Education was in the news today.  Several main stories in the NY Times hit upon the perverse use of Education by political forces that do not necessarily reflect the issues addressed by the presidential candidates.  Much of this has to do with money.  We all (me particularly, because I have from the word go as a teacher KNEW that I was not paid what my work was worth) know that teachers are underpaid. One question is that why all teachers are paid the same?

Some of the blame is placed on Teachers’ Unions which were modeled on the industrial unions which centered mainly on economic problems – pay and benefits.  Rarely did any of these unions tell the industries how to make their products or conduct their businesses.  The worker was still at the mercy of markets and conditions that may have originated in other countries on the other side of the world. The tactics which have gotten teachers in a lot of trouble can be traced back to their opinion that they ARE professionals and should be paid on a par with doctors and lawyers and such.  And, they paid a big price when they insisted that they should have a say in how to conduct THEIR business, that of teaching children.

All of us should know that the different levels and different subjects in schools have different problems and that ALL children are different requiring special skills, talents and experience.  Not all students are equal and not all teachers are equal, either.  The teacher’s unions have lost power along with the unions of an industrial nation that has seen its businesses shift to other nations where the price for labor is much cheaper. The blame is wrongly placed on the unions.

The biggest problem is how to reward teachers with special talents and abilities differently than teachers who are just ordinary or, in too many cases, are pretty terrible but are protected by the union that speaks for them.  Pressure is quite heavy to differentiate teacher pay to reward gifted teachers and NOT penalize the ordinary ones that run ordinary classes.  That pressure is also to differentiate schools from which “good” and “better” students could be culled out from “ordinary” schools and create a new kind of school )Charter?) in which excellence would immediately go to work to create better students taught by great teachers. Experience has shown that the vast majority of students as well as the vast majority of teachers are just plain ordinary. Education on the industrial model does not work.  The folks who run the schools should listen to the teachers.

Unions should help “poor” teachers to become better or help them leave teaching.  Our schools should be ornaments to a democratic society but the schools and people who run them have the obligation to do so democratically.