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 Good
Teachers, Students In Need,
Bad Administrators
EDITORIAL
Frank Salvato
September 18, 2003 |
Everyone agrees the
educational system in this country is in crisis. Teachers are generally
under-paid and faced with performing in overcrowded classrooms where they
have no recourse for discipline problems. They are expected to succeed in
their efforts despite these facts. And they are literally forced to join the
most liberal unions in the country, unions that do very little to help on
the front lines of teaching other than pontificate their liberal agendas,
which routinely remove the power in the classroom from the teacher and place
it with the students and their parents who are largely disconnected from the
process in total. That said, it should come as no surprise that local school
administrations across the United States are mired in incompetent
bureaucracy, and are most often devoid of understanding what is needed in
the classroom.
Now comes a study that teachers, both new and experienced, are finding it
difficult to get hired in a profession that needs so many additional
members. One would think that this problem would be related to funding but
that isn’t necessarily the case. The New Teacher Project has come out
with a report stating that local school administrations are so disorganized
and have their priorities so askew that employment opportunities for
teachers are literally falling by the wayside due to the ineffectiveness,
lethargic attitudes and bureaucracy of local school administration
officials.
So,
it should come as no surprise that there are problems within our schools
that can be attributed directly to the management of the schools themselves.
Ask any teacher in virtually any school throughout the country and you will
find that cooperation from the administration regarding curriculum,
resources and discipline are lacking and in many cases non-existent. In
fact, with regard to discipline, it is normally the modus operandi to place
the burden on the teacher to "cater to the needs” of the disruptive student.
They call this canard differentiation of instruction. It is a catch all
phrase for, "I don’t want to deal with it…you do it!”
Whether the problem is discipline in the classroom or hiring practices at
any given school district, local school administrations have become a
behemoth worthy of publicly mandated change. Our educational system is not a
member of the private sector where employees have to be managed, these
people, these educators, these teachers, do what they do because they
believe in what they are doing. They work fifteen-hour days on average and
this trickles over into their holidays and weekends. Obviously they don’t do
it for the money, they do it for the children. For school administrators to
play authoritarian with educators, whether it is in their classrooms or in
the hiring process is a crime, or at least it should be. The school
administrators should be there to support the teachers in every way
possible, especially where classroom discipline is concerned.
It is time for those who consider themselves school administrators to
re-invent themselves. They need to become a resource for the teacher not a
management overseer and potential stumbling block. They need to get involved
with making the school a place where education happens once again not just a
place where kids survive their tenure by graduating without getting shot.
They need to stop managing the teachers and start managing the students. It
should be unacceptable for students to disrespect the teachers. It should be
unacceptable for students to challenge the authority of the teachers in the
classroom. It is unacceptable that teachers should have to take 20 minutes
out of a 50-minute period to discipline a student thereby eliminating the
education of the other students in the classroom. And it is unacceptable
that a teacher should every have to worry about his or her own safety within
the sanctity of the classroom. These situations require the involvement of
the school administration. We are seeing many of these issues receiving only
lip service and many, many schools across America not addressing these
issues at all.
It is time to give the teachers their classrooms back. Give them the tools
they need to teach once again and that means disciplinary recourse and an
ability to garner respect from their students. This should be the tenet of
the local school administration…although you could hardly expect it of them,
they can’t even figure out how to hire people they need when there are a
plethora of them right in front of their faces! And believe me, the unions
couldn’t care less!
Frank Salvato is a
political media consultant and the managing editor for The New Media Journal.us. He is a
contributing writer for The Washington Dispatch, GOPUSA, OpinionEditorials,
Men’s News Daily, Canada Free Press & AmericanDaily. His pieces are
regularly featured in Townhall.com. He has appeared as a guest on The
O’Reilly Factor, The Kevin Matthews Radio Show (Chicago) and The Brad Messer
Radio Show (San Antonio). His pieces have been recognized by the Japan
Center for Conflict Prevention and are occasionally featured in The
Washington Times and The London Morning Paper as well as other national and
international publications.
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