Garret Keizer for President!

I would like to report a fascinating article in the September issue of Harper's entitled Getting Schooled: The Re-education of an American Teacher. In it, Garret Keizer shares his observations on what has changed about being a public school teacher as he re-enters the school system from the vantage point of teaching at the same rural Vermont school at which he also taught thirty years prior.

One thought-provoking point that he makes is that, although he believes as much as the next guy in the importance of public education as an equalizing socio-economic force, there is danger in placing all of our societal eggs in that basket.   Keizer points out that it might be just a little too comfortable to look at a child who is doing well in school and justify the fact that the child was living with no heat in the winter, for example, by saying that a child who is doing fine academically must be doing fine overall. "Hey, a baby sleeping in a stable might grow up to be the next Jesus Christ." Test scores are not indicators of a child's overall well-being or their chances at leading a successful life. (If only it were that simple.)

Public education alone is not a panacea for all the problems facing children, and a school's relative success despite the odds should not be used to assuage societal guilt that children in that school are living in sub-standard or inhumane conditions.  We cannot forget that kids' lives have many more dimensions than their performance on The Test.

Also, in another very resonant part of the article, Keizer writes, "In the increased emphasis on data and the imposed emphasis on standardized jargon and tests...I sense the encroachment of the totalitarian "business model" that has destroyed family farming as a way of life."  A colleague remarked, "I'm afraid the day of the teacher-as-artist is drawing to a close."

My recent tenure troubles would certainly corroborate that.  The Superintendent who denied my institutionalized pat on the back doesn't know me from a hole in the wall, has never met me or seen me teach or been in my classroom or spoken with any of my students or their families or discussed with me any of my ideas about education.  If I'm an artist, then she has never seen any of my art. But what she has seen is a computer screen filled with numbers, and my numbers don't fit into her equation, and that makes it easy and convenient for her to decide remotely who is a good teacher and who isn't. So you see, teachers aren't artists, they're technicians, and students aren't kids, they are data.

But the part of the article that most caused me to pump my metaphorical fist in the air was remarking on
     
"the number of people  that need to believe you love [teaching.]...'I know the pay is not the        greatest," [they say]. 'but you're doing what you love.' -- a sentiment that puts me in mind of the trope of the happy slave... This is not to suggest that contemporary teachers are slaves or that I was ever treated like one, only that I am inclined to distrust people who expect me to work for love, or who need a sentimental mythology to gloss over the impossibilities of my job and the daily injustices it lays bare."

 I totally agree. I feel anyone who claims to love  the job, which Keizer is careful to point out is different from enjoying the job, must be either blind or insensitive to some of the more perverse realities of the job. Maybe it's just the simplistic terminology of "love" that bothers me, because I certainly don't hate the job either.  I have respect for the importance and monumentality of the task before teachers.  I am amused by the more comical and/or absurd elements of the job. I appreciate the chance to connect with kids and colleagues. I feel pride at the positive changes I've been a part of. I feel tenderness for the simultaneous vulnerability and strength of my students.  But the verb "love" doesn't encompass everything I feel about my job.  Because, in a certain light, teaching is like the story of Tantalus, with the fruit tree eternally raising its branches out of reach and the water always running dry, and a big boulder dangling on the precipice above. "To teach with your eyes open in a region like this is ever to be on the verge of tears," Keizer writes. The odds we face are hard to love.