"It was with that first class that I became aware that a teacher was subservient to a higher authority. I became increasingly aware of this subservience to an ever growing number of authorities with each succeeding year, until there is danger today of becoming aware of little else."
-- Marian Dogherty, Teacher, Boston, 1899
Take Me Back to Ol' Time Bossism, Let Workplace Harassment Roll
The changes in the Michigan Teacher Tenure legislation done by a greenpea legislature (where where about a quarter of the elected have not sought or received a degree beyond a high school diploma) have taken the profession back to the days of the late 1800's when Marion Dogherty penned these observations and assessment: "It was with that first class that I became aware that a teacher was subservient to a higher authority. I became increasingly aware of this subservience to an ever growing number of authorities with each succeeding year, until there is danger today of becoming aware of little else." -- Marian Dogherty, Teacher, Boston, 1899
TeaPublicans have been trying their darnedest to heap reprisal and retribution on the teachers and their choice to associate together in a coordinated effort to raise teaching standards and give the profession a solid basis for participation in the act of teaching, employment perimeters and a kind of professional codetermination" in educational policy (This collective bargaining act-with local contracts, creates agreed parties who work together) The giving of the right to collective bargaining legislation was signed into law by Republican Gov. George Romney).
Teachers teach, it the thing which they alone do. It's egregious and wrong that the TeaPubican rabble of Michigan has turned back the clock and chocked the pendulum (in order to serve the interests of the American Legislative Exchange Council the Chamber of Commerce and a myriad of supporting subgroups across America such as: the public school hating Mackinac Center here in Michigan and the notorious and divisive promoters of educational apartheid, Dick and Betsy DeVos and the Amway Clan, not to diminish the anti-public school subversion of the WalMart Waltons, and "for-profit freelances such as Michelle Rhee.)
The archaic power to hire and fire teachers "at will"( the 19th century industrial model) has been restored to administrators; who have been saddled with a overweening unnecessary demand, in revised law, to "evaluate" teachers on a intense schedule, in a not-so-hidden effort to weed out the "ineffective" amongst them. We all know the bottom lines: Increased intimidation and control, and replacement of experienced teachers with high salaries with newbies with much lower. The ability to conduct short term rollovers of staff is put in place. None of this assures anything less than the gradual erosion of educational achievement in Michigan.
This undefined term "ineffective" so hastily passed by anti-teacher foes, and now left to insider, smoke-filled legislative caucus/committee action, to flesh out and delineate what that term of choice "ineffective" may mean and how the process of "removing" those instructors whom a non-certified administrator SUBJECTIVELY DECIDES TO RELEASE or DEMOTE, takes form is yet to be decided. The entire question regarding "due cause" goes back to the"right-to-fire-at-will" process/setting observed by Marion Dogherty, Boston, 1899, a teacher is meant to be subservient and docile: "I became increasingly aware of this subservience to an ever growing number of authorities with each succeeding year, until there is danger today of becoming aware of little else."
Dealing with disruptive bullies and students lacking concern for their own educational progress-in this new Michissippian throw-back atmosphere-is a tough assignment; it takes teachers back retrograde to those ruffian times of "Let's get our teacher fired." This same tenor now exists in the adversarial relationship between administration and teachers; codified and put into law under the recently legislated tenure reversals imposed by Michigan Republicans.
If this be REAL education reform: Let's give up WiFi and limit ourselves only to the telegraph! Teachers will be judged on their proficiency-with slate and chalk.
Forced by Landrum/Griffith Act, co-authored by Sen. Robert Griffith-R of Michigan, teacher professional associations were constrained and forced to act as part of the more traditional frame/definition; a "union." New federal regulations were put in place that dictated changes that made the teaching profession more synonymous with "rank & file" industrial unionism than with the American Bar Association or the AMA.
Original.
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