Making the Teachers America's Scapegoat

...And every American parent also considers himself an "expert" on education who must entrust his children to teachers whom he often distrusts and has contempt for...

...Every parent considers himself a "teacher" (as in some sense he is...

...What goes on in the classroom is what counts, and aggrieved parents had best bear this in mind...

...They are performing the most important public duty now performed by any one group in society...

...The more closely one examines the Bundy report, the more doubtful it appears as a fruitful starting point either toward constructive decentralization or toward giving various elements in the educational system a meaningful voice...

...The teacher's feelings that his worth as a professional goes unrecognized, and that he is being turned into a scapegoat, are partly responsible for the notorious shortcomings in our educational system...

...the question is, what kind of decentralization...

...All this intensifies the turmoil of the educational scene...

...Wittingly or unwittingly, a disastrous alliance of forces is developing in urban centers...

...Most teachers' strikes took place in metropolitan centers, which indicates a close link with ghetto and urban problems...

...parents do not see that massive educational failure cannot be explained by a simple good-teacher—bad-teacher theory...

...This new militancy of the teachers, in turn, provokes hostile reactions on the part of other groups concerned with education (parents, community organizations, etc...

...For if we accept the Bundy report, with its proposed 30 to 60 school districts, or any similar version of miniscule autonomy, we accept an end to integration for the foreseeable future...

...Old institutions are hard to change, and public education is among our very oldest...

...What good can possibly come out of such an experience...

...to let the ghetto dwellers take over...

...Any claims which they can rightfully make are not made in behalf of themselves as private persons, but in behalf of society and the nation...

...Kenneth Clark's study of "separate but equal" education, if Harlem children were now to pass through 12 years of de facto separatist education under so-called community controls...

...that system can be changed only if parents and teachers enter into a partnership for educational revolution .. . Teaching in itself is difficult...

...And the teachers and their union can play a leading part in the reconciliation of the contending forces...

...Thwarted parents and feckless columnists tend to blame teachers, but the truth is that the present educational disaster is part and parcel of the collapse of the American city...

...that is, it is most hide-bound, most bureaucratized, most burdened with conflicting interest-groups —and most in need of drastic reforms...

...Shanker is aware of the professional inadequacy of a good number of public-school teachers, but he feels that it can be overcome by proper internship, help from experienced colleagues, and an alert administration...

...The Teachers' Union has subjected the report to a searching criticism and has offered for discussion its own plan for decentralization, geared to the realities of New York financing and designed to provide the basis for a new—and indispensable—healing of relations between teachers and ghetto communities...

...The inequity of financing is clear enough, but ghetto schools increasingly dominated by black nationalist forces hope to close the monetary gap by applying a variety of pressures...

...If we have given up the notion popular during the days of "progressive education" that the school has the power to make over a deficient society, we still cling to an even more deeply imbedded notion that education is the road to success, status, and career...

...Teachers are neither saints nor sinners, although there seems to be a good deal more idealism present in the teaching profession than is usual in America...

...Because integration on a massive, city-wide scale is out of the question now, shall we drop all effort to have a more modest, small-scale integration wherever possible...

...you run your schools, we run ours...

...A competent teacher who has worked successfully in a white middle-class school cannot simply be transferred to a ghetto school without thorough reorientation and training...

...and we now find ourselves in the unhappy situation where competing "militancies," each with authentic concerns, struggle at cross-purposes...

...If one acknowledges that few ordinary mortals are capable of the notorious asceticism of Kempton, it becomes possible to ask: what is wrong with both plumbers and teachers earning a living wage...

...What has led to this new militancy among the teachers, apart from such obvious tactors as grossly inadequate salaries...

...In a series of cities and states tens of thousands of teachers fought for union recognition, an improvement in school conditions, and the beginning of a voice in determining school policies...

...in short, that there is really no "conflict of interests...

...Now there has emerged a new panacea in the form of drastic proposals for decentralization of the school system...

...the truth is that both teachers and students are being destroyed by a rotten system...

...To anticipate their answer that this is what already exists, is not very helpful...

...I see no firm evidence that they are true spokesmen for their communities with a solid base of support or that they are professionally qualified in the area of pedagogy...

...If originally the abandonment of the cities by 7 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS large numbers of suburbia-headed middle-class whites helped precipitate the educational crisis, its new, intensified stage is due to the cynical abandonment of school integration programs by white-dominated Boards and the growing white attitude of letting the Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and other slum dwellers stew in their own communal juices—offering "local educational autonomy" to ill-equipped groups...

...Because school integration may not be a living question today, shall we agree to its being permanently shelved...

...If there is to be an authentic dialogue—and who can say whether this is possible in the current atmosphere?—we ought to recognize that, given the nature of the learning process, compromise will have to take place...

...At the moment, however, it is much more fashionable to needle the teachers, often in a distasteful and self-righteous way...

...Realistically, one might put the question, if so much power (and money) is up for grabs who shall grab what...

...Is it so difficult to understand that an underpaid teacher is bound to be a poor teacher —or that satisfying his material needs may contribute measurably to his becoming a successful teacher...

...But I share Shanker's view that the overwhelming proportion of teachers "want to teach" and are keen to do a proper job...

...But it does not invalidate an older and perhaps more "conservative" pedagogic view: that success in educating the child depends upon the skill and devotion of the classroom teacher...

...Their message to parents must be that an improvement in teachers' condition and status will show up in improved teaching and education...

...201 in Harlem, I raised the question of what would be the long-range psychological effect, in terms of Dr...

...Everyone, including the central Boards, favors decentralization...

...On all sides, it is taken for granted that centralized Boards of Education will be phased out of existence...

...At the least, this plan ought to be seriously considered...

...6 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS THE TEACHERS, as they finally come into their own, are bound to step on some people's toes...

...This also explains why feelings of outrage and even of desperation were at work...

...Ghetto parents, filled with anxiety about the future of their children, are particularly prone to blame teachers for the damage wrought by the whole society...

...It means that hundreds of thousands of school-age children and millions of children yet unborn are being condemned to a mode of education that can only be crippling in its consequences...

...But, for their part, parents, administrations, and communal groups must accept the central role of the teacher within the classroom...

...Given our national penchant for reducing enormous issues to simplified formula we ought to look carefully at the notion of decentralization...

...Yet this trend toward ghetto separatism is unmistakable and perhaps not to be denied, thanks in great part at least to the cynical willingness of organized whites (Board of Education, city administration, so-called white tax-payers associations, etc...

...ALBERT SHANKER, president of the New York teachers' union and the leader who courageously bore upon his shoulders the weight of the New York strike, recently remarked: . . . Conflict between teachers and parents is most tragic...

...The nature of the alliance is also clear—separation of the schools...

...The New York Board of Education is dead" —Albert Shanker...

...THE DE FACTO ABANDONMENT Of integration in the North is the single greatest indictment of American racism...

...but to teach while engaging in a constant need to defend one's self against parental and community attack is impossible...

...White power" community leaders, bitterly hostile to all integrationist tendencies, are entering an uneasy alliance with "black power" leaders who probably represent only an insignificant portion of their ghetto communities...

...If the cities are explosive, the subject of education is dynamite...

...In asserting themselves, teachers ought to be aware of this problem...

...to make it clear beyond a peradventure that public education is not a business carried on for pecuniary profit . . . but that money spent on education is a social investment . . . Teachers are simply means, agents in this social work...

...One is not at all sure, to begin with, that these people are anything more than militant activists grinding the ax of black nationalism...

...One thinks especially of Murray Kempton, who devoted his New York Post column during the recent strike to denouncing the teachers for "money greed" comparable to that of "plumbers...

...Talking recently to members of the newlyelected governing board of IS...

...Most teachers would subscribe to the words of John Dewey: It behooves the teachers...