Set Our Teachers FREE!

On Monday I shared a paper by Dr. Martin Haberman, Distinguished Professor and Academician. The repercussions from this paper could be far-reaching, not only because Dr. Haberman is extremely qualified to make his assessments, but also because he pulls no punches and really says it like it is.

In the paper he shares 15 different types of lessons that are being taught to urban students, that he calls “the ideology of non-work”.

I’ve been deliberating how I should present the information to you, my reader. I finally decided that I would list the 15 “subjects” he has outlined, then, if your interest is piqued, I would simply provide the link to the article itself. After all, you probably prefer to evaluate the facts for yourself, rather than having me chop them up and spoon-feed them to you, with a healthy dose of my own opinions.

Some of the “lessons” he names are pretty-much self-explanatory. Some require further explanation, which his paper proceeds to do. Here are the topics/lessons he addresses:

• Nowness
• Showing Up
• Make Me
• Excuses
• Non-Cooperation
• Respect
• Authority
• Peers
• Messing Up
• Explaining Success
• Relevance
• Purpose
• Staying On Task
• Ignorance
• Investment

Each of these topics is clearly explained in the article. Dr. Haberman then lists 20 reasons why graduating students of urban schools find difficulty being employed when these “lessons” are transferred to the real world.

As Dr Haberman says:

“The ideology of unemployment insures that those infected with it will be unable to enter or remain in the world of work without serious in-depth unlearning and retraining. Urban youth are not simply ill prepared for work but systematically and carefully trained to be quitters, failures, and the discouraged workers who no longer even seek employment.”

WOW! Strong words! Is he right?

Before I give you the link to the article, I would like to address one of the “lessons” Dr. Haberman says that urban students “catch”. It made me think.

The lesson of MAKE ME is really about who is accountable for what students learn. He gives many reasons and a clear explanation of this lesson in his article. But what really jumped out at me, among the information about “authoritarian institutions” and safety needs, was his report of student attitudes.

Young people in urban schools feel that principals, teachers and staff run everything by their rules, so school is “their deal, not ours”. What’s more, since these students are compelled to go to school while the teachers are “paid” to go to school, it’s the teacher’s JOB to see that they learn. It’s actually logical when you think about it. Because these students are not learning for the sheer enjoyment of it, or even taught to take responsibility for building a better future for themselves, why wouldn’t they feel that way? The article says:

“The endless rules, a prescribed curriculum, and the pedagogy of poverty. . .supports the students’ perception that it is not only the teacher’s job but his/her responsibility to see to it that they learn. Students describe good teachers as the ones ‘that made me learn’.”

The article concludes with Dr. Haberman’s suggestion about what can be done to remedy this situation. Everything he says about correcting issues in public schools is completely in alignment with “Set Our Teachers FREE! A Plan to Save Public Education”, although the book spells out a much more thorough restructuring that would improve EVERY school, not just urban schools.

The article is interesting, provocative and well-worth reading. For the entire article, Click Here!

Have a GREAT day!

Brennan

Filed under: Education Reform