People are more important than things in that things should serve people and not the other way around. Organizations are things. Public education is an organization that has, like other organizations, come to serve itself more than the pupils for which it exists. As a result, public education fails to prepare great numbers of students adequately to function as they should and as public education was originally designed to provide. For public education to be effective for our children, our parents, our society and economy, the original priorities need to be re-established.
The unions are not the ultimate culprit in the mess which public education suffers today. The administration of the school districts are not the ultimate culprit either. Nor are the parents and certainly not the students are not the ultimate culprit. However, all of these share in the reasons why public education is not providing the sufficient number of graduates capable of lifting society to a better place.
Finger pointing of one group against another must turn the finger of accusation around and point to self. Each one must give up the mantra "give me" and embrace a new mantra "what can I do?" The paradigm to success is as effective and well known as the principle of gravity. It is the "golden rule". "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It is repeated in different ways in different belief systems, but was originally a quote from Moses and promoted by Jesus Christ. Even so, it works perfectly well in a variety of secular settings, including public education.
The unions can begin by understanding that the professionalism they claim for teachers to be independent from administrators is only partially useful. It is useful to allow teachers to have independence of thought and creativity. However, there is a boundary to that liberty. When that freedom from interference goes to the extreme, it becomes freedom from accountability. Teachers must be accountable to administrators such as school principals who share with the teachers the responsibility for the accomplishments of students. The effort by unions to be more than a bargaining unit for compensation and benefits and working conditions should end with the freedom of teachers to be free of politically or immorally motivated pressure from administrators. That much is useful. But to try to gain access to management including the shielding of ineffective teachers from discipline for academic failure, is to place the union organization and its membership above the reason for the existance of public education. It is to place the organization of the union above the people their members are hired to serve, the students and their parents.
The administrators from the superintendent down to the assistant principals and counselors must understand the nature, the source, and the proper use of authority. Administrators recieve authority from the board of education. The board receives that authority from the power of the public vote. The responsibility that goes with that authority goes to serve the public that elected the board. The original premise upon which public education was founded was something called "in loco parentis". It is Latin and it means, " in place of the parent." Parents were to trust their children into the hands of public educators and the welfare of the children and the educational process was to be entrusted to "trustees" who would represent the public and the best interests of the children and the parents who sent them to public school.
Thus, it is that administrators (and teachers) have responsibility passed down to them from the district board of education. They are also have given to them the authority that exactly matches their responsibility. They have no authority beyond any aspect of their responsibility. Their authority and responsibility are very much like the two sides of the very same coin. Administrators are human and as such are tempted to use their authority over funds and capital assets and personnel for their own personal benefit. Then again, there are those who feel the pressure of doing a good job and find that they are held responsible for things well beyond their reasonable ability to control, therefore, beyond their authority. Much would be solved if administrators of good faith were to encourage others of good faith in working reforms within their sphere of influence or control. These reforms would center around giving up those things that serve the organiation or selfish motives at the expense of doing what is really more in the interest of students. An example would be to take budget for administrative perks and return it to a budget area that directly serves the classroom. Another would be to move away from seeing the school district as being superior to the interest and concerns of parents who entrust their children into the care of the school district.
It would be useful for teachers and administrators, with the support of unions, to encourage parents to take a more active role in the education of their student. Many parents were not successful students and are thus not motivated to support the school as they should be. Outreaches to parents have been successful is some areas and should be evaluated and used to encourage parents everywhere. I believe it would be a great boon to the success of students at many levels.
Students need to receive a teacher's outreach to them in the classroom. If teachers were to understand that the essence of formal education is the learning relationship between the teacher and the student, then, they might make an effort to first of all, bond with each student. Learn their names as soon as possible. Let each and every one know that they are cared for. Ask students about things outside the classroom like goals in sports, or favorite things to do. Students like to know that you would like to know more about them. While teachers need to maintain the role of teacher, not homey (friend), they need to engage in certain aspects of parenting. Even high school students need some element of nurturing. These efforts will establish in the minds of the students, the right of the teacher to discipline. It is important that students know that the teacher does not arbitrarily assign grades but that the student creates their own grade as a result of their level of accomplishment. This gives students the motivation to succeed. And, success without learning relationship is impossible.
This is a lot to do. However, it can and should be done one step and one day at a time. A change in direction is vital for our public education system. Rather than pointing the finger of blame, rather than defending our vulnerabilities, we public educators need to reach out and do for our students and parents what we would wish for them to do for us if the situations were reversed.
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