by Michael Patrick

Created on: June 30, 2008   Last Updated: July 04, 2008

I challenge the question's implication that teachers are responsible for positive global change. Let's be careful about that. Teachers have a mission . . . to impart knowledge of their expertise to children who resist every word they say. A very tough job. I don't believe they should be burdened with saving the world. That's up to parents, family, friends and neighborhoods, religions and cultural icons.

Teachers are amazing, an absolute necessity, and I support them as often as I can with money, boxes of reams of paper, and joining School Action Committees (SACs). Teaching, nevertheless, is a profession, not an immutable force for good or evil. Teachers patiently impart knowledge and it's up to parents and families and communities to help students learn how to use that knowledge for positive change.

As much as the NEA and AFT suggest they have overwhelming influence over life itself, such claims are more consistent with political rhetoric than fact. Teachers, God bless 'em, remain in the trenches as the ones who train our children in the basics of information: reading and writing, basic mathematics, and, in some cases, inspiring the grand prize; that learning never stops, that the more we know, the more we need to explore, research, question and revise our beliefs to, by Jiminy, discover the ongoing brilliance, color, and music of life.

Teachers can only do so much. They are a specifically trained and educated part of the broad communal gestalt that gives our children the tools and understanding to act in positive ways . . . or not.

The concept of general education took centuries to happen. By the early 20th century, the idea that all American children would attend school was accepted. It still took decades to force upon parents a national standard for basic education that superseded a family's desires or objections. That debate is yet to be settled.

While it may be argued that movers and shakers throughout history were generally better educated (therefore "taught" by a teacher), whether the resulting change was positive or negative is certainly debatable.

George Counts, PhD (1889-1974) was one of the first to write extensively about and promote the idea that educators were not only better able, but responsible for proper moral, ethical, economic, and political thinking. He believed that educators should be policy-makers in all walks of life and decide between conflicting purposes and values. By his reckoning, teachers were better qualified to decide issues than Congress or the Supreme Court. With a sort of smug class distinction, Counts attributed a higher moral and ethical standard to the educated than those who worked the land, toiled in the factories, or pioneered unpopular ideas.

I disagree with Counts' autocratic view that educators are omniscient judges of cultural change. While I support his zeal for education as an impetus for national and personal progress, I remember my first grade teacher who mercilessly beat my hand with a ruler because I wrote with my left. I survived that and became an artist just to prove her wrong.

Teaching plays a critical role in the formation and maintenance of our national character, but should not be held accountable for the failure of parents, extended family, friends and workplaces, churches and communities, which bear the greater burden in shaping the ideals of ethical behavior and the moral fiber to rise to the challenges of local and global change.

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