Treated like 💩- Part 1. Opening Premises

Note: I’ve been kicking around half a pile of half-baked writing on this topic for a few years, giving it irregular attention as the needs of my doctoral work have ebbed and flowed. For the next few weeks, I’m going to publish the major chunks of it here, even if they are still half-baked. Enjoy!

The thesis of this series is that every problem in American education can be attributed to one root cause: America treats its teachers like 💩. Make a list of every issue you think American education has (ex. student achievement, school funding, equity of access to quality public education, supposedly powerful teachers unions, the increasing tide of gun violence in schools) — Each one of them is due to the fact that in America¹, teachers are treated like garbage.

Am I really saying that in a system as complex and multi-faceted as American education there is a single root cause for the various issues that seem to plague it? Yes. And I’m saying that we should all understand what that issue is: It’s that American teachers are crapped-on beyond anything approximating reason if the goal is to have those teachers do their best work teaching kids.

It Can’t Really Be That Simple.

On one level, of course it’s not. The American school system is a complex thing. The idea that there is a single…