While sitting through the excruciatingly manipulative documentary Waiting for “Superman,” I thought back to one of the first teachers’ strikes in America, the one involving teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
It was a horribly divisive action. Many teachers—especially the older ones—had not joined the union, perhaps believing that doing so would forever lower the public perception of them. Others who had joined the union just couldn’t bring themselves to walk out of the classroom and leave students behind in an act that would be widely perceived as somewhere between blasphemy and treason.
During the strike, the Los Angeles Times reported that a sizable percentage of the district’s janitors (who were unionized) were getting paid more than the average teacher. No offense to janitors, but there was no damned way that such pay inequity should have existed.
My math teacher, an idealistic man teaching in a ghetto school, had a doctorate in math and had worked as a cryptographer for Army Intelligence. He was making $2,800 a year as a teacher. Adjusted to today’s dollars, that comes out to less than $18,000. He and his wife had two small children, and I later found out that he was agonizing over a lucrative offer to join the CIA. His salary had remained flat for years, and it was being eaten up by raging inflation caused by the Vietnam War and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. For many teachers struggling to earn a living wage, there was no choice but to unionize.
This man and others like him were vilified by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and scorned by many in the general public. But they hung in, and they won.
Forty years later, teachers are actually paid pretty well. But they’re also endangered, under constant attack by Republican politicians who apparently get up in the morning and spin the wheel to determine whom or what they will attack that day—teachers, unions or teachers’ unions.
It drives me nuts that middle-class Republicans—poor lost souls that they are—don’t understand and/or appreciate that the labor movement of the 20th century is largely responsible for the very existence of a middle class in America. It’s absolutely shameful that the sacrifices of all those people who poured their sweat and blood into blue-collar jobs so that their kids could have a chance to go to college are largely forgotten. And does anybody believe that the all-out warfare against organized labor and the shrinking of the American middle class are just coincidental?
And now along comes “Superman,” an over-hyped and under-delivering documentary on the current state of American education, and guess where virtually all of the blame is placed? Yep, with the teachers’ unions.
While this is probably a discussion better-suited for another time, I don’t think that America’s schools are doing all that badly. The task of educating young people in America is daunting, especially compared to other First World countries, where everybody speaks one language, and there is only one culture. I personally believe that the American educational system gets a B, at the very worst. There’s certainly room to improve, but things could be a whole lot worse.
Anyway, back to the documentary. To call “Superman” one sided would be to praise it with faint damnation. Many great documentaries are one-sided. This thing is about 4/15 of one-sided. Attempting to lay all the blame on teachers’ unions and painting charter schools as the sole source of redemption are simplistic, if not downright dishonest, arguments.
I cringe at the thought of defending all teachers’ unions, because there are certainly many examples of unions wrongly protecting incompetent and even criminally dangerous teachers. Because of the adversarial nature of things, such is occasionally the outcome in situations where a little common sense on both sides would much better serve all involved. However, in this real world, I would rather have a few underachieving teachers in the system than see the vast majority of hard-working, dedicated, excellent educators walking around on eggshells under constant threat from capricious administrators and legislators who have at least one eye on the financial bottom line.
“Superman” follows five school kids in different parts of the country whose parents are trying to get them into charter schools. Far more infuriating than the attack on teachers’ unions is the conceit that charter schools open up a yellow brick road to college and success. It has been well-documented that the vast majority of charter schools in America do not do a better job than public schools, and a significant number of charter schools do much worse than the public schools to which they are closest geographically.
By the end of the film, when we are shown painful reaction shots of the families as names of new charter-school enrollees are determined by lottery, I admired the fire of the students, and I gave the parents the benefit of the doubt that they really did believe that charter schools offered a miracle. But toward filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, I felt anger.
I hope Guggenheim isn’t Waiting for Oscar, because he doesn’t deserve one.
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2010.
The Great Society programs didn’t eat up your beloved math teacher’s salary. Once again, you’re full of it.
This is completely unfair. This movie is doing what it was SUPPOSED to, which is start a conversation. The director has already been in panels with the head of one of the main teacher’s unions, and EVERYONE agreed that making sure to help support and maintain good teachers is the top priority, NOT protecting mediocrity within our school systems. When making the movie, Davis already stated that a lot of reforms that are new had not happened yet. By and large, the teacher’s unions have proved largely receptive to critisim, open to change and innovation, and are willing to work with us all in providing some solutions. That stance had NOT come out before this movie, and is a credit to it’s worth.
This is absurd. You went to this movie and were forced to think, to feel! You were moved to action. That is what a piece of art is supposed to do! The fact that the majority of charter schools are doing no better than their counterparts WAS MENTIONED in the movie itself. I am sick, sick sick of people refusing to see the opportunity that charter schools provide: we can see WHAT IS WORKING, and also see what is NOT. There is a chance to look at what successful schools are doing, and see if we can replicate some of it in our public schools. The movie was highlighting what some successful schools are doing, and some of the children that wanted to go. I went to both public and private schools growing up, and now work as an after-school provider of college support to low-income youth. Too long we have allowed mediocrity to dictate school policy, at the expense of our children. This is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue; this is an AMERICAN issue.
Now, a movie comes out that points out how some schools are succeeding and starts a discussion among educators, union leaders, parents, reporters, critics, philanthropists and politicians for the FIRST TIME, and some angry reporters want to denigrate it?
Is this helping the discussion? Can we can all agree some things need changing in our public schools if 20% of high school 9th graders cannot find the UNITED STATES on a world map!?
Can we agree that throwing money at the problem is NOT going to fix it if there is no innovation in curriculum, in support for teachers, for personal development for administrators and staff, for more responsibility for student performance in the unions, and for more attention paid by all of us in all of our communities to make sure that our children are taught well?
Oh, no, we were all too busy shooting the messenger, having editorial tantrums, shifting the blame, continuing partisan mudslinging, and IGNORING the chance we have to really focus on making schools a dynamic, fun, engaging, and compelling place where our children learn.
God forbid people see this movie. It might encourage them to think, discuss, and most importantly, ACT.
Meh. I saw the movie a week or so ago, and I’m not sure I understand the hype or derision.
Guggenheim was pretty careful to mention multiple times that teachers are the lynch pin of education. You can open a million new types of school buildings, but if you don’t have the teaching talent it’s all a folly.
He also mentions pointedly that charter schools are NOT performing as well as regular district schools. I think a lot of people who watch the movie with their ‘School Choice’ glasses on must have missed that frame.
However, as a person who volunteers at a school that has been lacking recently in necessary textbooks, toilet paper and a consistently working power supply….I hope that people don’t walk away from the movie like DivineLioness did feeling that “throwing money at the problem” isn’t a part of the solution. People can crow about their respect for education all they want, but when teachers & kids are walking into a building that looks like a dilapidated prison, they get the message about how much we ‘value’ education loud and clear.
As a parent, I also don’t disagree with the movie’s premise that the traditional east-coast style teacher’s unions are an antiquated obstacle. (Note – this type of union doesn’t exist in our Right-to-Work state.) The union rules in some states make any small change a huge production, and I have first hand experience with ‘teachers’ who have been bounced from school to school or who are just surfing on their tenure. It is deplorable, and not at all helpful to our kids, our schools, our good teachers or our economy.
Tom’s defense of teachers and inability to understand the criticism indicates he’s one of a lucky few parents in Tucson. Many are so fed up with public education that they dig into incomes far lower than those of teachers to send their kids to private schools, or sacrifice more to home-school. It’s no surprise to find students in private schools with parents who are public school teachers or administrators. In eight years attending a variety of TUSD schools – most of them in the GATE Program – my son had only one good academic teacher (Randy Moon- 7th & 8th grade Math at Alice Vail) and several excellent Music teachers. Members of teachers’ unions regularly whine about the job & salary, but I can think of no other occupation where an entering college student has had 12-13 years to get a good picture of his or her career choice. The truth is still that a huge number of College of Education students come from the bottom 25% of entering Freshmen, and would never be able to graduate with a 4-year degree in any other field. For several decades approximately 75% (or close to 100% of the brightest kids) realize in the early grades that they are smarter than their teachers. The argument for higher pay is pointless when lower paid parochial school teachers or unpaid home-schooling parents are doing a better job. Unions fight it, but we should let our public schools hire teachers who are enthusiastic specialists in Reading, Language Arts, Math, History, etc. instead of looking to graduates of the Colleges of Education. Those “methods & theories” classes in education will scare away any bright and eager future teacher. I know several self-taught drop-outs who would (& as home-schooling parents do) make excellent teachers. Maybe we should instead try originality and enthusiasm for the subject as a requirement in hiring teachers. It couldn’t hurt.
Danehy’s outlook is skewed because he has exceptionally capable children who had a very good experience in the Amphi district. I, on the other hand, had a child who came into TUSD with diagnosed special needs and a folder two inches thick about her past “treatment” by a team of specialists. When I went to talk about her needs and placement with TUSD, they wouldn’t accept the diagnosis and said that they would decide after ONE YEAR if she needed to be SCHEDULED for testing! I put her in parochial and private schools and we ate a lot of beans. Charter schools weren’t an option then. When she went into high school in TUSD, she had exactly one English teacher whom I even considered semi-literate. I can make that judgement because I taught secondary English. In addition, the administration of that high school was clueless, incompetent and unresponsive. It was an accurate reflection of what I found when trying to deal with 1010. I recently lost a good neighbor when they had to move to keep their children in Tanque Verde. They had put them in school there because the youngest was four years behind in reading and the mom couldn’t get any response from the teacher. The first two months in Tanque Verde and the kid picked up three of the four years.
Danehy writes that “the labor movement of the 20th century is largely responsible for the very existence of a middle class in America.”
Well, I think American industrial strength and hard-working people in small businesses are more responsible for the existence of a middle class, not that unions didn’t and don’t sometimes do good things for workers. Anyway, as Tom does not mention, many regular folks, including poor people and minorities are rebelling against our failing public school systems. That’s a good thing, and will eventually make those systems better. Check out another, soon to be released, documentary on our failed education system –“The Cartel”
http://www.thecartelmovie.com/cgi-local/co…
“About The Cartel | Teachers punished for speaking out. Principals fired for trying to do the right thing. Union leaders defending the indefensible. Bureaucrats blocking new charter schools. These are just some of the people we meet in The Cartel. The film also introduces us to teens who can’t read, parents desperate for change, and teachers struggling to launch stable alternative schools for inner city kids who want to learn. We witness the tears of a little girl denied a coveted charter school spot, and we share the triumph of a Camden homeschool’s first graduating class.”
“Balancing the fact-dispensing with emotional interview footage of unhappy teachers and students, The Cartel is a convincing exposé of a nationwide system designed to favor school officials over students.” –Peter Galvin, San Francisco Bay Guardian