The False Guise of Civility

by Dennis Green

I’m being called a “liar” and a “Limbaugh.” I’ve gotten death threats. My integrity has been questioned, along with my experience and my intelligence. All for saying that American public schools, including Alameda’s, are failing their students badly and deserve our tax support only for being accountable in return.

What a radical concept! Of course, we criticize bankers, financial manipulators and speculators, and day traders who take fat salaries or bonuses in the wake of their companies’ failures — but if you suggest that many teachers are doing a poor job of motivating and teaching their students you can expect a shitstorm.

In the wake of ten recent examples of vandalism against Democratic offices and headquarters, death threats by phone and email to Democrats who voted for the health care reform bill, even racial and anti-gay epithets, the Republican Central Committee accused the Democrats of “trying to stifle democratic debate and freedom of speech under the false guise of civility.” The false guise of civility. There it is.

It’s come to that. Our opinions are so much more important now than civility. “I’m right and you’re wrong, and the only way you could be so wrong is because you’re so stupid! And probably a faggot at that.”

I smoked out one guy, married to a teacher, who went so far as to claim that merit pay is a hoax, that President Obama’s “Race to the Top” Program is a farce because Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has never been a classroom teacher, and besides, you can’t evaluate good teaching anyway, especially not with TEST SCORES!

The writer overlooks the fact that education is all about test scores. The only way you demonstrate achievement and competence in math, or spelling, or writing coherently, or having learned the Third Law of Thermodynamics is by taking and passing a test. It might be “true/false” or multiple choice or an essay exam, but your test scores as a student determine whether you get that passing grade, that scholarship, or admission to Cal.

So why not evaluate the teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores, how many of them drop out, how many of them achieve 100% proficiency in a given subject? You can supplement such measurements with observation of the classroom and see whether the students are motivated, engaged, excited, and learning. You can also test the teachers and determine whether they are prepared to teach, and whether they maintain their knowledge and their skills. Excellence in teaching is not some mysterious aura that can’t be measured or observed.

Under the false guise of civility, I will even give the worst teachers the benefit of the doubt. I think you are in the minority, perhaps no more than one third of all teachers holding tenure, and I think you would be much happier doing something else for a living. And you wouldn’t be destroying young lives.

©2010 Dennis Green