Sane Schools Pillar II

II. Intellectual Authority of Teachers

If I were seriously ill and in need of a physician, and if by some miracle I could secure either Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, or a young doctor fresh from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, with his equipment comprising the latest developments in the technologies and techniques of medicine, I should, of course, take the young doctor. On the other hand, if I were commissioned to find a teacher for a group of adolescent boys and if, by some miracle, I could secure either Socrates or the latest PhD from Teachers College, with his equipment of the latest technologies and techniques of teaching, with all due respect to the College that employs me and to my students, I am fairly certain that I would jump at the chance to get Socrates.

—William C. Bagley
Professor, Teachers College of Columbia University (1934)

Teaching is a noble profession, perhaps the noblest of all. It is certainly one of the most ancient. Every schoolteacher, new and experienced, has a rich, centuries-long heritage on which to draw, because every pioneer in every one of the intellectual disciplines, from Copernicus to Newton; from Chaucer to Twain; from Aristotle to Wittgenstein; were teachers themselves. Not all of them were classroom teachers; in fact most of them weren’t. But that doesn’t matter; they were masters of their respective fields, and often they were masters of several fields at once. In short, they were intellectuals.

But today, American schoolteachers are not valued for their mastery of subject-matter or for their intellect. Educrats do not respect subject-matter (or “content,” as they dismissively refer to it) because it threatens their authority, and intellectual authority over teachers is their bread and butter. That is why they’ve distorted the fine art of pedagogy into a pseudoscience and subordinated all curriculum and classroom practices to the whims of current research studies—studies that are as flaky and vulnerable to interpretation as is medical research. The analogy to medicine is particularly important here because educrats are forever using it as their first line of defense, maintaining that anyone who presumes to teach children without being steeped in the latest “research-based” “best practice,” as they define it, is an effective danger to children.

Nonsense. As we stated in our Credo, educrats are the ruling class of American education, and their exclusive franchise on what defines good teaching is the real threat to our kids’ intellectual health. Pedagogy isn’t a science, medical or otherwise. And no pedagogue can replace a teacher who knows their own subject matter thoroughly. The real reason educrats deify “current” pedagogy is to deify themselves: with rare exceptions, most of these people are career opportunists, always on the hunt for greater influence and (more often than you might suspect) more money. They must foster a culture of constant change—change for its own sake, not for the sake of quality, despite their rhetoric—because their own careers would be dead in the water without it. And because of the American commitment to a basic, quality public education for everyone (which we unquestionably support), their silly theories and gimmicks are often implemented in an environment of monopoly and dictatorship, not competition and objective scrutiny.

We believe that school change should be driven by advances in the academic subjects, not by crackpot pedagogical theory, and that real innovations should originate with teachers in a competitive environment. One way of achieving this is merit pay, which we know is opposed by most teachers’ unions, but we think it should be an option—particularly if it means slashing the salaries of high-level school officials to pay for it. Another way is the establishment of a new system of academic freedom in the public schools.

Most school districts employ a tenure system for teachers similar to that used in American universities, but with one critical difference: individual schoolteachers do not have the right to openly dissent, criticize, or oppose district policy as do their counterparts in higher education. The purpose of tenure in colleges and universities is to ensure not that professors can’t be fired—they can, for gross incompetence, misconduct, or other obvious causes–but that they can’t normally be fired for criticizing their own school administration. They are not punished for speaking out or for following their individual conscience. We’re all aware of the abuses to which the tenure system is vulnerable, as when university professors use the lectern as a platform to spout political propaganda instead of teaching. But one indisputable fact remains: American universities are the envy of the world, while American public schools are a public disgrace. We believe that if teachers were given the power of open dissent, schools would change for the better.

Our version of academic freedom, which we’ll refer to as Intellectual Authority from here on out, would give individual teachers the right to initiate and/or oppose school policy changes. It would not give them the right to commit insubordination, but it would force administrators to solicit approval from a majority of the school faculty before initiating new programs and policies, the way presidents must solicit Congress and all politicians must solicit voters. This is crucial because the power of administrators to set school priorities—fiscal, ideological, and academic priorities—affects all teachers, both directly and indirectly. And while many schools are thick with committees, they’re usually thin on democratic decision-making that respects the opinions of all teachers (see Pillar IV). Under the current top-down management system that prevails in most schools, teachers are often treated like blue-collar laborers instead of professionals so that educrats can pursue their own wasteful, careerist agendas.

Intellectual Authority also means that individual teachers are entitled to do things their own way, a right they’ve presumably earned by completing a college education, demonstrating mastery of their subject-matter, and acquiring their state-mandated teaching credentials. This right to independence varies, of course, according to the level of competence each teacher displays in the classroom—but we believe that competent teachers, and particularly Master Teachers as defined in Pillar III, have a fundamental right not to be interfered with. And while there are certainly a lot of administrators with the good sense to follow this simple rule of thumb, there are plenty more who would punish good teachers who don’t subscribe to their personal philosophy, whatever that philosophy may be. Mere teachers must never be allowed to control (or buck) the agenda of public schools; that is the exclusive realm of educrats.

And therein lies our main reason for asserting the Intellectual Authority of teachers: individual teachers should be entitled to freedom from ideology. If a teacher wants to pursue the latest, hippest fads advocated by the educrat establishment, he/she should have every right to do so. Likewise if a teacher wants to use traditional methods. And if a teacher wants to use a sensible combination of both, again, that’s his/her professional prerogative. But first we all have to agree that teachers are professionals, not mere laborers. We also have to agree that teachers should be the intellectual leaders in our schools, not the educrat class. They should have the same power to originate policy initiatives as administrators, under the same democratic conditions; and just as important, they should have the power to openly criticize and challenge school policy without fear of reprisal. There are ways to do this without causing institutional chaos, but it will necessitate the stripping of certain powers from educrats and elevating all teachers to the professional status they should’ve enjoyed all along. This, in turn, may also necessitate an all-out war on the education establishment.

For the record, that’s okay with us.

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