“Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?”
To sum up the article, “Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?” teachers are being threatened, per-say, to get laid off or get a salary cut for one of a few reasons. Either due to low-standardized test scores, they don’t have “seniority protection”, or the government feels as if they are not doing their job. I find this ironic because in Ken Robinsons video clip I watched in class he touches on this same subject, just viewed in a different way, instead of criticizing the teachers his fingers are pointed in the direction of the government.
Our government says students standardized testing scores are low, yes well maybe they are, this could result in bad teaching yes, but lets be honest not every teacher is bad, being a student, I had more good teachers the bad. I think it results in bad standardized testing. Like it as stated in the video, these big yearly tests the states have us taking are broken down into what they think is appropriate for each grade level to have the knowledge of, and each grade level is broken down by age, well what if some kids who are the same age are more or less advanced then others and know more or less? Which I believe is almost always true.
Teachers are being laid off because they have only been in the school system for three years as opposed to 20, so they don’t have those seniority privileges. Seriously, really, are you kidding me? If this is the way the school system is ran then no wonder it is failing, the people running it are failing. Some of the younger teachers have so much knowledge, spunk, and motivation to be a amazing teacher and they have more chance of loosing their job compared to someone who has been teaching longer, who easily and most likely does take advantage of this system and can get away with being a lazy teacher. Government cant ask why the schools are the way they are, it is because Government is the way it is.
In the article “Teachers wonder, why the scorn?” Tony Bennett, a young teacher who was laid off due to seniority privileges, said, “This is in no way, shape or form an attack on teachers; it is a comprehensive effort to reform a system.” If teachers aren’t doing their job then yes, they should be fired, education is a very important subject, and they are teaching the future of our world, our children. I agree with the intentions the Government and authority has to make our schooling system as good and advanced as possible. But we live in a very advanced time right now, much more then in the past, how do people think we can learn the same way as we did years and years ago? We are trying to meet the future, doing everything the same as the past and we are getting nowhere.
Maggie -- you do a good job of pointing out how this article differs from Ken Robinson's video. However, you make a lot of references to a general government or authority. What we need to do is specify who we are talking about in our critiques. The government, society, authority and others are not one singular power/voice -- there are many perspectives and stances which we need to clearly identify in order to point where they are right or wrong in their policies.
ReplyDeleteI also have a question -- why would you believe that the longer someone works somewhere (seniority) the more likely they are to "game" the system (take advantage)? Maybe I misunderstood your critique?
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