Good teachers in K through 12 make all the difference in the quality of preparation for further study and for responsible citizenship at election time. The strength of a Democracy varies directly with the educational level of the electorate.
When my son was going into the third grade we hope he would not get Mrs. Carter as he was tough and mean and he would not survive her. He got her and flourished. She put him in the focus group despite his scores not being high enough as he work was better than those who qualified. When he made Eagle Scout she spoke at his request. When he graduated from UVA we were afraid she would get our tickets, but could not complain if she did. She set him on the path that has been his success.
The oligarchs don’t want an educated population. The GOP doesn’t want an educated population. The people stealing power from the masses don’t want an educated population.
Dr. Reich, thanks again for sharing your story. It seems to me that we who are no longer actively teaching as well as those who were never teachers are going to have to take up the fight for teachers. All the teachers I knew in my 26 years teaching were so overworked and busy they don't have time to do more than fight at the fringes. We need to have a question for every candidate for public office at every level about the quality of their support for public education and demand they answer it honestly. It's time we seriously show we care about our precious children and the teachers who are helping to guide them into a positive inclusive democratic future.
Our nation's founders had doubts whether our democratic governing experiment could succeed. They finally reached consensus by trusting that public education could sustain it.
Sadly, two centuries later, Republicans (Nixon, Reagan, Bush2, DeVos, #45) have undermined public education to such an extent that a huge portion of voters in gerrymandered districts and electoral-college-controlling states feel they need to send their children to private, often parochial, schools. And, they've gotten their right-wing SCOTUS, which agrees public taxes should support private & parochial schools.
And, as pointed out, manipulative right-wing media and politicians insist on legislating that public schools must not discuss anything the right-wing considers inappropriate (for those who don't attend the schools that self-censor)
Here's a labor issue. Teachers should be professionals, respected and paid accordingly, but our unions are modeled after the trades. Over and over again the unions (and my union) have accepted less pay in exchange for job security resulting in poorer quality of teaching and some downright awful teachers. We have also granted ourselves guaranteed pay raises in exchange for mobility. For example, if I stay in my district I will continue to move up the salary scale, but if I move to a neighboring town and a different district, I start over again at the bottom. It becomes indentured servitude or hidden serfdom. As it is, whether a teacher deserves the honor and respect and pay is a voluntary individual choice. We need to re-organize as a professional organization willing to hold ourselves to some professional standards. Principals need to be included in that organization.
Teacher's create a safe place in the community. They saw me differntly than my family; I could tell by the way they treated me. This gave me the chance to explore who I could Become. Good teachers are essential, they have a unique capacity to show us how we can Be and Become in the world.
This is such a beautiful tribute to Alice Camp—and to all teachers who take their mission to heart regardless of low pay and public condemnation. (The other group I would include here are school librarians, who are also suffering from lack of public support,) I can remember this tension from my Georgia childhood, where the local state representative headed the education committee and thought teachers got a pretty good deal since they had the summers "off." His nemesis was a high school gym teacher who dared take him on in the local press. She, of course, was better educated than he was, but the local state park is named for him, and to my knowledge no monument bears her name. There should be one.
“The things in civilizations we most prize are not of ourselves.
They exist by the grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link.
Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received; that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared then we have received it.“. John Dewey, A COMMON FAITH
I found it remarkable how Dr Robert compared the teaching profession to money managers transferring symbols of value from one person to another. Teachers also transfer value from people who lived and thrive long ago to our minds in the present. The difference is how stockbrokers transfer value on the arithmetic scale where teachers transfer value exponentially and eternally.
Dr. Robert speaks for me so profoundly. Memories of them; what they said, still live on in my head for me to pass further on to others in more casual ways.
John Dewey is a native son of Burlington where I live. We celebrate his birthday at the public library Oct 20. Sometimes we make puppets and parade them up Church Street to make one helluva racket. That day could live on as a holiday to commemorate all teachers every year.
Getting funding to pay public school teachers higher salaries may be difficult, but providing housing might be possible. Here's an article criticizing a city (SF) for failing to do what its smaller neighbor accomplished:
Yes teachers are like the sun rises every day and we expect this no matter what. Well the teachers are not the rising sun each day, they need way more support. When I was a kid public school was a given. Every September school would start and away we would go. No protests no teacher shortages, no anti books or what could be taught and what is deemed offensive to some. It is a sad situation nowadays. On another thought anybody going to watch the Ken Burns series on Americas Holocaust story? Watched a clip about it on Politics Nation coverage on MSNBC. If the Republicans see this you can bet your bottom dollar they will claim you are teaching critical race theory and is not allowed because this makes white people look very bad.. can't wait to watch.. think this holocaust story premieres on September 19th on PBS...
I agree. Although I’m not a teacher, my father was a school principal grades K -8 for 16 yrs, my mother was a middle school teacher & reading specialist for 16 yrs and my husband taught math at a community college for 35 yrs. Wait…I just remembered I taught paralegal courses at the community college level for 2 yrs. So I know a little bit about the profession.
Anyway, I’m a boomer and when I was in school our teachers didn’t have to scrounge around for the tools they needed to teach us, much less pay for them out of their own pockets and hope to get reimbursed. Our public schools are in a rather sorry state and they have been for awhile.
So what’s behind that? Why are teachers leaving our public schools in record numbers and even leaving the profession of teaching? I blame the republican party for it because destroying our public school system is literally on their agenda. It’s on the list with all of the other things they are so eager to destroy:
medicare/medicaid, social security, welfare, free school lunches, subsidized healthcare, the EPA, pretty much all corporate regs, our government, and much, much more. And, think about this— republicans are willing to destroy our economy and our way of life to get what they want because they think they can quickly get the economy back on track. (I would call that wishful thinking.)
One of the keys to understanding why republicans want to destroy everything is greed & power for its own sake, because that’s what it boils down to. You see, they seem to be living in a fantasy world where they believe that if they destroy all of the aforementioned social safety nets as well as our government & our Constitution, they will then ipso facto get rich.
I’ve got news for the rank & file republicans—they aren’t going to get rich. They’re being used. After they help overthrow the govt. & write a new Constitution without a ‘Bill of Rights,’ I’m guessing the wealthy republicans in power will placate the religious right by creating a national Christian religion.
Then there are the Proud Boys & the racists they’ve been using. They won’t be among the wealthy republicans either, but in order to placate them, maybe they’ll allow them to bully & abuse immigrants to their hearts’ content as their reward.
But I digress. Republicans are trying very hard to create a fascist society in order to confiscate wealth & protect it. The only way fascism can succeed is if the govt. controls every aspect of our lives. Controlling people requires that the govt to control all information, as well as “dumb-down” the population. Hence the pending demise of our public school system.
What they’ve done is weaponize Charter schools to defund public schools. They defunded public schools by convincing parents to vote for public school funding to go “with” students to their charter school of choice. That isn’t the case in every state yet, but they’ve been successful in many states and they’ll keep at it.
Recently republican/fascists “upped” their game by creating a false controversy around what they call ‘critical race theory’ that isn’t even taught in 99% of elementary & high schools. What that false controversy does is create anxiety about curriculum. If a govt intends to control info, they must control what children learn, IOW they must control the curriculum.
Defunding public schools, curriculum controversy and recent calls for banning books are all fascist manipulations meant to drive teachers out of the profession. But there’s even more, they manipulated parents to angrily confront teachers and behave inappropriately by yelling at school board meetings & suggesting that teachers should display what they are teaching on the internet so parents can then be manipulated to pick fights with their child’s teachers. Why are fascists doing this? They do it to make teachers so angry & fed-up that they either quit teaching or start teaching at private schools, where I’m sure they’re told they won’t have to put up with irate parents, etc.
At some point we’ll hear that the teacher shortage is so dire, public schools will be forced to hire people to teach who don’t have a degree in teaching or any other credentials currently required. Here in AZ there are people in our state legislature who want to hire high school graduates with no college credits to teach, and get this—they’re also talking about putting schools in shopping malls.
We need to pay teachers a higher salary, pass laws that keep public school funding in public schools, and I suggest that school districts hire trained mediators to facilitate discussions between parents and teachers so they don’t devolve into angry bullying sessions. I also suggest training both teachers and children how to recognize manipulations and techniques on how to sidestep them.
Beautiful and timely tribute, Robert. Teachers no less than any other laborer or professional should be respected and adequately compensated. Public schools have been our way of affirming that access to our accumulated fundamental knowledge is a right for all and not to be limited to a privileged wealthy few. In this sense our public school teachers are on the front lines of building social equality.
TEACHERS AND PRO SPORTS PLAYERS SHOULD SWITCH SALARIES...
Good teachers in K through 12 make all the difference in the quality of preparation for further study and for responsible citizenship at election time. The strength of a Democracy varies directly with the educational level of the electorate.
When my son was going into the third grade we hope he would not get Mrs. Carter as he was tough and mean and he would not survive her. He got her and flourished. She put him in the focus group despite his scores not being high enough as he work was better than those who qualified. When he made Eagle Scout she spoke at his request. When he graduated from UVA we were afraid she would get our tickets, but could not complain if she did. She set him on the path that has been his success.
The oligarchs don’t want an educated population. The GOP doesn’t want an educated population. The people stealing power from the masses don’t want an educated population.
Dr. Reich, thanks again for sharing your story. It seems to me that we who are no longer actively teaching as well as those who were never teachers are going to have to take up the fight for teachers. All the teachers I knew in my 26 years teaching were so overworked and busy they don't have time to do more than fight at the fringes. We need to have a question for every candidate for public office at every level about the quality of their support for public education and demand they answer it honestly. It's time we seriously show we care about our precious children and the teachers who are helping to guide them into a positive inclusive democratic future.
As a former teacher, I feel acknowledged. Many thanks!
Our nation's founders had doubts whether our democratic governing experiment could succeed. They finally reached consensus by trusting that public education could sustain it.
Sadly, two centuries later, Republicans (Nixon, Reagan, Bush2, DeVos, #45) have undermined public education to such an extent that a huge portion of voters in gerrymandered districts and electoral-college-controlling states feel they need to send their children to private, often parochial, schools. And, they've gotten their right-wing SCOTUS, which agrees public taxes should support private & parochial schools.
And, as pointed out, manipulative right-wing media and politicians insist on legislating that public schools must not discuss anything the right-wing considers inappropriate (for those who don't attend the schools that self-censor)
Here's a labor issue. Teachers should be professionals, respected and paid accordingly, but our unions are modeled after the trades. Over and over again the unions (and my union) have accepted less pay in exchange for job security resulting in poorer quality of teaching and some downright awful teachers. We have also granted ourselves guaranteed pay raises in exchange for mobility. For example, if I stay in my district I will continue to move up the salary scale, but if I move to a neighboring town and a different district, I start over again at the bottom. It becomes indentured servitude or hidden serfdom. As it is, whether a teacher deserves the honor and respect and pay is a voluntary individual choice. We need to re-organize as a professional organization willing to hold ourselves to some professional standards. Principals need to be included in that organization.
Teacher's create a safe place in the community. They saw me differntly than my family; I could tell by the way they treated me. This gave me the chance to explore who I could Become. Good teachers are essential, they have a unique capacity to show us how we can Be and Become in the world.
This is such a beautiful tribute to Alice Camp—and to all teachers who take their mission to heart regardless of low pay and public condemnation. (The other group I would include here are school librarians, who are also suffering from lack of public support,) I can remember this tension from my Georgia childhood, where the local state representative headed the education committee and thought teachers got a pretty good deal since they had the summers "off." His nemesis was a high school gym teacher who dared take him on in the local press. She, of course, was better educated than he was, but the local state park is named for him, and to my knowledge no monument bears her name. There should be one.
I had some smart, kind teachers. I remember most with fondness.
“The things in civilizations we most prize are not of ourselves.
They exist by the grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link.
Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received; that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared then we have received it.“. John Dewey, A COMMON FAITH
I found it remarkable how Dr Robert compared the teaching profession to money managers transferring symbols of value from one person to another. Teachers also transfer value from people who lived and thrive long ago to our minds in the present. The difference is how stockbrokers transfer value on the arithmetic scale where teachers transfer value exponentially and eternally.
Dr. Robert speaks for me so profoundly. Memories of them; what they said, still live on in my head for me to pass further on to others in more casual ways.
John Dewey is a native son of Burlington where I live. We celebrate his birthday at the public library Oct 20. Sometimes we make puppets and parade them up Church Street to make one helluva racket. That day could live on as a holiday to commemorate all teachers every year.
This was an excellent tribute.
Getting funding to pay public school teachers higher salaries may be difficult, but providing housing might be possible. Here's an article criticizing a city (SF) for failing to do what its smaller neighbor accomplished:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/S-F-and-Daly-City-embarked-on-teacher-housing-17250359.php
Yes teachers are like the sun rises every day and we expect this no matter what. Well the teachers are not the rising sun each day, they need way more support. When I was a kid public school was a given. Every September school would start and away we would go. No protests no teacher shortages, no anti books or what could be taught and what is deemed offensive to some. It is a sad situation nowadays. On another thought anybody going to watch the Ken Burns series on Americas Holocaust story? Watched a clip about it on Politics Nation coverage on MSNBC. If the Republicans see this you can bet your bottom dollar they will claim you are teaching critical race theory and is not allowed because this makes white people look very bad.. can't wait to watch.. think this holocaust story premieres on September 19th on PBS...
I agree. Although I’m not a teacher, my father was a school principal grades K -8 for 16 yrs, my mother was a middle school teacher & reading specialist for 16 yrs and my husband taught math at a community college for 35 yrs. Wait…I just remembered I taught paralegal courses at the community college level for 2 yrs. So I know a little bit about the profession.
Anyway, I’m a boomer and when I was in school our teachers didn’t have to scrounge around for the tools they needed to teach us, much less pay for them out of their own pockets and hope to get reimbursed. Our public schools are in a rather sorry state and they have been for awhile.
So what’s behind that? Why are teachers leaving our public schools in record numbers and even leaving the profession of teaching? I blame the republican party for it because destroying our public school system is literally on their agenda. It’s on the list with all of the other things they are so eager to destroy:
medicare/medicaid, social security, welfare, free school lunches, subsidized healthcare, the EPA, pretty much all corporate regs, our government, and much, much more. And, think about this— republicans are willing to destroy our economy and our way of life to get what they want because they think they can quickly get the economy back on track. (I would call that wishful thinking.)
One of the keys to understanding why republicans want to destroy everything is greed & power for its own sake, because that’s what it boils down to. You see, they seem to be living in a fantasy world where they believe that if they destroy all of the aforementioned social safety nets as well as our government & our Constitution, they will then ipso facto get rich.
I’ve got news for the rank & file republicans—they aren’t going to get rich. They’re being used. After they help overthrow the govt. & write a new Constitution without a ‘Bill of Rights,’ I’m guessing the wealthy republicans in power will placate the religious right by creating a national Christian religion.
Then there are the Proud Boys & the racists they’ve been using. They won’t be among the wealthy republicans either, but in order to placate them, maybe they’ll allow them to bully & abuse immigrants to their hearts’ content as their reward.
But I digress. Republicans are trying very hard to create a fascist society in order to confiscate wealth & protect it. The only way fascism can succeed is if the govt. controls every aspect of our lives. Controlling people requires that the govt to control all information, as well as “dumb-down” the population. Hence the pending demise of our public school system.
What they’ve done is weaponize Charter schools to defund public schools. They defunded public schools by convincing parents to vote for public school funding to go “with” students to their charter school of choice. That isn’t the case in every state yet, but they’ve been successful in many states and they’ll keep at it.
Recently republican/fascists “upped” their game by creating a false controversy around what they call ‘critical race theory’ that isn’t even taught in 99% of elementary & high schools. What that false controversy does is create anxiety about curriculum. If a govt intends to control info, they must control what children learn, IOW they must control the curriculum.
Defunding public schools, curriculum controversy and recent calls for banning books are all fascist manipulations meant to drive teachers out of the profession. But there’s even more, they manipulated parents to angrily confront teachers and behave inappropriately by yelling at school board meetings & suggesting that teachers should display what they are teaching on the internet so parents can then be manipulated to pick fights with their child’s teachers. Why are fascists doing this? They do it to make teachers so angry & fed-up that they either quit teaching or start teaching at private schools, where I’m sure they’re told they won’t have to put up with irate parents, etc.
At some point we’ll hear that the teacher shortage is so dire, public schools will be forced to hire people to teach who don’t have a degree in teaching or any other credentials currently required. Here in AZ there are people in our state legislature who want to hire high school graduates with no college credits to teach, and get this—they’re also talking about putting schools in shopping malls.
We need to pay teachers a higher salary, pass laws that keep public school funding in public schools, and I suggest that school districts hire trained mediators to facilitate discussions between parents and teachers so they don’t devolve into angry bullying sessions. I also suggest training both teachers and children how to recognize manipulations and techniques on how to sidestep them.
Beautiful and timely tribute, Robert. Teachers no less than any other laborer or professional should be respected and adequately compensated. Public schools have been our way of affirming that access to our accumulated fundamental knowledge is a right for all and not to be limited to a privileged wealthy few. In this sense our public school teachers are on the front lines of building social equality.