A Teacher Resigns on YouTube

A friend sends the following video, posted on YouTube by a resigning teacher:

I think I can endorse everything she says from what I have seen myself, though I am not in the public schools.

The fundamental problem with the schools since the turn of the 20th century has been that they have tried to reduce students to objects and education to an assembly line. The current supposed "reforms" are not reforms, but further steps in this continuing process. The new emphasis is on standardized assessment because it makes it all look "scientific" and "efficient"--more like a factory. But this is entirely cynical--we know perfectly well in scientific terms that such assessments are relatively meaningless.

It is amazing that any good, honest teachers make it into the profession any longer; if they do, they are driven out. Leaving the field to those who are there either for as much money as they can get given their limited talents, and/or for the opportunity to bully. The worst of these naturally move up into administration, where the money is better and where the bullying opportunities are greater. And once there, they throw their weight around as much as they can, because that's who they are--bullies. This is why office politics are worse in "education" than anywhere else you can think of. This is why administration in the schools has been growing by leaps and bounds. This is why kids now get expelled from schools for such things as saying "Bang! Bang!" during recess.

And this is why the costs of education are skyrocketing without any improvement in results: because people who go into teaching now are not there for the kids, but for the money.

Michelle Rhee, former DC schools commissioner.

This is also why the current forms of "teacher evaluation" are designed, just as this teacher says, never to reward good teachers or good teaching, but rather to give administrators as much arbitrary power as possible. Like the wrongly celebrated Michelle Rhee in Washington. Which they will naturally use first on the best teachers. Because the most sincere teachers care more, they make the most satisfying victims.

I think the system is beyond saving. Certainly, there is no real possibility of reform from within.