Teachers get bipartisan criticism, but they aren’t the enemies | Opinion
Teacher shortages in Kansas City, and in Missouri Kansas as a whole, have been well-documented. As a result, the number of virtual teachers has increased significantly, despite the poor results they generate compared with in-person teaching.
Among the reasons teachers cite for leaving the profession are burnout (everyone should try to teach up to 100 students a day to see what it’s like), inadequate compensation and tensions emerging from the polarized state of the country.
With regards to the latter, news reports from across the nation reveal that our schoolteachers and college professors are under attack. The left charges them with supporting a racist and sexist society that favors advantaged white men and marginalizes everyone else. The right indicts these very same educators with the exact opposite sin: supporting a radical ideology that criminalizes the United States as the embodiment of evil. While there are some educators who fit one or another of these extreme views, the vast majority are caught in the middle. They strive to do their best at what they want to do most: teach. They are not our enemies.
On the contrary, according to both extensive educational research in recent decades, as well as countless personal testimonies from students, most schoolteachers and college professors bring to bear, in equal parts, love for the subjects they teach and deep care for students. They are not in the classroom to advance a one-sided political ideology. They are not there to indoctrinate. They are not there to bully. They are not there to pull the wool over students’ eyes. They are there to teach.
But what does it mean to teach? What makes teaching different from indoctrinating? The answer pivots around three crucial ingredients of good teaching:
- Knowledge of the subject.
- Commitment to students’ flourishing.
- Infinite patience.
No teacher can educate well without a sound knowledge of what they teach. This requirement is why so many teachers and college professors constantly seek to deepen their knowledge. At the same time, they work to refine their actual approaches to instruction in the classroom when face to face with students. They survey the previous scholastic year and examine intensely what went well and what could have gone better.
No teacher can educate well without a commitment to their students’ flourishing. In my hundreds of hours bearing witness to educators at work, in both schools and colleges, I am endlessly struck by the ways in which good teachers exhibit beautiful sensitivity and care for their students as fellow human beings. They do not treat their students as empty vessels in which to pour knowledge (as if anything could actually be learned that way). These teachers are “students of students.” They pay close attention to them, think about how they learn and continuously devise new methods for helping them grasp ideas.
Finally, no teacher who lacks patience can succeed. Education cannot be forced. It cannot be made to happen on demand. Moreover, nobody can give another person an education as if they were handing over a bag of groceries. All students must reach out for education. They must take their teachers’ offerings, work them in their own ways, and them metabolize them so that their new knowledge and skill stays with them and helps them the rest of their lives.
These facts mean teachers truly must be — and are — among the most patient people in our entire society. They know education cannot be rushed. They know people only truly learn when they take some risks and put themselves on the line, whether they are 7-year-old second graders or 27-year-old graduate students. These teachers never regard struggling students as problems. They treat them as fellow people in need of a teacher’s knowledge and dedication.
Schoolteachers and college professors are among the few adults in our society who interact on a regular basis with children and young adults from families with different political, religious and cultural outlooks. They know these differences need not separate us. On the contrary, teachers bring their students together in very real, educational ways. Teachers and professors are among our deepest friends.