Member-only story
Treated like 💩- Part 4. System Thoughts
A Thought Experiment
Consider the worst American school system you could possibly think of. This can be a real system, or something you imagine for this exercise. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that in this worst-possible school system, the teachers are treated like 💩. In fact, I’ll go so far as to suggest that the 💩 treatment of the teachers in a worst-possible system is a defining feature of that system’s dysfunction. Or if this is too abstract an exercise, feel free to find a counter-example of a dysfunctional school system that treats its teachers well. If you can find such a thing, please send it my way, but before you do, you might want to sit down with an actual teacher from that system and make sure that your perception matches their reality. This is the focus of this piece: The dynamics of the school systems in which American teachers teach, and how those dynamics can reinforce, or counter, treating teachers poorly.
How School Systems Fail.
There are plenty of ways in which school systems can become dysfunctional. Schools are complex systems, and there is a tendency in all complex systems to trend toward dysfunction absent well-considered actions by various system stewards. In schools, these stewards take many forms. They can be talented administrators, or rational teacher’s…
