Teachers are employees of school districts. Unless they function in compliance with the rules and regulations of their employing district they will not be hired or remain employed. Members of the public determine the content and nature of their services. As employees they have no legitimate control over their practices. It is only on an informal level, the fact that 3.1 million teachers cannot have their behaviors continually monitored and controlled, that they have any discretion at all. The advice to “shut your door and do what you want” does not make teaching a profession. Quite the reverse. It testifies to working conditions in which teachers must sneak activities which their employers might not sanction. If teachers can only demonstrate independent decision-making when they hide their behavior from superiors is that a hallmark of a profession? Legally, teachers have zero discretion over the nature of their training, certification, licensure, practice, or evaluation. Teachers are functionaries, frequently employed in dysfunctional bureaucracies. Teachers cannot decide “best practice”. “Best practice” is circumscribed and determined by what the public and the school boards and administrators who represent the public are willing to condone. If teachers don’t like their employers’ rules and regulations their only choice is to transfer to another school or another district where they can “live with” the conditions under which they must work, or they can quit teaching altogether. This is precisely the choice offered jobholders who are office workers, or who work in retail, or in any other job performed in an organized bureaucracy. Any reasonable analysis of what constitutes a job in contrast to what constitutes a profession will lead to the conclusion that teachers are jobholders who function in publicly run school districts.
Re: Criteria #7,#8,#9
I have previously posted that, if teachers were truly professional, they would refuse to work in conditions that damage children educationally, emotionally, socially, or physically. Unfortunately,teachers open their doors to, and work in, schools that use ineffective and damaging educational programs, and where children are brutalized by other children and sometimes the staff and other teachers.
We often hear that "good" teachers are doing the best they can and shouldn't be blamed. I disagree.
A heart surgeon would refuse to work in an operating room with a heart lung machine that was known to be defective, but, so-called "good" teachers go to work every day in schools throughout this nation that are using defective educational methods and are physically unsafe for the children. Would a surgeon just wring his hands and complain that he was trying the best he could? Hardly! He would transfer his practice to a safe hospital and refuse to practice in the hospital with poor operating room practices. If teachers were true "professionals", and if teaching were a true profession, they would do what was right for the students regardless of the demands of whiny or demanding principals or parents, or the possible loss of their paycheck and benefits.
Teachers, who work in schools with ineffective and damaging educational and discipline practices, or that are emotionally and physically unsafe for children, are one or more of the following:
1) They are too stupid to know with what they are cooperating.
2) They are greedy for a paycheck and generous benefits.
3) They like working in a system that harms children, and this makes them evil.
I have cut some of Martin Haberman's criteria for professionals from the post so that the excerpt could be accepted as a post. I recommend the entire article. It is worth the time to read it.
"The specialized body of knowledge practitioners have takes an extended period of time to learn."
I'm not sure, but I think the only professions that would really meet this criterion would be doctors and lawyers (and vets). Seems a bogus criterion to me.
Innumerable tests over many decades have shown that the mental test scores of people who specialize in education are among the lowest of any college students. This is not an accident. Given the incredibly bad courses in education that abound, in even the top universities, intelligent people are repelled, while mediocrities and incompetents sail through.
A 50+ year old liberal relative of mine has been a teacher for over 20 years. She thought a "separation of church and state" was in the Constitution.
Gee, and we got in trouble if we chewed gum.
The rules are rules have to be followed and the teachers get to follow 'em.
I'll tell you one thing: whoever wrote this rotten sentence, and the majority of this list, ain't no professional practitioner of writin' English.
Haberman-"He has developed more programs preparing more teachers than anyone in American education. His interview for selecting Urban Teachers is used in 200 cities."
It sounds like he is a major part of the problem in public education.
With the invention of the personal computer and the advent of the Internet, teachers became utterly obsolete. Society just hasn't fully realized it yet. In twenty more years, the idea of herding forty kids into a makeshift prison cell to be lectured to by a "C" student with a minimal command of the curriculum will seem as bizarre and backward as the medical practice of bloodletting to treat disease does today.
Teachers are stealth propagandists for the Left. Not all of course but the core definately is nothing but Draft Dodger hopefulls.
I guess the world's oldest profession isn't a profession at all.
Your list is specious and faulty."12. Professionals determine the cost of their services." Within reason, within what the market will bear. But it would be futile to argue point by point, since you are simply trying to 'dump' on all teachers. Would these be elementary, middle, high school, college, or university? I teach at the university where the body of knowledge required depends upon the subject. I teach English, which boasts subjects which would curl the hair of the average right-winger (wing-nut as my husband calls you and me), and my latest challenge is to AVOID LEFT WING, PRO-PALESTINIAN, PRO-TERRORIST, PRO-OCCULT, ANTI-CHRISTIAN DRIVEL! and believe me, it's hard! But my challenge (and that of all teachers) is to make kids think... and having lots of different teachers doing lots of different things accomplishes this, even when more than half of them are established on the left, or wear blinkers for their own subject, or kowtow to the administration. The curriculum we work with, and the teaching methods, were established by the ancient romans. Oh, we've dropped the birch, for the most part, and the Latin, and dummied down the process, but not much else has changed. Personally, I'd like to see a revolution take place, but it won't happen in my time. In the meantime, remember that the smart person YOU are is the result of the 'indoctrination' by these so very 'unprofessional' teachers -- bless them!
I've seen feed lots that contain less BS than this.
Haverman has let his ideology get the best of him.
You are clueless. You post a list of "criteria" which teachers "fail to meet," one of them being "trained to serve clients with problems." But who is the client? Is it the child or the parent of the child? Indeed, it is the parent.
My wife is a special ed teacher, and the scope of her work is defined by a document which is forumlated with input from the child's parents. In many cases, her work is limited by the demands of the "whiny" parents. In such cases, she is serving the student to the best of her ability; while she and the school district can offer the parent guidance and suggestions, it is the parent who ultimately signs off on the manner in which the child will be instructed and the goals which will be achieved.
Your presumption that the student is the client, and that teachers should be permitted to "do what was right for the students regardless of the demands of whiny or demanding principals or parents" is not only unfounded but utterly ridiculous. Indeed, it is the parents who do (or should) oversee their child's education and academic progress. In all too many cases, parents treat the school system as a daycare center and don't take any interest in what or how their child is learning. However, a teacher is not and should not be permitted to trump the wishes of a child's parent, for good or bad.
You could put Journalists up against that list as well.
professionIt's a simple, and deceptive, thing to make up your own definition of a word, then show how another does or doesn't meet that definition.
-noun
(From www.dictionary.com : profession)
- a vocation requiring knowledge of some department of learning or science: the profession of teaching. Compare "learned profession".
- any vocation or business.
- the body of persons engaged in an occupation or calling: to be respected by the medical profession.
Leftists love to play this game by calling GWB a "failure" and a "liar". They also regularly claim that we are "losing" the war in Iraq. If they are allowed to define the words "failure", "liar" and "losing", then they will always be right.
How about agreeing to use the actual definitions of words, to ensure that we all understand what we're talking about?
Teaching is a profession, according to the dictionary. That's good enough for me. The doctors and lawyers can go throw a tantrum somewhere else.
My wife was a teacher at the elementary level for 11 years. She was a professional at it. One of the best and highly recommended by parents whose kids were in her classes. It's a tough job and, yeah, it has many drawbacks. But I don't buy into this "teachers are NOT professionals" BS you've proposed.
BTTT
2) They are greedy for a paycheck and generous benefits.
3) They like working in a system that harms children, and this makes them evil.
I would hate to be your kids teacher!
Did you do well in school? What do you have a degree in?
Teachers make less than baby-sitters. Maybe we get what we pay for. They don't make enough for me to put up what they have to put up with so they can keep their paychecks and I'll keep my sanity!