This targeting of Teacher's unions is such a bullshit line of argument in this discussion and obviously based on a general animosity towards unions of all kinds (e.g. "every other (non-unionized) profession). The other part of seniority is that it protects teachers with experience--and higher salaries--from being laid off to hire random newbies because they are cheaper. this is objectively a resistance against the deskilling and devaluation of teaching as a profession. Lawyers may not have unions (though they do have a bit of a guild, IIRC), but they have the ability to make "partner" which gives them a say in how the firm works. Would you allow someone to make decisions about your firm who had no experience as a lawyer? Would you approve of a professional practice where partners could be fired in order to hire cheap new lawyers coming right out of law school? It would, in theory, be more economically efficient (which is supposedly the logic on which you base every claim), but it neglects to recognize that there is a good reason to keep people around who've been doing this for a while: experience is useful for institutions to function well.
Giving principals free reign to fire any teacher that gives them trouble is not a useful way to foster an institution of learning. Principals often move from school to school--my wife had a school where they had three principals in the course of one year--in many cases more often than teachers. This makes teachers one of the only populations that knows the community in which they work inside the school institution--and tenure helps retain that institutional memory in the face of administrative turnover. This among a myriad of other reasons is why tenure makes sense--and it is far from the biggest problem facing the public education system. Much of the problem stems from making schools the place where every other social problem is supposed to be solved--the health, feeding, housing, and family of students etc.--and then being surprised that they aren't able to do this. It is ridiculous to think that some private initiative in schooling--a precarious system for so many reasons--will be able to overcome the obstacles created by the privatization of every other social institution. This is a bankrupt way of administering public services and the sooner we realize it, the better we'll be. Yes there are problems with public bureaucracies; yes there are problems with unions; but none of those problems will be solved by a slash and burn effort to subject ever more aspects of our human existence to the creative destruction of the market. There is a reason we started building these bureaucracies to begin with--namely that the market wasn't providing these services. It is a senseless process of reinventing the wheel to insist that we go back to a system of seventeenth century institutions (debt slavery, poor house, transportation for offenses, enormous class disparities) in order to experience unmediated force of capitalism long enough to remember why we didn't like that way of doing things and start over. Just cause you'd like unions (or any government interference in the economy) wiped off the face of the earth doesn't mean that every problem we face can be solved by making your phantasies come true. s On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 14:00, David B. Shemano <[email protected]> wrote: > Michael Perelman writes: > > >> I do not entirely disagree with you. The problem is that we lack > >> adequate measures of good teaching – standardized tests give us some > >> numbers, but the numbers themselves are pretty worthless. If teachers > >> themselves had much say in the selection of administrators, I would be > >> more accepting of the elimination of seniority. > > > You won't be surpised I think this is a copout. Once we get away from > piecemeal production and into the world of knowledge and information > production, productivity becomes more subjective and difficult to evaluate, > but here is nothing special about this with respect to teaching. It applies > to lawyers, etc., and every other (non-unionized) profession manages to get > along with managerial qualitiative review. In fact, precisely beause of > standardized testing, it is easier to include an objective criteria in the > evalution of teachers than most other knowledge/information producers. > However, the ultimate issue is who decides. You think the decision should > be in the hands of the teachers, while I think the decision should be in the > hands of the principal, who has the managerial responsbility to ensure that > the school attracts students and performs its function. > > >> The job of the teachers should be to inspire, but inspiration becomes > >> difficult where teachers lack respect and where they get bogged down > >> in bureaucratic nonsense. > > An inevitable consequence of the government provided unionized school > system. Compare to private schools/catholic schools. > > David Shemano > > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > >
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