Teachers should function without pressure

Daniel B. Coupland, Tribune News Service

The pandemic-related chaos of the last two years exposed a decadeslong scandal in American education: Bureaucrats from the education establishment have failed those communities they claim to serve. When students were forced to remain home during the COVID-19 lockdowns and online instruction was streamed into their homes, many parents — who send their children to school to learn math, history, literature, science, art and more — were understandably aghast by what they heard and saw. They witnessed weak, content-free instruction. Last year, parents unenrolled their children from traditional public schools in record numbers — marking the largest decline in a century.

Most Americans know by now that K-12 teachers are underpaid, overworked and underappreciated, but few acknowledge the fact that they are also overregulated. Even now, teachers are hamstrung by rigid, top-down mandates from government administrators and policymakers far removed from local schools and communities. This omnipresent oversight from bloated, multilevel educational bureaucracies, along with an unhealthy and oppressive overemphasis on testing, has made the central work of teachers — educating students — nearly impossible. No wonder many educators are leaving the profession in what amounts to a crippling exodus, robbing many students of the excellent teachers they deserve. Many within the education establishment deflect criticism of their radical agenda by using students and teachers as shields. They claim to be acting on behalf of schools, but don’t be fooled: Their highest priority is protecting their own positions of power and influence as they push the newest, half-baked educational fads alongside ideological agendas. The education establishment does many things poorly. But what it is very good at is protecting itself.

But most educators don’t choose to become teachers so that they can serve as laboratory technicians for educational experimentation and foot soldiers for ideologues. They accept the low pay, long hours and difficult work that come with the profession because they recognize the lasting impact of learning on their own lives and want the same for future generations of students. So, what’s the solution? Freedom. Local school leaders — who are accessible and accountable to the communities they serve — should be free to hire, train, cultivate and retain the kind of people they need to do the difficult work in schools. While the demand for teachers continues to grow, the pool of applicants needs to expand beyond the alarming status quo. Currently, the education establishment controls the supply of potential teachers through unproven, irrelevant and unnecessary certification requirements — essentially acting like a modern-day medieval guild. Teachers should be free to teach. Under the direction of local school leaders, educators need space to cultivate the intellectual and moral growth of their students without the heavy hand of a distant, self-serving education establishment.

Teachers should be free to use their natural and developed gifts to teach a robust curriculum in science, literature, mathematics, the arts, history, physical education and civics. This is the kind of schooling experience that students deserve, parents desire and society demands. Most importantly, it’s precisely the type of education that can provide students the best chance to attain the knowledge and skills they’ll need to embark on a life of learning.

We at Hillsdale College believe that a classical education returns honor and dignity to the teacher by asking teachers to serve as role models for the kind of human beings that students should ultimately become. For this reason, we focus on who teachers are, not just what they can do. Hillsdale doesn’t offer majors in “education” because we want all of our undergraduates to have the experience of being grounded in at least one academic field of study. We choose not to offer a typical certification program because the standards for these programs reflect the same agenda of the education establishment. Instead, we offer our students an optional minor in classical education that includes a small selection of content-rich courses in education that any undergraduate may take.