It's not enough that the Education Establishment of this country has dropped tons of stupid policies on us. No, they have done something else almost as diabolical.
They have blurred the distinction between teachers, that is, the people in the classrooms, and educators, that is, the bosses at the top. These two groups have no more to do with each other than management and labor typically do. Educators devise inane policies. Teachers have no choice but to carry them out.
For most of American history, this distinction was understood and required no explanation. Now, however, there is an epidemic of confusion. Make a comment about educators, or even education, and teachers wonder why you are saying mean things about them.
I think the Education Establishment has pulled off a cute trick here. They have deliberately tangled up the terms. How often have you heard kindergarten teachers referred to as "educators"? Here's why this happens. Most people like and admire teachers. But more and more people are figuring out that "educators" are not people that you should like and admire.
I think the guy in the street gets it completely. Teachers are the people in the local schools struggling to educate his kids. Educators are the people in faraway cities who create the insane policies and methods that make educating his kids almost impossible.
So who doesn't get it? Teachers don't get it. They are touchy and sensitive. So if anybody dares to criticize a counterproductive policy in America's public schools, the teachers react as if the criticism is directed at them personally. Indignation fills up their souls. And they stop thinking altogether. It would be much more helpful if teachers would examine the policy being criticized and ask this question: well, how would my life be improved if that policy were changed? Probably a lot.
I'm always very careful to refer to "elite educators," "top educators," or the Education Establishment. I always stress that I'm talking about ONLY the people at the very top, the commissars with PhD's and power at such places as the Harvard Graduate School of Education, people who are 1,000,000 miles away from the teachers. But still there is confusion. Somehow those elite commissars have managed to bamboozle teachers into thinking that the two groups have tea together every day.
The whole thing is preposterous, but you can easily see how all this confusion serves the interests of the Education Establishment. They are only too happy to hide behind the skirts of a kindergarten teacher. That part is easy to understand. The weird part is that the kindergarten teacher actually thanks the educators for their dishonorable behavior.
It reminds me of the Stockholm syndrome, where kidnapped people identify with the kidnappers. In extreme cases, and that's the one we find ourselves in, the victims defend and protect the perpetrators. You also think of abused spouses who adamantly refuse to criticize their abusers. Enough. This perversity is getting in the way of all educational reform.
It seems to me that the Education Establishment has created three separate sets of victims: students; parents; teachers. They are all equally the victims. This is mainly what I write about, that the Education Establishment went off track because of ideology. They became committed to social engineering. As a result, they embraced one counterproductive idea after another, all of which impact destructively on almost everyone else.
If we're going to improve public schools, we--everyone--has got to be more cold-blooded and analytical. The schools didn't get dumb by themselves. The bad ideas were carefully created and promoted. That is, forced on the country.
Was anyone asking for the total hoax known as Whole Word? Were students demanding that sensible arithmetic be abandoned so that we could have New Math and Reform Math? I could take you through a dozen policies that our Education Establishment concocted and then imposed on us. My take is that these policies are bad for the country, bad for students, bad for parents, but ESPECIALLY bad for teachers.
Just to take the simplest case: if you are forced to use a hoax to teach reading, and few of your kids become good readers, where does that leave you as a teacher? There is no polite way to say it. You're the walking dead. Going through the motions, working hard, giving tests, staying after school, but a huge percentage of your kids never become literate. The USA has 50 million functional illiterates. Undoubtedly, there were teachers teaching all those illiterates. But not really...
Aha, you say, so that's the game? The Education Establishment uses bogus methods to create the illusion of teaching and even of success. But it's all fake. Exactly. And my message to teachers is, if we can get rid of all these bad ideas, your professional life would be so much better.
Look closely at the people who craft and praise the dubious ideas. In all other areas of human activity, when there is failure, you fire the bosses with the dumb plans. That's what we need to do now.
(For more analysis of all the bad ideas, see "38: Saving Public Schools" on
Improve-Education.org.)
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