Posted by
Bruce Deitrick Price on Monday, March 17, 2008 7:34:21 PM
It has been said that teachers are the hope of the future. This was never so true as it is today. More and more I think that if American education is to be rescued, teachers will have to do it.
I write a lot about our educators and their counterproductive theories. I always explain that when I speak of educators, I never mean teachers. I mean the people at the top, the bosses with PhD’s who control policy in the ed schools and the bureaucracy. (Indeed, my work is dedicated to America’s teachers--I always feel they are as much the victims of bad theory as students are.)
Unfortunately, teachers often allow themselves to be co-opted and controlled by these elite educators with their hidden agenda. Here is a better paradigm: teachers should distance themselves from these education commissars, and focus on what is genuinely best for children....
Mona McNee and Alice Coleman, two remarkable British teachers with more than 80 years of experience between them, have just published a searing new book titled ‘The Great Reading Disaster.” McNee and Coleman analyze education in the UK during the past 50 years, and reach this sad conclusion: “The real villains were not the victimized teachers who carried out the intellectual child abuse but the training establishments that brainwashed them into doing so.”
Victimized. Brainwashed. How many American teachers recognize themselves in that quote? Indeed, how many teachers have always known that they were being manipulated and managed in a variety of ways, and sent forth to do the ideological bidding of their trainers?....
Thomas Jefferson said: “A little revolution now and then is a good thing.” What we need, I believe, is for teachers to take that message to heart, and revolt against the secret manipulation by educators. Why not return to the real business of teaching--which is to raise children as far as you can. Not control them, not level them, not shape them to somebody else’s blueprint. But to enable them to achieve all that they can achieve--for their own good and for the good of society....
The USA seems to have two types of educators that cause most of the damage: the Rousseauvian/Hippie/Romantic/Permissive sort that scorns standards of any kind; and the Collectivist/Socialist/Communist/Totalitarian sort that hates this country and this civilization. The synergy between these two types is predictably negative: less and lower, dumb and dumber. Neither group is overly concerned with whether children can read or count. Indeed, academic success actually seems to get in the way of the social engineering schemes the top educators are often in love with.
It’s not that these people are evil. It’s that their field is contaminated, encrusted, weighed down by lame ideas and inane sophistries. Even the most motivated people are kept from doing their best.
So, it’s a good time for teachers to pull back from the smothering embrace of educators. Teachers should turn toward doing what is best for their own minds, their own souls. As the Carnegie Foundation stated: “Teachers must think for themselves if they are to help others think for themselves.”....
Many teachers know in their hearts that they’re caught up in a huge con. What they don’t know is how to escape.
Well, first of all, with regard to educators, let’s just point out that the Emperor is quite naked. Educators since Dewey have been playing power games and ideology games, and many of these games got tangled up with money games (need I mention Big Publishing, Big Psychiatry, Big Pharma, Big Labor, all in a steamy bed with Big Ed). So here’s where we are now. The guy’s naked. Yes, the Emperor of Education is totally naked. Educators who would create 50,000,000 illiterates have no credibility. They ought to be laughed out of town, perhaps arrested. It’s child abuse, for one thing....
Teachers need to be liberated from their oppressors. We need to see some new political movements. Teachers should join, at least in their hearts, the Teacher Liberation Front. TLF! Power to the Teachers!
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These five excerpts provide a short version of a much longer article: "31: Teacher Liberation Front" on
Improve-Education.org
Article has epilogue titled: Educator Liberation Front.