Teaching used to be such a respected and rewarding career. It was a profession that retained employees for decades. My Great-Aunt Mildred taught school for fifty years and touched the lives of hundreds, thousands, of children. Aunt Mildred began her career in rather primitive one-roomed schoolhouses where, in addition to teaching, she did the janitorial work, and fixed hot noon meals for the students. A couple years after she retired, I asked her how she felt about retirement. With her stern, schoolmarm manner, she bluntly stated, “Worst decision I ever made in my life!” She would have preferred to teach until they had to carry her out of the school. As a child, my mother would occasionally ‘go to school’ with Aunt Mildred to watch her teach, and to dream of someday becoming a teacher.
My mother did, indeed, become a teacher and touched the lives of hundreds of students. Mother taught the deaf in and around Ypsilanti, then supervised a school for children with multiple handicaps in Jackson. She taught ‘deaf & blind’ children in Colorado, then returned to Michigan and taught special education students in the job that I now hold. Mother tried to retire once – we even held a big retirement party – but she was called back, yet that summer, and continued teaching until she was 72 years old. As a child, I would occasionally ‘go to school’ with Mother to watch her teach, and to dream of some day becoming a teacher.
I did become a teacher, and believe that I, as well, have touched the lives of hundreds of children. I began my career in 1972, teaching the deaf in Sioux City, Iowa, and have also taught in Colorado, Eastern Iowa, and Michigan. I share, with my Mother and my Aunt Mildred, a deep love for teaching, and an appreciation for the awe that comes from contributing to a child’s development – into a reader; a learner; a thinker; a truly educated individual. What I do not share with these two fine ladies is any desire to teach in public schools into my sixties, let alone into my seventies. I plan to retire as soon as I am old enough to file the paperwork. My son never chooses to ‘go to school’ with me to watch me teach, and never dreams of becoming a schoolteacher.
The modern culture of schooling has taken a great toll on my generation of teachers and on our families. Some teachers have been able do their best while trying not to worry about the system as it crashes around them. I have never been able to do that, and my family has paid a dear price, living with my stress and my tears of frustration. I have always believed that it was my job to educate children to the best of my, and their, abilities. That quality is no longer appreciated, or even encouraged, in too many schools. I first understood this when one supervisor wrote a negative evaluation: “Linda is even willing to fight to improve services for deaf children.”
Many of us face reprimands, even retaliation, for daring to improve services for children. Those of us too young to retire, often find our health and relationships harmed. Many of us believe that our frustrations stem from the fact that we began teaching when learning was valued, students were motivated, and administration was supportive of excellence in education. We then spent these thirty years observing, with no power to stop, the trashing of traditional teaching methods; the entrenching of inferior fads and materials; the lowering of expectations – at first for the lazy children, and then for the remainder of the student population; and the ‘other-world’ craziness of administrative leadership.
We have watched our schools be vandalized; traditional curriculum be compromised; students speak, dress, and act like the lowest of classes. We work for young bosses who are proud of never earning anything higher than a ‘C’ in school, but who expect us to applaud their ‘achievements.’ We shake our heads in disbelief, but this is too often the world we face when we arrive at our buildings.
Those who know teachers who began teaching in the late 1960’s or the early 1970’s, must be noticing the fact that they are leaving the teaching profession in droves. They quietly file their retirement papers at the soonest possible moment, and turn away from public education.
I find that I cannot leave without asking, “Why?” Why has the educational culture destroyed the schools that used to educate all Americans? Why have educational policies and politics shattered the hopes of all races of people in this land, and the hopes of all their offspring? Why have poorly educated, but well ‘trained’ administrators been so unwilling to acknowledge, let alone wisely use, the potential that experienced and caring teachers possess – we who might have planned to teach into their sixties, if not our seventies – but instead file retirement papers in mass numbers?
Has the destruction of the American education system been done purposefully, or just out of widespread stupidity? There are theories, documented and well-supported, that lead one to believe that the results we work so hard to hold at bay, are exactly those which arrogant socialist planners want and strive to achieve. Our educational culture seeks the kind of teachers who believe that such ‘social leveling’ is best for us; for our America.
Is government education in the process of facing its ‘twilight years’ or is public education entering a ‘twilight zone?’
Seasoned, skilled, and caring teachers face a conundrum; a quandary: we were not trained, nor are we willing, to accept the miseducation and dumbing-down that come from either scenario – the twilight of American schooling, or a ‘twilight zone’ of crazed educational pathologies. We have no choice but to pack up, turn in our keys, and leave. We are seen as dinosaurs, and the new educators do not want us in the schools. Our rational knowledge and skills-based instruction distracts the ‘levelers’ from their spacey concepts of learning and conditioning.
Can the schools survive without our skills, experience, wisdom, insight, behavioral management, and academic goals? I believe that the nation will discover that answer within the next ten years. Some young, shallow-thinking, ill-trained principals – not only believe public schooling can survive without us; not only expect that the schools will be better off without us; – but actively seek to drive us out of the field of education. Sadly, but still forward-looking, we early retirees will spend our twilight years being productive – not in the public schools – but elsewhere.
January 24, 2003
