The problem with education is America’s contempt for teachers
Almost every problem with education in the U.S., from kindergarten to college, can be traced to the same basic thing. And almost every reform of education passed into legislation is founded on this same thing — a fact that suggests these reforms can only make education worse. That thing that underlies the problems we have with education in America is the widespread American contempt for teachers.
The contempt in our culture gets expressed in many ways. Parents treat teachers like baby sitters. Administrators treat teachers’ talk of higher wages as appalling, dismissing money talk with, “You’re supposed to be in it for the children” — as though worrying about paying your bills keeps you focused on your students. Legislators impose standardized tests as a blatant accusation of incompetence. Universities hire more and more adjuncts at poverty wages. All of these are expressions of contempt for teachers.
The contempt gets translated to classroom behaviors by the students. The parents don’t respect the teachers, and when administrators almost always take the side of students over the teachers, that too teaches students not to respect their teachers. On the news, we are always hearing about the problems with our schools, and that is almost universally interpreted as problems with our teachers. From every authority, students hear the message that teachers are the problem, not deserving of respect. How should we expect them to act?
This attitude toward teachers is a uniquely American one. Students and parents who are recent immigrants are typically quite respectful of teachers. In most places around the world, teaching is an honored and honorable profession. This gets translated into respect, and even into decent pay in many countries. In the U.S., we pay poorly, disrespect teachers, provide them with terrible insurance, and overwork them in an emotionally taxing, highly stressful job.
Under such conditions, we shouldn’t be surprised to find low performance. But even then, how much are the teachers to blame? Standardized tests treat students as the same, whether the students have a high or low IQ, are autistic, have learning disabilities like dyslexia or cannot speak English. And if they do not pass the test, it is not the fault of the low IQ, learning disabilities or language barriers. No. It’s somehow the fault of the teacher. And this ignores behavioral problems that can affect students and their classmates as well.
Worse, there is research that shows standardized tests in no way reflect the quality of teaching or the degree of learning. John List and other researchers at the University of Chicago have demonstrated that by using what economists call “loss aversion,” they could dramatically raise test scores. What they did was give students, literally right before they took the test, with no warning beforehand, a small amount of money, and told them that they could keep the money if they scored well on the test. As if by magic, test scores dramatically increased. And racial gaps in test scores disappeared. What this suggests is that standardized tests do not test for student learning, nor for teacher competence in teaching. Rather, they test for students’ motivation to do well on that test. In other words, they are useless.
Does this mean students are to blame for their low test scores? What drives students to be more motivated? The lack of motivation can be traced to their parents’ attitudes. Parents who do not value education, who have contempt for teachers, who are themselves unmotivated and do not motivate their children are the problem. But so, too, is the very presence — the very overbearing presence — of standardized tests. Students are hardly motivated to do well on the tests. They are badgered and browbeaten all year, given test-taking strategies, etc., but in the end, the students are simply made to hate school, hate their teachers and hate testing. Talk about being unmotivated.
But nobody wants to deal with these problems. They are too complex. Some of these issues are too volatile. And the testing industry is in a mutually beneficial relationship with the legislators forcing these tests down everyone’s throats. In the end, it is simply easier to pick on the teachers, to heap contempt upon them all. But as long as we do that, our problems in education, from kindergarten to college, will continue to get worse.
Richardson resident Troy Earl Camplin has a doctorate in the humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas and has taught English in middle school, high school and college. Reach him attroycamplin@gmail.com.Troy Earl Camplin: The problem with education is America’s contempt for teachers | Dallas Morning News: