Davis Guggenheim's documentary "Waiting for Superman" takes an hour and forty minutes to make two rather obvious and seemingly uncontroversial points. One, all children are capable of learning. Two, the most important variable in determining whether a child receives a sufficient education is teacher quality. A good teacher inspires children to great heights of achievement; a poor teacher condemns children to educational oblivion.
As a teacher, the Solipsist agrees that good teachers are a vital component--perhaps the most vital component--in a child's education. The problem with Guggenheim's film is that it says nothing about what makes a teacher "good." The examples he chooses to present, though, are telling: All the good teachers he shows work for charter schools: schools that receive public financing but are allowed to try different approaches to providing education. These may include special curricula focusing on things like arts or vocations; extended school days (or, indeed, years); and different instructional methodologies. The not-so-subtle point: If you want your child to receive a quality education from a talented teacher, you need to look beyond your regular public school.
But why are standard public schools so deficient? Well, based on Guggenheim's film, the culprit is clear: Teachers' unions. Indeed, one reason charters are so "successful" is that they are not bound by union regulations. You know, those pesky rules that require teachers to be paid a living wage and prevent school authorities from arbitrarily firing people.
Guggenheim's film makes some valid points about unions, most emphatically that union contracts make it difficult for schools to fire incompetent (or even criminal) instructors. He implies, however, that this is the PRIMARY mission of the United Federation of Teachers. And here is where his film goes off the proverbial rails.
We would say it goes without saying--but it apparently doesn't--that the main concern of the teachers' unions (indeed, any unions) is NOT to protect the incompetent or dangerous: It is to protect the interests of its members--ALL its members, the vast majority of whom are skillful professionals (and a minority of whom are just as if not more skilled than those superteachers at the charter schools). We can of course roll our eyes at the protections afforded those who have no business being teachers, and we imagine that the union would be open to reform of its system for allowing such teachers to be dismissed. But to focus on unions as the cause of failing schools is to utterly miss the point.
Let's say the unionbusters had their way and teachers' unions were abolished immediately. What would happen? Sure, the incompetents could be dismissed. And then what? Do these anti-union crusaders imagine there's some vast reserve of eager young instructors just waiting to take the place of the losers? Because, y'know, if there is this vast pool, really no one is stopping them from coming forward right now. In fact, we imagine the immediate effect of mass layoffs would simply be to increase the already heavy workload of the skilled teachers currently employed (thus causing a decrease in their effectiveness, but that's a whole 'nother story).
So just hire better teachers? Well, OK. But how many of the best and the brightest would clamor to join a profession so often villified and whose starting salary is little more than that of a typical cubicle-dwelling office drone? Some will say that we need to increase teachers' salaries. We agree. But that's just a starting point.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
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