As New Jersey Governor Chris Christie asks, “Why should teachers be guaranteed lifetime employment after three years on the job?”
We have a slightly different question. Why do teachers get tenure at all? We mean other than the fact that their unions demanded it and no one was willing to stand up and say, “Are you insane?”
What’s the logic behind teachers and college professors getting tenure? Are there any other professions that get tenure?
We’re asking. Start telling.
This post was last modified on December 13, 2010
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Chris Christie is a common sense man of the people. Plain and simple. He gets it. He says what the majority fo decent hardworking Americans think.
Tenure is a joke. For those of you who complain tha he is anti children you are brainless. Yeah lets keep horrible teachers because they have been there for 3 years. Lets not worry whether they are good at their jobs or not. Who cares about that? The unions say they have 3 years in and thats all that matters.
Chris Christie neets to run for president at some point in the future.
Ok, I'll sya it again...
Chris Christie 2012!
...& I think if he wants it, he will be our 45th President.
Given the incredible stupidity of some of the public school teachers I've met, I have a possible solution for tenure: if they can't spell it, they don't get it.
I dont understand tenure either... If I perform badly I get fired... the end.
I dont see why professors or teachers are better or more needed than me just because they are profs or teachers. If they perform well, teach the truth as it happen, keep their opinions to themselves and incite dialogue on all sides and respects all opinions I dont see why tenure is necessary.
Tenure to me just seems like a way for certain ideological schools to make sure that their liberal teachers do not feel that they can loose their jobs if they do or say something that they know to be wrong.
Education is too important to be left up to selfish unions. The concept of tenure originated in ancient Greece but it is highly unlikely that they would have put up with today's state of affairs in education, they were far more rational than that.
CHRIS CHRISTIE HATES CHILDREN!
HE DOESN"T THINK OF THE CHILDREN! HOW WILL THE CHILDREN GET A DECENT CHANCE IN LIFE IF THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS HAVE TO TRADE THEIR BMW 5 SERIES FOR A 3 SERIES?! ANSWER ME THAT RETHUGLICANS!
There, now donavan doesn't need to show up.
YT - You channeled donavan very well. What's your secret?
I punched 90 IQ points out of my own skull and shoved a gerbil up my ass.
Here's the reason
Schools are completely politicized. You have to go with the politics of the administrators. If you are a conservative teacher, you get the worst classes, get called in for numerous "talking to's," bad evals, and no back-up for discipline. You may get fired (ahem...) for wanting to enforce discipline, for instance, because the dominant philososphy is that negative consequences are bad and only "escalate" the situation. (By all means, don't get the student or parent angry).
Curriculum is also involved. For instance, how 'bout a teacher that refuses to take her class to a radiccal mosque these days, or teaches the truth about islamic history? Especially if she has years in, and a maleable child just out of college can be hired to replace her?
So while I can get that people don't understand, I can tell you that if you want any conservatives in the public schools, this is helpful, if not necessary.
That said, this should only be a stopgap till we can privatize.
All I know is there's a professor at my university (who has tenure, of course), who couldn't teach someone how to start a car.
one of the "jocks) that graduated from College with a degree in education, was hired to teach Junior high but he read at the sixth grade level? so unless there is competency testing in relationship to pay? For twenty years the teaches have been complaining about more pay, smaller class size, more time to prepare, which they have gotten by holding the parents and students as hostages at the start of each school year, while at the same time the test scores have been dropping yearly for the last twenty years?
You would think that with the collective intelligence of academia, they would have figured out how to objectively measure teacher performance. Either they're not as smart as they've led us to believe or they're rigging the game.
I guess cheating isn't only by students.
Ray - you use "intelligence" and "smart" as if they are interchangable. To me (and a few - very few - others), they are not. I have not seen this distinction often, but IMO it is a good one, and an important one.
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. It is the capacity to analyze data without bias or preconcieved notions, to recognize and see through half truths such as the presentation of limited, carefully selected statistics. Essentially, it is the ability to reason, and to apply knowledge to the real world with a specific goal in mind.
Smart is the ability to retain information and impress people with it when creating an impression is called for. It is not a bad thing in itself, but without intelligence, one is no more than a walking encyclopedia. Lots of data, probably limited and biased, with no connection to the real world. It is the proverbial professor who understands the highest, cutting edge calculus, but can not figure out how to file his expense records in an orderly fashion.
Clinton and his comrades are smart. But they are not intelligent. Noam Chomsky is an example of lots of smarts and very little intelligence. The current administration is also lacking in intelligence, but sadly, the smart part seems to be highly questionable too.
George W. is not nearly as smart as Clinton, but infinitely more intelligent. Thomas Sowell may very well be the greatest combination of the two alive today.
The "collective intelligence of academia" is a perfect example of the whole being significantly less than the sum of the parts.
As long as the teachers have the powerful union that dictates their employment (incompetent or not) they will remain employed. In all too many cases the old adage of "those who can do, those who can't teach" is painfully true.
There is some semblance of logic for tenure for professors (higher education). It offers academic protection. If not for tenure, we can have a reasonable level of certainty that Walter Williams', Thomas Sowell's, Mike Adams', etc. jobs would be in jeopardy. Even in the sciences, politics are at play (e.g. the global warming "debate").
Why a 5th grade teacher's academic freedom needs to be protected is a different story. The curriculum is set for them by either higher-ups in the education cartel, or by state or federal dept's of education. I'd like to see a 5th grade teacher put a US Constitution lesson into the day's curriculum (meaning a real Constitution lesson, not the teacher telling the kids what the Constitution intends to say, or "really" means, but one in which the kids actually read the document), and then see how much "academic freedom" there really is in pubic schools.
Does not compute. If a professor is silent because they can loose their job they can also tow the party line to earn tenure.