It's been a while since I've written about education here on DK. My first diaries were dedicated exclusively to that subject, and at that time I never intended to write about politics here. Add that to the fact that I left teaching over four years ago now. But I still talk about it a lot. And the recent California court ruling made me think about it a little bit more.
I had a long and distressing conversation with a friend of mine recently, who lives in California and has never been a teacher (although his mother was), who wanted an explanation as to why teachers, specifically, as a particular class of professional/employee, should have the kinds of workplace and employment protections that they have, which employees in other professions and other businesses don't. What makes teachers so special that they should be uniquely difficult for their employers and supervisors to fire and replace? Why should teachers have things like tenure and due process that other professionals and employees don't have?
Ultimately I really couldn't do it, in the sense that I was not able to distinguish the teaching profession and/or employment in public schools, respectively or in combination, from other professions and employment contexts enough to satisfy my friend that there is a meaningful difference. To absolutely everything I proposed his answer was, "Other professionals [or employees] have to deal with that too." I did point out repeatedly that these protections were earned in that they were collectively-bargained-for, and that other professionals and employees could do the same if they were so inclined. But that really was not his point.
Normally I'm able to make these distinctions, and it was frustrating to keep hearing the same response -- "Other employees deal with that too; teachers are not special in that regard" -- to everything I brought up. Even as a former teacher I can't really explain or articulate what makes teachers, teaching, and working in a public school system so unique and special that it should be harder to arbitrarily fire a teacher than to arbitrarily fire any other employee in any other profession. There were times during my teaching career that I needed those protections -- and there were times when they didn't do me any good. But I still couldn't find a distinction that would satisfactorily answer my friend's question.
I'm not suggesting, and have never suggested, that things like tenure and due process should be reserved for teachers alone; that only teachers are worthy of such employment protections. Maybe that's why I couldn't come up with anything satisfactory. Being a former teacher and still invested, emotionally at least, in the teaching profession, and given the experiences I had, I feel like I know that teachers do need these protections but I can't really explain why. And I can't explain why I can't explain.
Is it because non-teachers resent teachers more than teachers resent other teachers? What I mean is, I don't think teachers who work hard and dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to their teaching resent fellow teachers who don't, and who take unfair or unjust advantage of those protections, as much as non-teachers resent such persons (be they real or imaginary). I don't think teachers judge other teachers the way non-teachers judge teachers (again, be they real or imaginary), and not in the sense that people outside the profession "don't get it" or "don't know what it's like."
Bill Maher did a New Rule about this a few years ago, in which he pointed out the absurdity of the idea that we can simply "fire" all these "bad teachers" and replace them with "good" ones -- "from some undisclosed location," as he put it -- and everything will be fine. Blaming the teachers, kicking them when they're down, and getting rid of them all, he said (paraphrasing), is a solution that "doesn't require us to change our behavior or spend any money" -- i.e., a uniquely American solution.
Everyone has their own idea of what a "good" teacher or a "bad" teacher is. As I've always been fond of saying, I had students who thought I was the best teacher they ever had, and I had students who thought I was the worst teacher they ever had -- each for the same reasons. I had supervisors praise, encourage and emulate the exact same techniques, methods and materials that other supervisors rejected, condemned and forbade. I was required in one school to do things pedagogically that I was forbidden from doing in another.
Teachers, like most professionals I'd imagine, like to give themselves the benefit of the doubt. I certainly did. But no one seems to trust teachers anymore. They don't trust their knowledge and expertise, their judgment or objectivity, and they certainly don't trust their dedication and work ethic. I've stated repeatedly, here and in other forums, that where an academic or disciplinary dispute arises amongst a teacher, student, parent and administrator, the teacher is the only one of the four whose judgment and expertise are not respected, the only one whose credibility is not presumed, the only one who bears a burden of proof and must overcome a presumption of wrongdoing, negligence, dishonesty and/or incompetence, the only one whose final determination cannot supersede that of any of the other three.
I'd better get down off this soapbox now, as I think I've drifted away from the point. It's really not useful to talk about the trials and tribulations of teaching in public schools, and what teachers go through day-to-day and year-to-year. Teachers know it already, and non-teachers don't think it makes any difference.
Ultimately, I think my friend's point was that people in all professions and all employment contexts know they have to do a great job in order to remain employed, whereas teachers -- and only teachers -- know that they don't have to do a great job to remain employed, and therefore a lot of them don't bother to try. I think a lot of teachers believe that teachers, in general, still strive to be the best teachers they can be even though they supposedly "know" they "don't have to" in order to "keep their jobs." I think non-teachers don't buy that. I think non-teachers presume that teachers should do more to earn their continued employment, and thereby presume that they don't deserve it to begin with.