Final Essay 3 - No More Pretending

No More Pretending

It seems to be on the news all the time – how can America change to make its schools better? How can we help our students learn? What is the real cause for our education crisis? These questions are asked every single year in the fall-time, but no one ever seems to have an answer, since it just seems like America “spend[s] a week or two pretending we're going to do something about the conditions of our schools.” (Education Crisis) With all the plans and budget cuts and shuffling of jobs, there is always one subject that seems taboo to even mention: tenure, and if the Board of Education should get rid of it or not. Even though the very thought of getting rid of tenure is frowned upon, it may be the very thing America needs to get a kick-start on improving its schools.

Tenure, by definition, is to give (someone) a permanent post, such as a teacher or professor. No other job in the entire world has a policy like tenure. No doctors, lawyers, contractors, or garbage men are promised their job no matter how good or bad they do it. Why do teachers get it, then? Well, it's to protect them from getting fired over false allegations such as “he looked at that kid weird” or “she screamed a bad word at the class.” While teachers do deserve protection from false allegations made by angry students, it seems that the true purpose of tenure has changed since it was first put in place.

But, what if a teacher really did do something that could get them fired? What if these accusations made by angry students weren't so false? Drinking on the job, touching a student, screaming profanities – these seem like extreme examples, but they really aren't. Almost every single school in America has one or two teachers like this, and every year they come back to teach some more. The logical solution would be to simply fire them, but because of tenure, even the middle-aged male teacher who is known to looking at the teenage girls a little too much is allowed to come back and teach. Even if it's a little less extreme, such as Mrs. Smith gives easy A's because she is too lazy to put effort into every single essay graded, tenure lets her come back year after year to keep passing kids who may not be learning a single thing. It is because of tenure that these bad teachers are able to come back, and there is nothing the students can do about it.

It is not the kids to blame. Most school officials say that kids just need to work harder, pay attention, cell phones are the root of the problem. But more often than not, educators forget “that the true purpose of education is to make minds” (Hedges); teachers, much like their students, have spent years being conditioned to think about good grades and how to get them, even at the cost. But, how can intelligent little Sally get perfect marks when her history teacher is filling her brain with why it's the Native American's fault for getting massacred? Teachers have begun to teach what they feel is right, even if it's not factual. Kids then are taught the wrong information, which would later greatly effect them later in their academic career.

It is not just the wrong information being taught in the classroom. Teachers often forget that it's not just about the perfect grades their students can or can not get – it should be about molding the minds of our country's future. The exceptionally poor teachers always forget about this. “You really connect with your students” (Chalk) is not something every teacher gets to hear. Even the really good ones don't hear it that often. Poor educators have impossible high-standards for their students, but basically refuse to give them the materials to achieve. It is not enough to have kids memorize how many countries are in Europe – they need to learn how to apply this knowledge in the real world.

Kids simply cannot learn from bad teachers. If a teacher refuses to encourage them to attain knowledge that will help them later in life, how will these students figure it out for themselves? Unfortunately, it is more common to have a teacher that only cares about the perfect marks their students are getting, or a teacher that really does not care at all, than to have an educator that genuinely cares about what their students will be doing after their twelve years in primary school. It is simply outrageous, because it seems that “the more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are” (Freire, 1). Over the years, kids will allow themselves to be 'dumbed-down' so that they fit the expectations of their poor teachers. Which, in turn, causes them to never actually learn anything. Kids begin to feel lost and left behind in the academic life, always feeling like “there [is] no one coming with enough power to save us” (Waiting for Superman).

So, how does eliminating tenure help the teachers at all? It doesn't. Yes, it will be much easier for a teacher to get fired, but that can be solved by replacing tenure with guidelines of how teachers should be behaving in a classroom. If a teacher does not meet the standards, they will be put under examination. The news, government, and school boards always say that they have the kids in mind when they're trying to come up with new ways to improve the American schools, but in reality, they are only thinking about the adults involved, and trying to keep everyone's feelings from getting hurt. By directly removing the adults that are causing the problem, students will do better in school. It would also give other people who aspire to be great educators the chance to do so.

Getting rid of the tenure policy would be a risky move. But, instead of every year talking about how much change is going to come about to the schools, it's time to actually do something about America's education crisis. Yes, there are many other things that need to be changed (funding, for example), but it needs to start with the source of why kids are doing so poorly in a select few classes. It is time to take action.

Works Cited

Akel, Mike, dir. Chalk. 2006. Film. 15 Mar 2013.

Guggenheim, Davis, dir. Waiting for Superman. 2010. Film. 15 Mar 2013.

"Daily Show: Back in Black: Education Crisis." Milkandcookies.com. N.p., Oct.-Nov. 2010. Web. <http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/223041/detail/>.

Hedges, Chris. Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. New York, NY: Nation Books, 2009. Print.

Freire, Paulo. "The "Banking Concept of Education." 1. Web. 16 Mar. 2013.