Because Educators Do As They're Told

By:  Justin S. Williams

Justin S. Williams

Justin Williams wrote this powerful post in reaction to this article http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article142682464.html

What's most interesting to me about this story is that I've been through the document authentication process required for working abroad. Your degrees have to be authenticated by the department of education located at the capitol of the state in which it was earned. Then it has to be authenticated again by the Secretary of State in DC, followed by the embassy of the country in which you expect to work.

To which State would an online degree be beholden? How diligent are State Education Departments? The universities themselves have to provide an authentication stamp of approval also. Many people at brick and mortar universities are unsure of this international authentication process because they so rarely receive requests for them. How would an online degree program handle this? Where do you go?

There's a lot of shady business going on in the global education ecosystem. For the sake of kids around the world, education ministries and departments in the western world need to clamp down on the chicanery.

Will Betsy Devos, the billionaire recently appointed to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education, be looking into such matters?

Nope.

The business of educating children is becoming more and more of a profit-making venture, shot through with vultures very qualified at making money and not much else. For now, education remains a sitting duck for these capitalists.

Because educators do as they're told.

We're told to not talk publicly about the abusive, poorly conceived standardized tests we proctor and prepare kids for, against our better judgement. We follow orders, because we need to pay private school tuition for our own children. Or we just need to live, on money earned as complicit abusers of children who'll not easily forgive us.

We're told it's against the law for us to strike. So we don't, though many of us teach our students to be free thinkers, to challenge abuses when they see them, to be confident enough to stand up for themselves against bullies and thugs. Other educators have stopped even this level of resistance, succumbing to the war for the minds and bodies of our children, our students.

We're told not to dare be too political. We follow orders, like sheep among wolves, because of all that big money most of us are making. I'd understand if all teachers were making Long Island money.

We're told what to teach, how to teach, when to teach. We're told we'll have 35 kids in each of five or six classes. We're told great teachers can handle this. We're pitted against one another with merit pay, unequal pay, publicized test scores, recognition for best decorated classrooms, best management of classes, best dresser, most able to kiss up to administration. We tolerate the dismantling of our profession by forces like Teach for America and our own union leaders.

Teachers, the largest professional workforce on the planet, follow orders better than any other workers in history. It's why we're the last great union, wherever we are "allowed" to unionize.We're the most educated group of discounted, disrespected, go-with-the-flow, wherever-it-goes workers on Earth.
And it's why we're failing our children, all over the world. Miserably.

Can we find another way to help each other eat? Can we find a way to look each other in the eye again, to look ourselves in the eye again? When's the last time you looked yourself squarely in the eye, for more than a glance while brushing your teeth?