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I’ve been a teacher for 26 years, and I have to agree with the president of Hillsdale College.

My post-secondary education started at American University with a degree in political science, where I graduated in 1978 with the expectation of law school. I decided that polite courtroom warfare wasn’t my cup of tea, so I worked in a variety of jobs until deciding to return to college when I was 39 years old to do what I had really wanted to do ever since I was in the second grade.

The education classes at the University of Alaska Anchorage were easy beyond words. I took 24 credits a term in addition to 30 hours a week working and a 45-minute commute to the college from the valley. 4.0 GPA. Many of my colleagues over the years have been great people, and a few extraordinary teachers stand out, but the lemons in the baskets get to remain due to job protection embedded in tenure and union agreements. One third grade teacher asked me once to tell me that names of all seven continents. I worked with a horticulture teacher who never planted a single plant but was well loved by students because she handed out energy drinks and chips while showing Hollywood movies. The superintendent’s office was on the other side of the wall and must have heard what was going on, but never did anything about it. There was less rigor in my master’s degree classes than the classes I had in high school back in the early 1970s. The support staff, in my observation, tend toward mediocrity.

Students routinely tell me that they know American schools are failing them; they can see what schools look like with excellent teachers and stringent standards by watching anime and seeing what high school is like in Japan, superpowers and supernatural forces notwithstanding. There’s a popular anime called “Deathnote,” typical Japanese fare about a demon giving a teenager a book with the power to kill; all you have to do is write the name of a person in the book, and they die 10 seconds later. In an early episode, the demon asks the teenager why he’s not writing names in the book, and the boy says he needs to study for a chemistry test. Many anime series center around the need for study, respect for teachers, and overcoming the hardship of academic failure. The comparison is not lost on the American teenage viewer.

I’m going to be 67 on my next birthday, so this is my last year. My students tend to enjoy honest feedback and a focus on excellence. There are fewer of us every year.

Here’s some solutions to the current problem, based on my experience and observing places like Finland and South Korea, where there is robust student achievement.
- Colleges of education should be far more rigorous, on par with medical and law school. Weed out incompetence at the gate.
- Reduce barriers to professionals from other fields who want to teach, like engineering or medicine, so they can share workplace experience.
- Eliminate tenure. Poor teachers need to be quickly shown the door.
- Treat students with respect by requiring stringent competency tests to move through grades and graduate.
- Understand that teachers work for the families of the students. It’s unethical to use a classroom for advocacy.
- Every district website should have lesson plans, curriculum, readings, and other assignments posted daily.
- Salaries should be linked to student achievement.

It’s been an awful experience watching the education system deteriorate. Maybe my next step should be running for a school board in the community where I retire.