The Image Problem

I had planned to start this blog with a vast manifesto about the macro-sized root causes of what appears to be a very real crisis in public education (the development of education in an agrarian society, the failure of the current funding model for public schools, etc,etc) but instead I think I will start this series of musings with a magazine cover and an overheard remark.

My wife was traveling, and in airport newsstand she was struck by a Newsweek cover that featured an image of a blackboard with the words, "We must fire bad teachers" written over and over again. She brought it back and I read the article: it was a barely informed one-sided diatribe about teachers holding on to an old ideal of lifetime protection and a cartoonish portrayal of national teacher's union leaders as resistant to reform and accountability, as brave district superintendents and reformers tried to buck the resistance of cliques of stibborn coffee-drinking, newspaper-reading teachers hidden in teacher's lounges vowing that they would pry tenure from cold dead fingers even when their kids can't pass the standarized tests.

Yeah, got it, well done in terms of cliche recycling. Not that I am, by any means, a blind teacher's union booster, but I worked in corporate America long enough to appreciate a contract. Compared to the lack of same. But I do think the unions have grown out of touch, or are at least not skilled enough in spinning their side of the story. Begs the question, though: Where do those images (which the article's writers only had to touch on briefly to evoke) come from?

Which leads to the second part of this post. Last night at Target Field, in a break right around the third inning (in which the Twins, down 0-2 to Baltimore, had left the bases loaded when Cuddyer flied out to center), one of those mid-inning, hunt down the unwitting fan and make them do something for the camera games was underway. A fan being filmed on a portable videocam was asked to guess what relief pitcher Jesse Crain would have done for a living if he hadn't made The Show.

The choices were History Teacher, Mechanic, and another job I can't remember. In a row down below and to the right of me in Section 324, a group of men in their mid-20s shouted out their guesses (mostly Mechanic!). They were in Twins gear, but a couple were wearing button down shirts and loosened ties. When Crain's video image stirred to life and he said he would have been a history teacher one of the men called out "Failure! Failure!" and a couple of the others echoed it. The others all laughed.

So here you have a situation where a group of people who, almost as a rule, have master's degrees (and typically further) graduate educations, who work in a system crumbling from within due to changing demographics and drying funding streams, with students who come to school carrying with them a myriad of challenges. Daily, they handle demands and imperatives from literally dozens of directions, and yet they manage to survive, through creativity, dedication, boundless optimism, and the courage of warriors. After 20 years of service, they might be paid about the same as a 24-year old trainee financial analyst. These are my colleagues, urban teachers, "failures."

This group of young guys may have had MBAs, but not necessarily, and were making more money than teachers ever will, to serve themselves first, their companies when possible and their clients last. They are worthy of respect. And teachers are failures.

This is the crux of the image problem. Is it the image of the tenure-grubbing teacher, unwilling to take responsibility for their failing students, that causes these perceptions? If so, as always, we can ask the question: who profits? Because images don't exist for no reason. They are propagated by actors, with agendas.

If you are not born into old wealth, education is the only way to change the pathway of your life. Generations of working people have pulled themselves into the middle class that way. The middle class has pulled itself into the upper-middle. It was education that opened the path for those young upper-middle-class white men to congratulate themselves on their ability to thrive in a school system designed for them, specifically, to prosper. So they are prospering. Surprise. I'm sure very few of them (some may have, but those hide their stories) came to school regularly worrying about their food, safety, housing or language barriers. But public education, at least as we have legislated it in the last 30 years, is supposed to provide the path for others--who are not English-speaking white males.

So, who are the failures? The teachers, who in every moment of six hours with students and many more each day besides, struggle to keep the path open, and yes, often fail? Or the people who have benefited from the path, who do not feel it is their responsibility to maintain for others?

And most of all, what will the Bad Teacher forces, if they create public education without tenure, teachers fired due to bad standardized test results, corporate styled profit and loss accountability, and the students still struggle? How deep is their commitment to the public path for students who are the newest Americans, the forgotten students of the inner city, students who are born different and struggle with disability? Who will they blame then?

Images are powerful. I think as teachers the first thing we need to do is tell the other side of the story. Police officers and firefighters put their lives on the line daily and are heroes. Teachers put their hearts on the line every day and are failures.

There's something wrong with that picture.