I recently posted an article on ksdcitizens FaceBook page along with the question:
“Who would want to be a teacher or invest 5 years of college in becoming one?”
and received this heartfelt response from David Campbell. It is followed by a note from Dick Rapp, a retired college administrator who worked in post-college placement for many years.
David Campbell:
I hate to say this, because I love teaching, and think I’m doing some small measure of good despite all that’s going on, but an emphatic NO. I deplore the current politics of ignorance (instead of education, the growing culture of anti-intellectualism that continues to increase it’s influence in society) that is making it harder for the people who do some of the hardest and most necessary work of the society, educating any and all children who enter the schoolhouse, private schools certainly WON’T do that! It angers me that my profession is at once blamed for the existing poverty, which seems to be growing, while at the same time, we apparently are responsible for the budget crises across the country. Funny, I thought it was the fault of the legislators who thought it was better to force banks to give loans to people who couldn’t pay the money back, that it was the investors whose attempts to play Monopoly with real buildings was a failure, that it was the collective greed of an entire society which thought that the margin call would never happen. I thought it was the fault of the fools we as a people sent to Washington, D.C. who again coddled the bankers, speculators and swindlers who caused this mess in the first place. What a fool I am.
It was the TEACHERS, who stand at the back of the line for raises from the several states, yet who get their salaries reduced FIRST when the economy goes south, that are at fault for the economic meltdown!
I want my children to engage in work that will not require them to bankrupt themselves to go to college for a career that may or not allow them to live in some measure of security, or have to spend themselves into penury to keep up with requirements that are unnecessary and silly, just to demonstrate to a keyboard tapper in Olympia that they actually ‘work’ for a living. I would not encourage my children to enter education given the way thing are today, because it is not about helping kids become better people, or citizens who may cure cancer someday. Education today seems to be about training children to completely fill in a bubble or write a 5 paragraph essay about some stupid prompt for a state assessment. Where do people use those particular skills? In the legislature? Congress? The Presidency?
Dick Rapp:
Even 4 years ago when I worked with college students at the Career Center as they were making career decisions I was already seeing a decline in the number of quality students who were considering going into education especially in shortage fields like math, science and special education. They were seeing a decline in respect and support for teachers and for math and science students even though there had been some increase in teacher salaries they weren’t even close to the salaries and increases people going into math/science related fields were getting. Typically those students were already starting around $50K while teachers were looking at $30K starting and needing a masters and 5 – 10 years experience to get to $50K.
I am beginning to receive responses to the original FaceBook post. Will encourage posters to comment here as well.
Who wants to be a teacher now? I do. Your complaints ring hollow in light of the fact that KEA, WEA and NEA charge more dues than any real union I belonged to but sit on their hands while the legislature does what ever it can to promote charter schools. I ask the KEA president, once, how he can say he wants what is best for kids and then do nothing but complain silently. Where are the informational postings on the internet, letters of explanation to the editors and a state wide strike? Where are the TV adds explaining the lunacy of state testing? When I started teaching in public school I joined my fifth union and it is the most political and nonfunctional I have ever see. It is as if the NEA doesn’t understand what a union is supposed to do. The administration and the union are their own worst enemy. They allow teachers and administrators to get away with inappropriate behavior because of not wanting to appear in a newspaper headline. They try to sweep controversy under the rug to not embarrass the school board to the detriment of the student. I had a letter of concern in my files because I go hit by a student! The student didn’t even get talked to so he kept hitting teachers with impunity. When I started teaching we used the phrase “what ever is right for kids.” then we developed the phrase “student driven” and now we appear to be driven “make the school board look good at cocktail parties.” I am now in my 40th year of teaching and would do it again in a heart beat. I have to ask thought, why would the largest union in the state which represents so many employees sit by and watch the Kennewick School Board in action and not start a recall movement? Cowardice has many faces.
I see complaints above, but I also see a love for teaching and sorrow about what has happened as the result of corporate greed, apathy, etc. I too have been concerned about unions, board members, legislators and others looking the other way while teaching to the test became the norm.
Unfortunately, young people are looking at what teaching has become and saying, “Not for me.” Until things change, I don’t expect the trend to turn around.