Posted by Wait a minute 2 ... on September 10, 2002 at 03:29:50:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Why should we have to defend teachers? posted by Rick Denney on September 09, 2002 at 14:30:27:
Sorry, but almost by definition, home schoolers do what they do because they feel that their efforts are better than public school, whether the focus of that schooling be academic, moral, or spiritual in nature. Also, what's good for the goose is good for the gander; if public schools are subjected to such scrutiny, private and home education should be also. Questions along those lines are quite relevant to the topic. Public education has its failures, but so do the alternatives.
Second, the tests the home-schoolers I was referring to in my previous post had to take to get credit were the same comprehensive end-of-course final exams that the students in the school had to take, and these tests are not pushovers.
Third, why would it be considered use of a double standard to criticize parents who can't communicate? Gibberish is gibberish, and saying that teachers cannot apply the same criticisms that are applied to them is the double standard, not the other way around. I am concerned with the fact that so many people seem to feel that teachers are not competent to criticize those around them in the same manner that they are subjected to.
Fourth, many of the standardized tests that so many people seem to think are so wonderful as evaluation tools are badly written, inconsistent, riddled with errors, and often not properly curricularly focused. Until the testing companies clean up their act, and until the public realizes just how big a problem poorly written "professionally created" tests are, teachers are going to be stuck listening to twaddle about using standardized tests for accountability purposes. Yes, there is often teacher opposition to those tests, but teachers in the trenches are the ones who realize the flaws in those instruments better than anyone. You have no idea how frustrating it is to be required to subject your students to tests that have incomprehensible questions, sometimes NO correct answers to questions or even multiple correct answers (with only one counted as correct).
Fifth, some teachers don't want to be held accountable for their work, and some engineers, accountants, lawyers, and doctors don't want to be held accountable for their work, either. Yet these other professionals are not regularly pilloried in public forums like teachers are. I get damned tired of putting in 60-70 hour weeks, spending my own money on materials and equipment that I can't get through my school, and automatically being tarred with the same brush as the incompetents in my profession. Do incompetent doctors, attorneys, judges, and the like catch the hell publicly and repeatedly that teachers and education in general do, even though the damage they do can be even more immediate and drastic than the long-run effects of a poor education? Have there been forums on this board, in the newspapers, and on the net dedicated to them? Afraid not.
Fifth, (and this is not directed at you, Rick) why do so many critics of education assume that anyone in education who disagrees with them is either lazy, incompetent, or stupid? Those of us in the classroom are on the front lines of education, and its problems are rubbed into our faces every day; however, over and over again our ideas are ignored and our input denied. We're closest to the problem, and have a very good idea of what needs to be done. Unfortunately, although I don't know of a single teacher who thinks that education is where or what it needs to be and who doesn't see a need for improvement, yet we're constantly referred to as opposed to change, complacent or lazy. Most of us are constantly adding to our training and educations, yet we're accused of not wanting to change. Most of us work our butts off, spend long, long hours, and work under conditions of stress that most people would never tolerate for the money that we make. We have to listen to too many idiots who have the idea that we do what we do only because we're too incompetent and too lazy do do anything else. No matter what we do, how hard or well we work, or how much we improve, we are constantly criticized by people who have no real idea what's going on in the schools. We are constantly kept from doing our best by bureaucratic garbage forced upon us by politicians who have no clue about the reality of education and who deny at the top of their lungs that they're one of the biggest parts of the problem. And whether you critics like it or not, you're just as much a part of the teacher morale problem as politicians and school administrators.
Do we teachers feel that we're above criticism or that we shouldn't be held to reasonable objective standards? The vast majority of us do not. We're just tired of being yanked about by forces beyond our control and then being abused, harrased, and insulted while we're just trying to make the best of a difficult situation. Are we bitter? Many of us are, and have a right to be.
And last, there's one thing that this debate has driven home to me: altogether too many critics of teachers have a bad case of Critic's Syndrome. They assume that the problems of their own little corners of hell are universal, and that their scattershot volleys only hit where they're aimed. Education in this country is about as inconsitent as it can get. Prevalent methods, attitudes, and problems in one state may be almost non-existant in another; for that matter, they vary from state to state, county to county, city to city, and often from school to school. A criticism that's perfectly valid in one area may not apply at all in another. Are critics of education right in what they say? Often, yes. Do critics agree with each other? No way. Which criticisms should we listen to? All of them. Upon which ones should we base our actions? School's out on that one.