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This week on CounterSpin: A special back to school episode, with two interviews from this year that get at some of the thorniest issues around public education: The politics of teacher tenure and the de facto segregation of American schools. Our guests are writer and activist Brian Jones and Nikole Hannah-Jones of ProPublica.
LINKS:
–Protections of Teacher Tenure Do Not Hurt Students, by Brian Jones (New York Times: Room for Debate, 6/12/14)
–Segregation Now: The Resegregation of America’s Schools,” by Nikole Hannah-Jones (ProPublica, 4/16/14)
CounterSpin’s August 29, 2014, edition Guests: Brian Jones (on tenure) Nikole Hannah-Jones (on school segregation)
In both of these presenters, I find a critical flaw: “blame”. Someone said “fix the problem, not the blame.” I agree. If you don’t even suggest a solution, you have not aided in the solution to the problem posed. I find also in these presenters an “either-or” thinking, an old flaw.
Number 1 Tenure: There is clearly something wrong with the “tenure” system in schools and colleges and universities in the United States and it is disingenuous to omit this. But the solution is to analyze it seriously and fix it; neither hold on to it wholly, nor throw it out completely. Within the tenure system is a corrosive crony element and this may be a factor also in poorly prepared teachers (not to mention inept administrators) and poorly prepared/educated students, graduates and dropouts.
Is there any evidence that tenured or non-tenured teachers alone or integrated or segregated schools alone makes for inferior or superior education? There are people who rose from the earlier eras, 1950s and before, who contributed greatly to America, who were accomplished people, and moral leaders.
Number 2 Segregation, desegregation, re-segregation: It is easy to throw around words like “apartheid” (used inaccurately by the presenter) and the inflammatory refrain, “racism.” But again this issue is more complex than the lazy would have us believe. The presenter never mentions some black people’s pride in being segregationists. She didn’t mention the black “charter” schools and who is profiting from these often inferior schools. She fails to mention what black people in America have or have not done in their own behalf since the 1954 school desegregation ruling. And probably worst of all, you can’t begin to report on segregation unless you include northern cities and western cities. In both cases, such studies are useless except to further inflame one side or the other. These two presenters or writers or researchers – or whatever they are – “fix blame” but make no attempt to “fix the problem.” This is part of what fuels regression in the United States of America.