Should Teacher Tenure Be Abolished?
- Thread starter The Thriller
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Deleted member 95
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My sisters a teacher. Such a hard career path imo. I feel bad for her.
Archie Moses
Well-Known Member
qft.
Archie Moses
Well-Known Member
I wanted to be a teacher for the longest time, but the pay just isn't enough. It's sad really. Kids spend almost more awake time with their teachers than their parents.
I did too. I was a substitute for 6 months while I decided what schooling I was going to go through, and that was enough to turn me off. (well, that and I'm a dumbass)
chemdude1232
Active Member
To clarify here: are we talking about teachers (high school and below) or college profs? Difference being that college profs can have a sweet paycheck.
As a whole, tenure has got to be one of the nicest forms of job security that exists in this country.
Here's a great article on tackling tenure: https://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-02-05-university-tenure_N.htm
Apparently OSU's president (Gordon Gee) is, in academic circles, very highly respected by his peers. Until he said this stuff at least. Surprise surprise.
As a whole, tenure has got to be one of the nicest forms of job security that exists in this country.
Here's a great article on tackling tenure: https://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-02-05-university-tenure_N.htm
Apparently OSU's president (Gordon Gee) is, in academic circles, very highly respected by his peers. Until he said this stuff at least. Surprise surprise.
Stickler
Well-Known Member
I will ignore the irony here, and just be direct: I thought your post was a direct response to mine. The way it followed immediately after mine -- without quoting another post, and without being particularly relevant to any other particular post -- made the idea that it was a direct response to mine seem likely.
I thought you were taking a jab at me, and responded in kind. To the extent that I was wrong, if I was wrong, I apologize.
CONAN
Well-Known Member
No problem, Bro. As a teacher I read, hear, see this stuff all the time. And I've found the observation I made to be true. And I find it's best just to state that upfront as it seems to stave off a lot of ignorant morons spouting BS. Bad timing I guess. If your opinions on teachers are well-researched then don't sweat it.
It is amazing how many haters you can talk to and it ultimately comes down to some experience(s) they or someone they know had with education.
Stickler
Well-Known Member
I haven't done any research. It just comes down to bad experiences for me.
DeliveryBoy
Active Member
30 students? In one class, maybe. Most high school teachers teach 5-8 classes, so it's more like 150 kids per day, give or take. And that's just the hour or so per day they get with the kid.
I'm only about 6 years removed from high school, and I don't think going after the "bad teachers" (depending on who you ask) has ever been the right approach. If I had a magic wand, I'd structure curriculums to be more relevant to the modern era. The math-science-english-etc format basically hasn't changed since the 40's or so, yet the world we live in is completely different. Kids will pay attention in school if you teach them something they find useful. Instead of blaming teachers, how about we make school less boring?
We had a pretty bad experience with my son's teacher last year. She didn't like her job, and was forthright in her lack of care. But the school was very helpful in getting our problem solved.
That's a bad experience, but I could just as easily name a dozen teachers (K through college) that cared about what they did and had a very positive affect on me. I would guess (and it would be nothing more than a guess) that most teachers do care. But I can only imagine how difficult it is to maintain when the kids you are trying to teach, don't.
A few bad apples aside, I still consider it a noble, if not vastly under appreciated, endeavor.
That's a bad experience, but I could just as easily name a dozen teachers (K through college) that cared about what they did and had a very positive affect on me. I would guess (and it would be nothing more than a guess) that most teachers do care. But I can only imagine how difficult it is to maintain when the kids you are trying to teach, don't.
A few bad apples aside, I still consider it a noble, if not vastly under appreciated, endeavor.
The anti-well rounded education argument inevitably comes up, as it has previously in this thread. As a disclaimer: I'm not arguing that systems cannot improve as they stand.
Saying it hasn't changed since the '40's is patently false. I find the idea crude and intellectually challenged (retarded). Teaching math has evolved significantly and has accommodated advances while retaining the simplicity necessary without leapfrogging important learning stairs that growing brains require. It's not an easy task to cater to simplicity while simultaneously providing a highly technical and fragmented division of labor required for success in today's economy.
Basically, we've advanced really ****ing fast the past two decades.
I can tell you from experience that general ed. curriculum is absolutely necessary in a large portion of modern professions (nursing, lab jobs, banking, any management position utilizing even the most primitive version of Excel, etc.)
My experience with elementary and middle school teachers was terrible as well. I had two teachers before high school who were excellent and truly changed my life for the better. Maybe about a third of them were quality teachers. The rest were straight up clowns. A few of them were horrible human beings who I wouldn't hesitate to kick in the teeth if I met them today. That's just my personal experience.
Darkwing Duck
Well-Known Member
Thought this would be relevant to the topic at hand. I currently take no stance for or against this at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=channel
In the old days, the reason for tenure was to keep politicians from stacking the schools with their cronies, to keep the State from turning education in propaganda and/or citizenship conditioning.
Looks to me like the politicians found an end-run around that defense.
Some folks fondly look to free enterprise solutions to all of life's little problems, whether it's mice in the pantry or deadbeats in the ivy cloisters. Not much chance of some perspectives or fields of thought prospering with education for profit schemers running the programs either.
Originally in this country, public support for education was meant to provide an informed and competent citizenry that could actually govern. . . . I mean make meaningful selections for their representatives. But curiously, when organized businesses became huge cartel/monopoly interests, along came John Dewey with the socialist precepts of training the citizen to their menial tasks in service of the the big businesses, and education moved away from the classical form that produced our Founders. Education was bastardized to practical matters; old-fashioned "liberal" meaning generous and unstinting gave way to career bang/buck issues. . . . In the process, we moved a long ways down the road towards propagandizing citizens to serve their Big Brother State. And in the process, "our" representatives now look to their corporate backers for their marching orders. . . .
yep. I spent twelve years in college. I've been trying to undo the damage for longer than that. . . .
I wouldn't want to go to a school where the teachers were managed like they are in our K-12 grades, or in a public college without tenure. A school gets a few years to figure out what it can expect from a teacher. We can only hope some politicians will arise who understand the need for independent thinking, and who are willing to create a place where folks can freely enquire after the truth. A private school might have either classical liberal or statist/corporate mentality. But a teacher afraid to speak his mind is as worthless as you can get.
Looks to me like the politicians found an end-run around that defense.
Some folks fondly look to free enterprise solutions to all of life's little problems, whether it's mice in the pantry or deadbeats in the ivy cloisters. Not much chance of some perspectives or fields of thought prospering with education for profit schemers running the programs either.
Originally in this country, public support for education was meant to provide an informed and competent citizenry that could actually govern. . . . I mean make meaningful selections for their representatives. But curiously, when organized businesses became huge cartel/monopoly interests, along came John Dewey with the socialist precepts of training the citizen to their menial tasks in service of the the big businesses, and education moved away from the classical form that produced our Founders. Education was bastardized to practical matters; old-fashioned "liberal" meaning generous and unstinting gave way to career bang/buck issues. . . . In the process, we moved a long ways down the road towards propagandizing citizens to serve their Big Brother State. And in the process, "our" representatives now look to their corporate backers for their marching orders. . . .
yep. I spent twelve years in college. I've been trying to undo the damage for longer than that. . . .
I wouldn't want to go to a school where the teachers were managed like they are in our K-12 grades, or in a public college without tenure. A school gets a few years to figure out what it can expect from a teacher. We can only hope some politicians will arise who understand the need for independent thinking, and who are willing to create a place where folks can freely enquire after the truth. A private school might have either classical liberal or statist/corporate mentality. But a teacher afraid to speak his mind is as worthless as you can get.
CONAN
Well-Known Member
Oh, I guess my post was directed at you then.
I'm just hoping before people advocate to heavily against the unions, tenure, etc., they look at why we have them in the first place. Sometimes cures are worse than diseases.
Thank you. It's all for the infants, elderly, and immuno-compromised.
However, then my ability to teach math interacts with what an English, history, etc. teacher is doing.
I agree that relevance is important. Unfortunately many young people don't understand what's relevant. Further, if you are teaching skills that are relevant for a particular class of job, they will be irrelevant to the 90% of the students who want a different class of job. What we try to do is teach skills and thinking that have general applicability, but that means the specific applicability is often lacking.
this is true, although not so much the state since I'm pretty sure schools have always been controlled at the local level. (though maybe that's what you meant, and used the term "state" in a more generic sense) But most local school boards are elected, and the perceived problem was that teachers would be hired and fired as new board members came into power - - whether it be for personal reasons or because those serving on the school board had some specific educational agenda they wanted to implement.
An interesting thing regarding k-12 curricula, it seems that more schools today are trying to go back to the "old-school" curricula of the 40's and 50's with more focus on memorization and things like that. For a while it seems that fell out of favor as schools seemed to focus on developing "critical thinking skills" and memorization was seen counter to those skills.
I think tenure needs to be modified. A longer time span initially, and perhaps some recertification process every 10 years or so. It can be difficult to assess however as there are so many variables.
I also think some of the problems (where student progress is lacking) are less with individual teachers and more with the curriculum that is being taught.
Stickler
Well-Known Member
So why do you think it necessary for a person to have done a thing in order to criticize a thing. I mean, I think it's funny that people who have never been President criticize the President, as they clearly don't understand the pressures involved. It's strange how people criticize rapists. If you've never been a rapist, you don't know the pull and the magic that it contains for a rapist. Etc.
Nobody has to be an expert on teachers in order to say: I don't know about you, but many of my teachers weren't worth the paper their various certificates were printed on.
This idea that any criticism of teachers is invalid because it is made by people who haven't taught, or done research, is a pretty cheap argumentative tactic. I did 13 years of research by being a student who went to school every day and realized: Hey, this is a major problem. Most of these teachers don't seem like they care about what they're doing.
Students generally don't succeed because of teachers: those who have special success usually would have had it regardless of who their teachers happened to be, because they were curious people who were interested in learning and willing to do the work. College shows us this. But, heaven knows many teachers are quick to point the finger at parents when a student isn't succeeding.
So, do teachers deserve the credit but not the blame?
My own opinion is, they don't necessarily deserve the blame except in certain extreme cases where the teacher is a real dickgoblin. Many of us had at least one such teacher. (For references, see the Pink Floyd song, "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2.") By the same token, they don't usually deserve the credit except in certain extreme cases. (See: your favorite teacher.)
So what I propose is: let's not be so impressed with teachers.