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Teaching as a Profession: Historic, Public, Union, and Alternative Perceptions
by Robin Ann Martin, MA
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Prepared for: HPC 690: Special Topics on U.S. History and Redefining Public Education with Chris Lubienski, Iowa State University; also a possible background paper for facilitating dialogue in an NEA Online Conference, Fall 2000. Contents:
Introduction and Defining a "Profession"The Preamble to NEA’s Code of Ethics of the Education Profession begins:
Codes of ethic like the one above can contribute significantly to the definition of jobs within a profession. For the past two centuries, American educators have been attempting at various levels to shift teaching into the status of a full profession. For the past two centuries, American educators have also met with many internal and external contradictions and conflicts that have posed barriers to that goal. One barrier is that there is no single definition of what a profession means, so what is it that we are working toward is often left ambiguous. For the purposes of this paper and to facilitate further discussion, I wish create a definition of “profession” for teachers that takes into account the evolving belief that parents and community members are equally responsible for the education of youth in our society. Just as we are all responsible for our own health while still turning to health professionals with questions, so too can we create greater professional status for teachers. In working with many alternative educators who are often suspicious of “professionals,” I want to clarify that I am not exonerating education professionals (whether they be teachers, educational researchers, or educational psychologists) as special experts to whom we in anyway should turn over the education of our children. Rather, the reason for looking to teaching in particular as a profession and creating a greater professional status around it centers on the need to attract more highly qualified (compassionate and intelligent) people into teaching. Throughout the centuries, teaching has been renowned as a “calling” or a “vocation” as well, and these too are worthy categories, each for different reasons. For the purposes of this paper, I shall focus on teaching as a “profession,” so that in the Twenty-Fist century, we can make it more visible, while delineating more clearly the freedoms and responsibilities that go along with the profession. What exactly do I mean by profession? Drawing on the early work of Myron Lieberman (1956), I wish to define profession as having the following characteristics:
In 1956, Myron Lieberman wrote a book entitled Education as a Profession
in which he argued that teaching was not yet a full profession but
that it needs to be. In comparing teaching to other professions,
he illustrated the complexity of the problems involved around the
interrelationships between educational and vocational objectives.
While outlining the critical barriers to professionalization, Lieberman
also gave some hope to teachers about their power in these matters.
He wrote: “One of the main reasons for studying education as
a profession is to demonstrate that the educators themselves have
the power to achieve certain vocational objectives which would materially
affect the educational objectives and possibilities of the public
schools” (1956, page 15). A primary message
of his book was that teachers themselves need to understand the complexities
involved in making teaching into a profession so that they can take
action from a point of understanding rather than a point of ineffectual
idealism or cynical defeatism. Now, over 40 years later, the hopes
and challenges outlined by Lieberman continue to teeter off balance
in comparison to other professions. While there are innumerable ways in which to frame the problems of professionalization, in this paper I intend to show the patterns (healthy and unhealthy) across perceptions about teaching. In examining historic, public, union, and alternative perceptions about education, there are three particular areas that stand out as especially problematic for making teaching into a fully respected profession that more highly qualified people would desire to enter. These include:
This paper is intended as a stepping stone for teachers or others
who wish to begin examining those issues which hold the profession
of teaching in stalemate. It concludes with a few questions from
the perspective of alternative educators who have challenged the
traditional views of professionalization far enough to step outside
the boxes of traditional reform and standardization efforts and look
at teaching itself from other perspectives. Unrealistic Public Perceptions about EducationLow salaries are often sited as a primary source for not motivating more qualified persons to enter teaching and appear as the nemesis about which those in the profession most often complain. Yet how can we expect the public to make decisions via School Boards that agree to pay teachers more when teachers so seldom live up to the public’s expectations for education? The reply to this belief, which many teachers take as an accusation of their skills and talents, is basically that “we’re doing the best we can with what we have to work with.” Rather than getting defensive about not living up to the public’s expectations, let us take some time to uncover the roots of the expectations themselves. High expectations of education are deeply rooted in American history. The predecessor of what we call public education today was the common school of the 1800s. When the common schools were organized in the 1840s by Horace Mann and his contemporaries, the social problems of a quickly changing society were amuck. The newly formed country was not only learning more about the realities of governing its republic, it was also faced with mass influxes of immigration, population increases, and urbanization. These were not simply abstract concepts that people read about in the newspapers or that we read today in our history books; these were real changes to a rural way of life that threatened the stability of families and the welfare of society (Katz, 1968, pages 5-11). As Carl Kaestle writes about this period:
Believing that the survival of the republic would depend on the
virtues and intelligence of its people and that the moral character
of a country rested on the moral character of its citizens, education
soon became a central focus of our new republic. Thus, the school
promoters of the day used rhetoric that convinced the public that
schools would and could shape the behaviors and attitudes of students
in morally uplifting ways, alleviate social and family problems,
and thus become a key agency for solving social problems (Katz, 1987,
pages 22-23). In 1856, John McMynn, an early educational leader in Wisconsin, said: “It is the opinion of our wisest educators that ninety-nine hundreths of our youth would become moral and intelligent citizens, should they attend school regularly and punctually from the age of six to sixteen years” (in Lieberman, 1956, page 483). Such idealism shows up time and again through the formative years of our school system. James Carter, the predecessor of Mann, wrote in an essay: “While the best schools in the land are free, all the classes of society are blended” (1826). He contended that free education would lead to an effectual check against the aristocracy of wealth and consequently of political influence. After exonerating the benefits of education, he goes on in the fifth essay of this series to outline the faults of the (free) schools. These faults all directly related to the teachers, their lack of experience and lack of preparation. In the sixth essay, he frames a proposal for creating the first institution for the education of teachers. The primary intention of this essay was to guide public attention toward “a thorough and radical reform” so as to provide competent teachers, as the character of schools depends “almost solely on the character of teachers.” Here, we see not only a faith in education, but also the importance placed on developing the skills and competencies of the educator. This extreme faith in education as being the institution with the essential answers for keeping our country and society strong and vital, by solving the problems for juvenile delinquency, broken homes, and every other social problem, poses a dilemma for making teaching into a profession. Professions are intended to serve a special and unique social service; however, for education, the social problems are so broad, encompassing, and unspecific at times that they appear impossible to solve. This ultimately leads to a disenchanted public. Whether we are looking at history or modern-day issues of educational
reform, the expectations of the public play a critical role in determining
the vocational status of teachers within a community. Teachers today
are not regarded as highly as lawyers or doctors: The job does not
require as much training as the other professions. Teachers are paid
far less and disputed far more. The very job of teaching is intertwined
with the expertise (and/or lack of competence) of the parents. While
some parent/teacher relationships are quite healthy with listening
that goes both ways in some communities, in other communities, there
is much strain for teachers to gain credibility. Not unlike parents
who do not trust doctors about prescription for a child’s physical
health, there are also parents who do not trust teachers about recommendations
for the intellectual health of a child. (The idea of listening or
discussing with teachers the emotional or moral health of a child
would seem ludicrous to many parents, although teachers are with
the children often more hours in the day, and learning by some educational
philosophies involves the whole child.) Parent/teacher relationships
often relate to class and social context in how much trust develops
between parents and teachers. In addition, distrust of teachers can
also stem simply from lack of time that teachers have in getting
to know parents at more personal levels. This lack of personal sharing
can also exacerbate further the unrealistic expectations of parents
for their children’s educational development. These problems
have been historically prevalent throughout public education, as
dilemmas for the teaching profession. Further, more than just the
individual teacher/parent relationships, distrust in many communities
may also stem in part from the 160 year history of public education
and the lack of positive end results that education has shown, in
comparison to grandiose expectations. Addressing Functional Disagreements about the Purpose of EducationWhat are the services that education is intended to supply? “To educate” is simply too broad of an answer: To educate for what? Another significant dilemma of making teaching into a more cohesive and respected profession is not simply that the public is unclear about what education will and can accomplish but that educators themselves are often in disagreement about its functional purposes. To further complicate matters, these purposes (the “ends” or “aims” of education) are often directly intertwined with the means of education. What does it really mean to believe in the “the worth and dignity of each human being”? And is that always congruent with recognizing “the supreme importance of the pursuit of truth, devotion to excellence, and the nurture of the democratic principles” as implied by the NEA’s code of ethics? The holistic and humanistic educators with whom I often interact hold adamantly to honoring the natural development of children as an essential component to believing in the “worth and dignity of each human being.” This belief relates directly to the function of education for facilitating the development of fully functioning human beings. Towards this end, they honor and attempt to encourage internally motivated learning, for example, which often looks quite different than the externally motivated, grades-based education of traditional schools. To really encourage internal motivation (and thus believe in the innate “worth and dignity” of each child) implies doing away with rewards (such as letter grades or even excess praise) for motivating students. As Alfie Kohn has explained time and again (1993), rewards are as dangerous to education as punishments. Educators and authors Ba and Josette Luvmour (1993) have developed an entire system called “Natural Learning Rhythms” for helping parents and educators understand how to guide youth toward their inherent wisdom rather than working against that wisdom with systems of rewards (or punishments). In direct contrast to these well supported views about education, visiting the NEA’s web site, the very first item in the section for parents gives recommendations about using rewards more with children. For many educators like Kohn and the Luvmours, as well as Herb Kohl, Grace Llewellyn, John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, Carl Rogers, and countless others, what the NEA labels the “pursuit of truth, devotion to excellence, and the nurture of the democratic principles” takes a vastly different form and meaning from the meaning ascribed by traditional educators. These contradictory understandings arise from differences in views about the function of education. While these views form the very basis of educational practices in public schools, they also serve to keep the profession of teaching away from further development. What the traditional public school teachers are doing is different from what the Catholic school teachers are doing is different from what the Waldorf school teachers are doing is different from what the Montessori school teachers are doing, and these may all be different from what some of the new charter schools are doing. While there are certainly specializations within other professions, such as medicine, most doctors have at least agreed to the broader common purpose of what healing means and how a healthy body looks and acts. Agreement around the purpose and function of education directly impacts curriculum, qualifications of teachers, teacher training, methodology, and the code of professional ethics. While there is certainly methodological disputes between mainstream and holistic or alternative medical practices, ultimately, there is little dispute about what a healthy body looks like. Ultimately, a well-educated person takes many different forms, depending on one’s philosophic assumptions, thus “believing in the worth and dignity of each human being” is far too vague to give any real coherence to a code of ethic for teachers. Lieberman (1956) suggested that some educators often believe that because functions overlap (as indeed they do), the disagreement about function is not as big of an issue as it might first appear. However, teachers can only focus on so much, and whether the focus is on helping students to learn democratic decision making, intellectual development, critical thinking, moral beliefs, or becoming fully-functioning human beings is essential to how teachers interact with students. The focus of teaching, based on the broader agreement of purpose, also impacts the type of support that teachers need to do their job most effectively. Lieberman argued: Basically, the confusions are due to the fact that the discussions of the functions of education are carried on in such a way that people do not realize that they will have to choose among competing values. People favor critical thinking until they discover this endangers cherished ideas. They favor better teachers until they realize that the choice is not between better teachers or worse teachers but between higher taxes or spending a little more on a car or a television set. When the actual nature of the choice becomes clear, agreement on function often breaks down. (1956, page 35) Further, what it even means to even be a “better” teacher
depends greatly on whether you subscribe to the educational philosophies
of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Carl Rogers, or to B.F. Skinner and
Jean Piaget. According to Lieberman (1956), each profession has its
own stumbling blocks, and teachers do not necessarily have to come
to full agreement about the functions of education, so much as they
need to recognize the complexity of the issue and how it poses dilemmas
within the profession. Yet, such recognition can not take place if
those teachers who disagree with one another do not even communicate.
Thus, the large educational associations and unions such as the NEA,
as well as lesser known associations such as the National Coalition
of Alternative Community Schools, must support and encourage ongoing
discussion amongst each other and between all teachers about how
basic educational functions, beliefs, and values within education
complement or contradict one another. The Controls: Professional Rhetoric, Policy, and Reform DirectionsSide by side with what education is really about is the related problem of “who decides what it should be about?” For teaching to become fully respected profession, the teachers themselves must assume greater responsibility for the profession. Currently, the dominant trend is that strong reformers, state school boards (or district school boards), and superintendents and administrators are still the ones controlling the rhetoric, policy, and reform directions within education. Their decisions are often strongly influenced by corporate values, which are by nature not always aligned with human values. In this final section, I shall touch on the control issues involved in professionalization which have been carried over from history, as well more current problems of the last 50 years due to the nature of teacher unions. Before the current bureaucracy for organizing schools was adapted in the mid-1800s based on school board and state-level controls, several other models for educating were considered. One model was what Michael Katz called “democratic localism” (1987), and it placed stress on variety and local adaptability of schools. Rather than promoting professionalism, localists felt that the Normal Schools (for training teachers) would become the training ground for state-defined doctrine; they feared that all the public schools would soon not permit teachers to teach without the proper indoctrination (Katz, 1987, page 34). Then “goodbye to all liberty of instruction” as Orestes Brownson was quoted in the 1839 Boston Quarterly Review. According to Katz (1987), Brownson argued that teachers needed no special schools for learning to instruct, as it would be acquired naturally having themselves undergone instruction. Further, as long as schools were only open 3-4 months per year, there was no need to elevate teaching as a distinct and separate profession. Now, obviously, education did not turn in Brownson’s direction. The problem with Brownson’s argument about professionalization is that if we teach as we were taught, how do we know that we are not simply perpetuating the mistakes of the past? While the state “indoctrination” systems of teacher education have never adequately addressed this issue either, they did at least elevate teaching in some ways. Another dilemma created by Brownson and other localists is that their arguments may have created more of a union between the state-defined model of education and teacher education, so that people who followed one tended to follow the other. As a result, I would propose that we explore further whether those developing the early teacher education programs were those committed to state-controlled systems? The dominating belief systems that accepted bureaucratic state-control of education could have oriented teacher education programs away from other localist (and humanistic) beliefs and more towards systematic and efficient (Lancaster and Prussian) systems for educating. While opposition to state-controlled education does not necessitate the drive away from professionalism, we need to be careful in understanding the differences and links between the two beliefs. The difficulty with identifying the functions and values which education shall serve is conflated by who has controlled the rhetoric of school reform. Whoever is most adamant about change has a tendency toward three patterns: (1) They use rhetoric that emphasizes broad goals that most people during that time period are likely to agree with. (2) They emphasize the need for change by defining educational needs based on their own framework for social stability. (3) They neglect to identify or recognize the competing values that their proposed change goes against. If the competing values are held strongly by the dominant culture, the reform is wafted away with the winds of time; if the competing values are held only by a minority and does not disrupt the public’s general expectations for schooling, it gets adopted. Historically, this means that we have put into place control mechanisms
and legislation for education that are not necessarily aligned with
professionalism so much as they are aligned with the dominant rhetoric.
For example, the issue of religion in schools had much more to do
with power issues between Protestants and Catholics (Jorgenson, 1987)
than it ever had to do with any educator’s perceptions of healthy
child development. Moving on to the issue of unions, we find another great irony in relation to professionalization and control issues. While teaching associations and unions were designed to give teachers more power, they can instead greatly impede the development of the profession by putting a halt to systemic educational reforms. This problematic role of teacher unions within education reform was described in some detail by Lieberman in Chapter 2 of Beyond Public Education (1986). The crux of this argument is that unions support reforms that require less work and less external accountability for teachers and thus make a teaching career more manageable, but they oppose reforms that may threaten the basic interests of even a small number of teachers. Lieberman illustrates how most school change issues are directly or indirectly subject to bargaining within unions. As the process of bargaining in public education does not lead to prompt settlements, many issues (from hours to scheduling to teacher inservice training) take over a year to negotiate in good faith. If the negotiations are not going in a direction that the unions find favorable, they can campaign against Board members and as unions are the major interest group active in Board elections, this weakens the Board’s adherence to positions opposed by the union. Thus, in some ways, the vocational objectives of teachers (higher pay and better hours) get put in ahead of the educational objectives for creating a system that is more responsive to the needs of learners. Imagine even just a simple change in curriculum, if it threatens a teacher’s job, the unions go to bat for that teacher. Rather than teachers learning more about how to meet the needs of the community or the individual learners, the subject-based way in which schools are organized is reinforced, whether or not it is aligned with the broader intentions or any code of ethics that educators wish to stand behind. Further, I would also argue that if we are moving in the direction of teacher-control of the profession, then we eventually need to do away with the current industrial-model unions altogether. Such unions are only necessary to protect teachers’ rights from an external governing body. To move toward teaching as a full profession, the large and ever-growing unions (AFT and NEA) will eventually need to dissolve themselves or re-envision their power roles within the profession. For teaching to be seen as a profession within each state, they may need to take the first step to re-organize as professional-model unions that empower teachers toward more professional roles, rather than defending teachers. While doctors own their own practices and are struggling with growing
powers of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) in many states
and thus loosing control of their practice, teachers have the opposite
problem. They are employed already by School Boards, with historically
little control over the schools in which they work, and are struggling
to gain control. While peer-review processes are one method by which
some organizations are helping teachers to gain control, overall
accountability is still very much a one-way street based on external
controls. Alternative Perspectives on TeachingAlternative educators are one group within the developing profession of teaching who are often overlooked by organizations such as the NEA. Yet, they often give students and parents in their community a new outlook on what it means to be a teacher. In this section, I shall summarize some of my initial observations in interacting with teachers from the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools , as well as other holistic alternatives. Although within many states and from traditional education perspectives, “alternative” often means “at-risk,” with the NCACS, we mean an alternative philosophy about what education is and how it can best serve students and the community, through homeschooling and other “alternatives.” While I have begun to elucidate some alternative perspectives about facilitating internal motivation versus teaching to instill external social norms, below are further observations which impact teaching as a profession. Taking a Stand and Promoting School ChoiceWhile many public schools have catered to the demands of the public, alternative educators are often the ones who take a stand such as, “We believe the core of education is about self-reflection and self-determination.” (For reference, visit the web sites of alternative schools, and take a look at their introductions and mission statements. Rather than being led by the public, they believe that it is their duty to inform parents and students about alternative meanings of education, to lead dialogues around such topics and give to parents and students the responsibility to decide if this given philosophy is a match for them. Rather than believing there is a one size fits all method of education, they believe strongly in school choice. While many alternative educators promote schools choice through charters and vouchers in the public domain (Glines, 1992; Nathan, 1987), when true alternatives are too restrained by state-controlled regulations, alternative educators are among the first to set up non-traditional private alternatives. The profession, calling, and/or vocation of teaching is too important for them to settle for anything other than real school choices for students, choices that give both teachers and students more freedom to define and select their own learning (or teaching) opportunities. Keeping Schools or Programs SmallFurther, their small size (as schools or schools-within-schools) helps to ensure that parents are included in the process of each child’s learning. Even medium-size and larger public schools that are dedicated to remaining alternative (such as the Jefferson County Open School in Denver, Colorado, or NOVA in Seattle, Washington) find ways of keeping programs within their schools small and personal by using non-traditional methods of organizing their administration or their student body as they grow. When top priority is given to “keeping it simple” rather than creating complex bureaucracies, teachers within these schools find time for meeting with parents, and the school/home dynamic is treated with greater care than is often done in more traditional public schools. Further, rather than “hiring” out for help, due to their often small budgets, these schools MUST find innovative ways to get parents more involved through volunteer work with the school, which in turn offers another route for creating more personal relationships between teachers and parents. And because the philosophies of these alternatives are often so different from “mainstream” ways of thinking about education, they must also take greater amounts of time when families enter the school to talk directly about parental expectations. This allows alternative teachers to move away from the subtle pulls of history by confronting directly each parents’ worries and concerns. The history of each parent and the history of education at large are still components of the teacher/parent dynamics, but they become more conscious than in traditional schools. Defining Their Own StandardsWithout exception, alternative educators take great efforts to remain outside of the traditional controls and requirements of public education as much as possible. Moving aside superficial knowledge tests as the primary means of evaluating students, this also redirects unrealistic expectations of parents. Alternative educators take time to educate parents about authentic projects and often student-directed means of evaluating student learning. Each school is quite different in how it deals with issues such as testing or diplomas, but all find ways to help their graduates move successfully to the next level of life transitions. The critical issue, even for the alternatives that are public (as many are), is that teachers do not focus on state standards; they see the state standards as a loop to jump through that will be encompassed by their own standards that are often much higher. Instead, they focus on assisting the members of their community in understanding their own standards (the standards of the school, as well as helping students to create their own personal standards). For better or worse, alternative educators are often the ones who must put money issues aside, for the initial visioning process, and ask the deeper questions of what their school should stand for and be about. They struggle much in their first five years, and often go under or get sucked up by traditional public reforms. For the ones that survive—their ideas of “professional” eventually include fair pay for teachers, but that’s never the primary focus. The primary focus is always who they are being in relation to themselves, their learners, and their community. The member schools and home schoolers of the NCACS has even taken a group of rather diverse schools, with quite different functional aims, and managed to find a common (though broad) goal for uniting them. Looking back at the definition used for a profession in this essay,
in many ways, alternative educators have found some of the most effective
ways to further this developing profession of teaching. Through a
focus on school choice, small or personalized programs as a top priority
(much higher than curriculum issues), and setting their own standards,
teachers are creating opportunities for themselves, in both public
and private domains, that provide the freedom and responsibility
necessary to develop authentic leadership roles within their communities. Summary Questions and ConclusionsAs we have seen, making teaching into more solid and respected profession
involves much more than raising teaching salaries. It involves the
attitudes, past and present, of what it means to educate. It also
involves who controls the rhetoric and policies and toward what end.
As we look at the development of education as a profession, we must
continually question the structures of power within which education
has developed. Even if on the surface the controls seem reasonable,
we need to ask: Who is really leading the change? If we feel that
we as educators are leading, then what is our end goal? And how can
we involve parents and the local communities to be a part of defining
that goal, rather than operating in opposition to us? As we explore
more deeply the issue of controls and alternatives, this can lead
us to insights about the initial issue of shifting public perceptions. ReferencesCarter, James (1826). Essays upon Popular Education, Containing a Particular Examination of the Schools of Massachussetts, and an Outline of an Institution of the Instruction of Teachers. Boston, MA: Bowles & Dearborn. Glines, Don (1992). Educational Alternatives: Philosophy and History. Changing Schools, May 1992. (Available from Education Future Project, P.O. Box 2977, Sacramento, CA 95812.) Kaestle, Carl (1983). Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780 – 1860. New York, NY: Hill and Wang. Katz, Michael (1968). The Irony of Early School Reform. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Katz, Michael (1987). Reconstructing American Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Kohn, Alfie (1993). Punished by rewards the trouble with gold stars incentive plans As praise and other bribes. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co. Lieberman, Myron (1953). Education as a Profession. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Lieberman, Myron (1986). Beyond Public Education. Westport, CT: Praeger Publisher Division of Greenwood Press. Luvmour, Ba and Josette (1993). Natural Learning Rhythms. Nevada City, CA: EnCompass Press. Nathan, Joe (1987). Choice and Excellence in Public Education. Perspectives on National Trends. (Paper presented at a workshop sponsored by the Metropolitan Affairs Corporation and the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. Southfield, MI. (Available from ERIC Document Reproduction Services.) Copyright 2000 - Foundation for Educational Renewal You may redistribute this research paper for noncommercial purposes, provided you reference the Paths of Learning web site at http://www.PathsOfLearning.net and attach this paragraph. |