug-crazed criminals looking for money to cover the cost of their next fix? Making these substances illegal is precisely the cause for all of the crime associated with drug use and the drug trade. If not for the illegality of marijuana, for example, the growing and selling of pot would probably remain far less profitable than tobacco and the government could tax the trade and consumption. The illegal drug business ruled over by thugs and assassins would disappear over night in favor of the new order: local farmers and public companies. Drug-crazed criminals looking for money to cover the cost of their next fix will be treated as all criminals should be…They’ll be arrested, tried, convicted, and punished for larceny. The crime is not the motive for the theft. The crime is the theft itself.