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As the
richest, most powerful nation in the world, you'd think we'd have the
best system of public education too, but we don't. There are those who
try to argue that we do, but
statistics and
hidden camera exposes easily debunk
their claims.
Most of those who admit we have a problem insist it's an issue of money,
namely the insufficient amounts we're spending. Specifically, the
argument is that we "undervalue" teachers and fail to "motivate" them to
do quality work by paying them too little. In essence, what we're told
is that "you only get what you pay for" when it comes to public
education.
Sadly, we often accept this theory without question. Why not challenge
it? Why not look around at our other government-funded systems that
serve the public interest. Are there any that have a highly motivated,
highly skilled, but low-paid workforce that consistently delivers
world-class-quality products and services?
The answer is yes. The U.S. military fits that
description to a "T." To be sure, its overall budget dwarfs that of the
public schools, but—thankfully perhaps—the materials for war are much
more costly than the materials for learning. But it's the
personnel costs I'm comparing. After all, the contention is that we
don't pay teachers enough to attract the "best" candidates for the
jobs, and, ironic as this may sound, apparently we don't pay the
less-than-best we do attract enough to motivate them to do a good job.
It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
It shouldn't be controversial to compare soldiers to teachers. Both
groups serve the public interest, both rely on our tax dollars for
funding, and both are essential to our survival. Without an educated
population, democracy cannot survive, let alone thrive. Illiterate
people cannot vote and cannot run for office; they cannot participate in
government at all. Without public education, the "of the people, by the
people" experiment-we-call-Home could, despite Mr. Lincoln's fervent
prayers, perish from the Earth.
The analogy between soldiers and teachers may not be apples-to-apples,
but it is close enough to be instructive. What motivates the soldier,
even in the face of terrible danger and horrific conditions? What
motivates him to become a soldier in the first place? What motivates him
to re-up, even after active duty in a combat zone? Is it love of country
and sense of duty, ambition for higher rank and pay, fear of death, or
all of the above?
If—as I suspect—it's all of the above, then we have to ask why teachers
consistently claim that more money would attract them,
motivate them, and keep them. We don't go around complaining that low
pay enables us to attract fewer or less qualified people to our
military, so why do we so readily accept that premise when it's schools
we're talking about? Why aren't we asking if greater love of country and
sense of duty would do the trick? What makes teachers so peculiarly
money-driven?
After all, teachers face less danger, have more job security, better
benefits and even greater opportunity for advancement than the average
soldier today, but while teacher morale is low, soldier morale is
consistently high. What causes this difference?
This I can answer, from my own personal experience, in precisely two
words: Teachers' Unions.
When a soldier
completes his training, he goes to work directly for the country. There
is no "union" to which he pays dues, no separate entity between himself
and the people and nation he serves.
In contrast, teachers do pay dues to a union. They have representation
through which they speak to and negotiate with the public.
Unlike the soldier, their loyalty is very often divided.
As Terry Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of the
Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, and a
professor of political science at Stanford points out:
The problem is not that the unions are somehow bad or
ill-intentioned. They aren't. The problem is that when they simply do
what all organizations do—pursue their own interests—they are inevitably led to do things that are not in the best interests of children.
To appreciate why this is so, consider the parallel to business firms.
No one claims that these organizations are in business to promote the
public interest. They are in business to make money, and this is the
fundamental principle that drives their behavior. Thus, economists and
policy makers fully expect firms to pollute the water and air when
polluting is less costly (and more profitable) than not polluting—and that is why we have laws against pollution. The problem is not
that firms are out to destroy the environment. The problem is simply
that their interests are not identical to the public interest, and the
two inevitably come into conflict.
Teachers' unions need to be understood in much the same way. Their
behavior is driven by fundamental interests too, except that their
interests have to do with the jobs, working conditions, and material
well-being of teachers. When unions negotiate with school boards,
these are the interests they pursue, not those of the children who are
supposed to be getting educated.
Soldiers don't actively seek to pursue their personal interests at our
expense. In fact, if and when they do, they are reprimanded, severely
punished or even dishonorably discharged.
Not so with teachers. The union that competes for their loyalty
protects them when they fail to make good on their commitments to us,
and we are the people who make their dues-paying possible in the first
place.
Teachers' unions champion the rights of the individual public servant
as more important than the rights and expectations of the public he
serves. The military takes the opposite approach. The individual is
secondary to the team or unit or platoon or regiment, and all of those
are secondary to the public good. This system works because there is a
clear hierarchy of rank and responsibility. Respect and obedience
to those of higher rank and experience is required and strictly
enforced, mediocrity is rarely if ever excused, and merit is often,
if not always, rewarded.
Unlike teachers, soldiers of superior rank "earn" their positions by
meeting a combination of objective and subjective criteria. There is
no union enforcing "equity" or "fairness" based solely on objective
criteria, no one paid to perpetuate the lie that people are "equally"
capable of doing a good job, and therefore "equally" deserving of
whatever benefit it is that they seek. In short, soldiers have no one
working overtime to protect their incompetence for the sole purpose of
retaining dues-paying members.
In contrast, teachers get to be individuals. They get to exercise
judgment on a more regular basis, and are not required to simply
follow orders. They do have to follow curriculum guidelines and an
arcane set of regulations and protocols, just like soldiers, but as
already noted, they get to do it without feeling like their lives
literally depend on the quality of the decisions they make.
Yet for all their autonomy, teachers still like to blame parents and
children when they fail. The same people who increasingly want to be
"empowered" to make more decisions for and about our kids—like when
and how much to medicate them, when, what and how much to feed them,
how to dress them and what they should believe in (or not believe in)—want more money from us for the privilege. Again, it would be funny if
it weren't so sad.
I'm not saying parents and kids aren't sometimes to blame for failure
in school, but maintaining that all the fault lies with them only
serves to further weaken the case teachers make for higher salaries.Why should we dig deeper to pay them more when we are supposedly the
ones who need to do all the work?
What would you say if the military told us it was our fault the war in
Iraq is dragging on, that paying them more would motivate them to do a
better job? How outraged would we be that people who had signed up to
serve us would demand to be served by us before even trying to
make good on their promises?
The bottom line is this: Divided loyalty and a emphasis on individual
rather than shared goals differentiates our teachers from our
soldiers. Soldiers don't need to be reminded that they work for us.
Would you let the government select your babysitter this Saturday
night?
Would you allow a government-hired, government-paid, union-accountable
employee to be responsible for the care, feeding and well-being of your
school-aged children in your own home, for even a couple of hours?
"Of course not," you might say. "My babysitter is accountable to ME."
Then why do we insist on personal accountability for our babysitters, but
not
for those who'll teach our children nearly everything they need to know
to
function in our society?
Apparently, teachers do.
Deborah Fillman is a blogger, mom, and former public school teacher.
She will write about school choice in the fall issue of Like
It Is Magazine.
Ms. Fillman lives in
Charlotte, NC with her husband and two daughters. |
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