SCAPEGOATING EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS AND CULTURAL FAILURE IN NEW YORK STATE

Given the anti-union ideology in America in general and the particularly virulent union busting, bad faith negotiation going on at NCCC between our local and a clearly anti-education, anti-faculty contempt on the part of an overpaid administration, I have a hard time being unsympathetic with NYSUT. I am also a member of NYSUT.

Moreover given the viciously anti-intellectual culture that I experience on a daily basis in the classroom and have as an intellectual experienced first hand throughout my life, it’s hard not to circle the wagons when teachers and education are pointed to as being the source of a failing business community in New York State.

Given the community’s expectations of teachers to overcome the failings of the family and the culture at large which respectively do little more than provide extensive infantilizing video entertainment at home and cretinizing amusement in movies, music, athletics and aesthetics, I would maintain that teachers earn every penny they get and more. Accountability in education cannot make up for that preparation for learning that comes in intelligent socialization for which the community is accountable but has failed essentially to provide. Moreover if parents would raise their children to be something more than merely tolerant of authority and educational institutions, then half of a teachers energy wouldn’t have to be put into maintaining a level of civility in which learning becomes possible. A teacher unfortunately has to do more than teach. He/she shouldn’t have to.

Even though it may be the case in recent history that increases in educational spending have not resulted in increased test scores and graduation rates, it certainly doesn’t follow that reducing teachers salaries, increasing class size and demanding more bureaucratized accountability is going to increase the quality of education. The problem with so much criticism of education is that the issues are always confused. The question regarding quality of teaching is logically independent from level of salary. The question of tenure is likewise independent of salary. Tenure is ultimately a question of protecting freedom of speech not protecting bad teachers. No one in the teaching profession wants to protect bad teaching. However the degree of incompetency in education is no higher than in medicine, business, the priesthood or government. When a heart surgeon fails noone argues to lower his pay. When businesses fail the government bails them out. When hundreds of priests abuse children they get sent to rest camps to chill out until things cool in the community. When governments commit blunder after blunder, they still get salary raises.

Here are my recommendations. If we are going to make cuts in education then let’s cut first the extreme excess of overpaid useless and officious administrators. Then let’s eliminate counselors. Educational institutions shouldn’t be responsible for mental health. Thirdly, let’s eliminate all the sports programs and coaches which are absolutely unnecessary. When I was a kid I would come home, eat dinner and go outside for three to four hours of running, sports competition, hunting, fishing, etc. I didn’t need an idiotic coach telling me how to climb a fucking rope in a gym. Why do kids need exorbitant sports programs which unfortunately are seen by many parents as the early training ground for professional athletes. As stupid as this is, it is the case. Elaborate football stadiums, equipments uniforms, coaches, assistant coaches, etc., etc., etc. Fourthly eliminate the required arts programs. As with athletics there could be voluntary programs, community sports, community bands, etc. Why does all this stuff have to occur in the schools. Let the parents pay for shoulder pads, helmets, arrogant obnoxious coaches and the rest of the crap. Schools are about learning to think, communicate, calculate and reflect. It is about creating a tradition of literacy, knowledge and critical self-examination. It’s not about providing enticing programs to “keep kids in school.”
If the kids don’t want to come to school for the right reasons, then as George Carlin used to say: “Fuck ‘em!” Let em go get jobs and see how they like that. Or join the army. There’s always more need for cannon fodder in America.

Please stop painting criticism of education and teaching with such a broad brush and thick paint that we can’t see what we’ve painted. And let’s please stop scapegoating education for the failures of a gluttonous consumerism, a cultural laziness that has created the well-known ugly American, you know, the one in your neighborhood who has the sign out front: I’m proud to be a redneck. Oh wait, that’s in my neighborhood.

But speaking of an overpaid excess of administrators there have been an abundance of articles recently about the bevy of bureaucrats populating our several hundred Authorities, the halls of the legislatures and I haven’t forgotten education. And if local communities didn’t have to spend a fortune in Washington to support our 776 military bases around the world and our unnecessary meaningless war in Iraq, possibly some of that tax money could stay in the communities where it’s needed. And if the 2/3 of all corporations in America who pay no taxes at all would start chipping in, possibly we would have some extra cash where it’s needed.

So the point is I’m quite sure education is not the culprit here. There is incompetency and waste and ignorance well enough to go around. Education and teaching remains your best investment. Education is the real thin blue line between civilization and barbarism.