Public Educators Deserve Gratitude, Not Political Propaganda
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
As part of this season of Thanksgiving, the Anderson Observer is shining the spotlight of gratitude on the men and women who make our county special.
Today, let’s be grateful for those who have chosen public education as their mission in life. It’s a tough time to be in the classroom and administrative offices of public schools these days.
Finding ways to build an effect structure to allow for a meaningful classroom experience has been a challenge for many years. With the advent of Chromebook classrooms and students with increasingly short attention spans, the road is bumpier than ever.
Do you remember your favorite teacher? What was it that made them stay in your memory all these years? It’s likely their challenging, creative presentation of subject matter and caring for students was part of the formula.
Teachers now face the additional burden of a level of scrutiny that makes creativity and engaging students even more difficult. Where it was once at least an option to bring in a book, news clipping, or other materials, a teacher found potentially interesting, today every move is being held to a standard that is both unclear and unfair.
As a result, teachers are leaving the profession faster than ever.
National trends are reflected locally, with many teachers and administrators a breaking point. The shortage of educators in public schools is acute, with teachers and superintendents leaving the profession at unprecedented rates. Across the country more than a half a million educators have left the profession since 2020, leaving schools to scramble to fill positions in the classroom – especially in areas such as special education – as well as challenging school boards to find experienced leaders.
Education has always been a profession that requires more than working for a paycheck. Teachers face increased administrative duties in addition to keeping abreast of the latest technology while grading papers at home to get it all done.
Superintendents and their assistant superintendents, the perineal target of school critics, faced with the everyday challenge of providing an environment that is safe and conducive to setting up teachers to provide meaningful classroom experiences for their students, are now faced with additional and most often meaningless political attacks which drain their energies and time.
Extremist groups, often led by those without children in the public schools they attack, are adding to the heavy burden already on public education leadership. Their attacks on public education are grandstanding theatrics and downright un-American.
A commitment to public education is one of the foundations which made this country great. By the mid1800s, most states had adopted three basic assumptions governing public education:
1. Elementary schools should be free and supported by taxes
2. Teachers should be trained educators.
3. Children should be required to attend school.
This educational blueprint quickly resulted in the United States boasting the highest literacy rates in the world.
None of these goals are part of the fringe groups attacking public schools. Their ultimate goal is taxpayer funding for private, exclusionary, sectarian schools. Most of these are religious-based institutions, with clear agendas beyond effective education. In many ways they represent the ideological equivalent of the segregations of a bygone era. They are free from mandates of public education, such as guaranteed special education and remediation for students who might need other extra attention. Many of these schools have roots, or owe some of their heritage to, the white flight schools that popped up in the 1960s when desegregation became the law.
Their rallying cry centered around criticizing government interference in the business of the church. Christian families who wanted unfettered school choice claimed they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.
School libraries are among the targets, where most of the materials described by critics as inappropriate are written by minorities. As one superintendent told me: “None of the books they have challenged have ever been checked out of our libraries.”
“I have been around a long time, and kids checking out books from the library has never created any issues in our schools,” said another South Carolina educator with more than 35 years’ experience in the public schools. I would suspect most in middle and high school might not even know where the school library is.”
It’s going to get worse, as the S.C. Superintendent of Education is now pushing for all materials of any kind used in public schools be approved by a state panel that is stacked against public education.
School districts are already forced to commit hundreds of hours dealing with calls and emails from parents and other citizens in their communities who hear the red herring charges that their schools are distributing “pornography.”
Today, especially in states such as South Carolina, powerful political forces dominate the Republican Party. The most evident expression coming from the Freedom Caucus group, founded in 2015 to move their party more to the right. They are using much of what is being done in Florida as a one-size-fits-all template for taking control of the public school system.
Creating mistrust in public schools is among the primary goals of the caucus. As one Republican activist. Christopher Rufo said in a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan, encouraged students “to be ruthless and brutal” in creating their own narrative. If public learning does not look, sound and feel white and Christian, then it must change or be removed. Lies, smears and distortions that create fear and anger in parents are the right-wing formula for attacking public education.
Such rhetoric and ridiculous criticisms are also making many who serve on perhaps one of the most thankless public offices, the school board, rethink their decision to serve. Some have even faced attempts to gerrymander their school district to create precincts more friendly to those with extreme agendas.
“If this continues, in 10 years the shortage of teachers is going to be catastrophic,” said another S.C. educator.
If you have a child in public schools, get to know your children’s teachers instead of listening to the loud voices spewing propaganda against them and the school’s leadership.
And take time to personally thank public school educators this Thanksgiving for their commitment to your children. It might be the only kind words they hear all year.