Education: Rewards

People who choose to teach are generally not leaders. They are collectivists who take pride in their altruistic constitution.

A typical teacher is that kid who in the third grade said: I want to be a doctor because I want to help people. The third graders who actually grew up to be doctors are the ones who said: I want to be doctor because I want to understand the human body, disease, how to cure sick people, and earn a decent living. Most teachers think of themselves as care-givers, helpers, nurturers. They believe their work is a service, a service they provide for the good of the community. They believe good teaching is a selfless endeavourer. Care-giver teachers even take pride in their small paychecks, further evidence of their virtue, this sacrifice they believe they are making.

Like nearly all people who live by the altruist code, when these teachers encounter students who don’t need or want “help,” but rather, wish to be challenged intellectually, they fail. They bore the best students in the building to tears and ultimately to open rebellion. Care-giver teachers utterly ignore or fail even to recognize the self-motivated, productive, creative student. If they do notice these sovereign individuals, they react with fear, tagging them “arrogant,” unruly broncos that must be broken. They actively work to break the will of these students with heaps of meaningless work, low-level instruction, group projects, and merciless remediation. Never fully conscious of the actual service they provide for the community, these teachers are The Levelers. Their focus is on the least productive, most needy students. Their purpose is to raise up the bottom. When the low level students fail to rise, The Levelers hammer the top down into submission. There’s no room in the collective for anybody who is too good.

Ayn Rand called this phenomenon: Hatred of the good for being good. [See Rand’s essay The Age of Envy.]

The best among us are forced to sacrifice their dreams, goals, and ambition; forced to apologize for their abilities, hide their talent; forced day after day to perform mindless tasks and volumes of useless, busy work. Why? Because their excellence is perceived as a threat to the self-esteem of the less able. Some school districts have gone so far as to ban “Honor Rolls.” The teachers’ union actively opposes merit pay for successful teachers. The collectivists will not tolerate winners, so we all lose together.

True competition has been removed from the school house. Merit—for both students and teachers—goes unrecognized, unrewarded.

So why do I teach? My reasons are pure selfishness.

I am a lover of humanity, i.e. human knowledge. I am a lover of ideas. I wish to spend my days studying and sharing great ideas.

I teach American Government. I love the principles upon which this country was built. I have a need to spread true understanding of those principles to my students [and to you my faithful reader] because I want this country to survive the Right’s assault on the intellect and the Left’s assault on property rights.

I am sustained by the Eureka smiles of my students. I love spending my days in the company of young people. I love to hear them speak the words: “Thanks…I never thought about things that way before.”

I love seeing my students go on to bigger and better things. Like the proud surgeon of the healthy transplant patient, I share in my students’ success.

I have met dozens of great teachers over the past 20 years. I have made a few good friends. I like working with people who are expert in their subject, thinkers, real teachers.

In twenty years, no school-site administrator has ever given me a hard time. I’ve had a dozen or more “bosses” through the years, and every one of them trusted me and left me alone to do my job.

I love being home with my own children everyday by 3pm, and all day Saturday and Sunday. I love June and July, a week off in October and April, and half of December.

I am pursuing my own happiness…my just reward.