I picked up this book on whim, not sure if it would end up being partisan drivel, interesting or just a waste of time. Well, halfway through it, I decided on “interesting”. While reading it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my experience when I was reading the book “Teachers Have It Easy” (don’t remember the three authors), a book that tells the brutal truth of what it’s like to be a teacher. I remember at the time of reading that book how some of their stories rivaled my own, and there were times when I just shook my head because I knew that other people needed to be reading the book, but they never would (or will). So, I’d end up reading a book that reinforced what I already knew, and I’d constantly be berated by people who knew nothing of teaching, but would act like they knew everything because “my mom was a teacher” or “I know a teacher” or my favorite: “I don’t have to be a teacher to know how easy they have it.”
“That Used to Be Us” also talks about one of the platforms that needs to be embraced in order to make things better, and one of those platforms involves teachers. In order to make America strong again, we need to empower teachers, and that means asking a lot of people to do something that definitely won’t be in their best interest, and that’s the part their book never really addresses. You see, the majority of the critics against teachers outright hate teachers. They don’t know enough about them, but they know that they hate them, and they take every opportunity to cast ridicule upon them. I see it on message boards and newspaper letter sites all of the time. MLive.com is one of those that excels in this. What happens is a bunch of “good ole’ boys” start posting about how teachers have it so easy with their big paychecks, their miniscule hours and the fact that they get these HUGE vacations every year. And then they’ll drone on about unions and how teachers are lazy, overpaid, quite often stupid, and more often than not, the problem. Try to talk to them politely, and they flame you left and right. Try to engage them in argumentation, and they start making personal attacks that have no actual basis in reality, but are designed to hurt and throw mud all over the walls.
Friedman and Mandelbaum rightly believe that the solution needs to start with an empowering of teachers who will then embrace a Colorado style of educational reform, but at the same time don’t seem to offer any way of getting everyone else on the side of teachers to make it happen. What ends up happening almost every time that standards are increased is that they become punitive so that unions become defensive, and then you end up with no one actually trying to improve things for children but people are seen as targets rather than part of the solution. For most people, educational reform is a zero sum game where one side has to lose for the other side to win, rather than their approach which is for all sides to win. Unfortunately, that’s what always makes it completely incapable of achieving success.
Part of the solution would be a simple paradigm shift in respect towards educators, which doesn’t happen too often in this country. I saw it when I went to Korea and was traveling home through China. I was stopped at the Beijing Airport, and I was being questioned about the medication that I was carrying with me (I had stupidly forgot to pack the prescription information with it, and Korean pharmacies have a tendency to just package pharmaceuticals in individual bags with no markings on them). I was in a seven hour layover, so I wasn’t in any hurry, but it didn’t look like I was going to be getting through customs any time soon. However, about fifteen minutes or so into it, one of the customs guards asked me my occupation, and I said I was a teacher, that I taught little kids (which is what I had done in Korea). His eyes opened, and he immediately took off to track down his supervisor, who had been in and out of dealing with me about the whole “drug” issue. The supervisor came back with another customs guard, a young woman. They both stood there for a second and just stared at me. Then the first guard started talking to them with animation, pantomiming the whole “little kids” action I had done when describing my job. Then both the supervisor and the other customs woman smiled, thanked me for my time and packed up all of my Korean bags of pharmaceuticals into my bag and released me to the waiting area untl my plane arrived.
Right then and there, you could see how much respect they had for someone who actually taught children. It didn’t matter that I was an American, and that the children I taught were Korean. I was a teacher, and it mattered to them.
We don’t get that sense of pride in this country. Ever. And that’s why it is so hard to find quality teachers who really care about their job. It obviously isn’t the money that keeps them in the profession, no matter how much political spin people want to put into it. For someone who has a master’s degree, the pay for the work isn’t worth it. The drama, the politics, the hassles and the unrealistic expectations with the lack of care of parents for the proficiency of their children…just doesn’t make it worth it. So it has to be something that keeps teachers in the business, and quite often it’s the few successes they do get from the struggles we go through.
Unfortunately, as long as the people in this country treat teachers as they always treat teachers, don’t expect things to get any better. And as for the book, much like the previous book I mentioned, I don’t expect anyone to read it who needs to read it. It will be read by people who already have an idea of what the book is expected to say, and only by them. I’ve actually be surprised at a lot of the information contained in the book, and I am one of the people who tends to read this kind of book. Unfortunately, the people who need to read it…well, they won’t.