If Teachers are Saints, Why Doesn’t Anyone Listen to Us?
I had a conversation yesterday with a friend about Elizabeth Logan, a teacher who stole a first-grader’s coat and sold it on Ebay. The judge told Logan that she should have known better because she is a teacher. My friend agreed. She said that teachers should be held to higher standards and should have a higher moral code than others. My response was simple- get a clue.
In his book Values in English Language Teaching, Bill Johnston argues that it is impossible to teach without interference from one’s value. He contends that teachers cannot deal with the issues the arise in the classroom without assessing those issues in relation to their personal values. And let’s face it, sometimes, teachers lack values. Sometimes, teachers have values that are not aligned with a moral or honorable code. In the same way that doctors, lawyers, CEO’s, police officers can go to the dark side, teachers are not immune to bad behavior. But why is it that teachers are held to a higher standard? Should we hold all members of society to the same standard? Why do we look the other way when anyone but a teacher drops the moral ball?
AVIW wrote in her post Why We look to Teachers to Solve Our Problems, “I fully recognize that teachers are not saints. We too have our scandals. Unfortunately, however, society has decided to canonize us…” and I could not have put it better.
But what disturbs me more about my friend’s way of thinking is that given a choice between two stories- one from a teacher and one, say from a student, why is it that students win? If teachers are such saints, why is it that no one listens to us? Why doesn’t anyone care about our ideas regarding education reform? Why is it that when politicians seek to “better” education they never ask teachers? Charlie Rose, in July, featured an Education Series with six days of interviews attempting to find solutions to solving the Education Problem. Teachers were only interviewed on one day. They were not present when Michell Rhee, Wendy Kopp, or Joel Klein spouted misrepresentations and incoherent jargon about how to better education.
This is the real problem. This is the problem with making teachers into saints. This is the problem with judges who tell teachers that they should know better not because they are adults, but because they are teachers. Teachers don’t know anything about their jobs or their field. But they should know everything about morals, values, and more. And as a society, we would rather listen to politicians and self-serving, so-called do-gooders.
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Comments
Deborah
Have you read this? Interesting in context to what you are say:
http://www.thebowencenter.org/pages/conceptsep.html
It’s also on the right-suggested reading, bowen’s thoery.
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I’ve always wondered about this attitude, as well. I think it’s because, once again, teachers are scapegoats for society’s ailments. I also think that when children are involved, the public becomes very self-righteous and protective, and not is a good way, but in a crazed, irrational, foaming-at-the-mouth sort of way.
Perhaps this also stems from the fact that so many adults believe part of a teacher’s job is to teach morals and manners to their children, something I believe is a parent’s job. Same goes for teaching about religious faith, which is usually embedded in moral diction. Parents simply want to let someone else cover these jobs so they don’t have to, and it sets other people up as accountable, again, so they don’t have to be when something goes awry. I have no idea why a parent would think I, as a teacher, would be more qualified to teach their children about God and how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, than they are. It’s as though they don’t even trust themselves to do THAT. And given some of the crappy parenting I’ve witnessed in recent years, I’m not surprised…but I digress.
This also may stem back to the days when women were viewed as “the moral sex”, and purveyors of morality and the heart of the home. To this day, a jury will hold an accused woman to a much higher standard than an accused man of the same crime. And look at how many educators are women, especially at the elementary and early childhood levels, which are almost exclusively female. Yet, respect and being listened to, is not something women have had easily granted to them. Just a theory.