They Hate Teachers

Recently a whole bunch of school administrators, spearheaded by Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, wrote a "manifesto," which the WaPo published. Not content to bash "bad" teachers and their terrible unions, although they do, the manifesto asks

Is it reasonable to expect a teacher to address all the needs of 25 or 30 students when some are reading on a fourth-grade level and others are ready for Tolstoy?

The answer is no, probably not.  The solution, one might think, is to hire one teacher per say 15 students so that the teacher has time to deal with each on a more individual basis.  And to ensure that teachers have a mastery over content, which in this case would be teaching Tolstoy. Not our heroic administrators; they want to do away with

arcane rules such as "seat time," which requires a student to spend a specific amount of time in a classroom with a teacher rather than taking advantage of online lessons and other programs.

Put another way, we have to do away with teaching so that students can be taught via podcasts, videos, and robots. It is a manager's utopia. How can you reform education if your basic idea is to create an educational delivery system that eschews teachers? Education, unlike furniture or pasta, isn't deliverable; it is created in the interaction between students and teachers with the aid of parents and administrators.  While it is almost certainly the case that there are bad or under-performing teachers in the world as we know it.  It is unlikely that they represent the majority of teachers.

Not content to traduce teachers and teaching, Klein, Rhee et alia, go after education and experience:

A 7-year-old girl won't make it to college someday because her teacher has two decades of experience or a master's degree -- she will make it to college if her teacher is effective and engaging and compels her to reach for success.

While true on one level, experience and education don't ensure effectiveness, but, to use their example, would you want your kid to learn his or her Tolstoy from an enthusiastic recent graduate who may have read Tolstoy in English 101 or someone with a master's in Complit who has taken graduate courses on 19th Century Novels in Translation and who has taught for 10 years?  Just as by the way, is it reasonable to expect even high school seniors to read and understand Tolstoy? War and Peace is one of the longest and most complicated texts ever.

Presumably their enthusiastic recent hire can turn the wonders of the internet and Jeanette and Johnny can benefit from a series of podcasts on Pierre's free thinking and Freemasonry.

There is lot's more in the "manifesto" itself.  But, given that they spend the most ink in blanket criticism of  flesh-and-blood teachers while touting the benefits of robotic teachers, the real laugh line is their claim that one of the big problems reform faces is

our discomfort as a society with criticizing anyone who chooses this noble and difficult profession[.]

Thank goodness our brave administrators are free from this discomfort.

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