Published: April 14, 2008 02:37 pm         

STUMPTALK: BTA is the one educational problem never discussed

Writers discuss various educational issues in these pages but never touch the most important: the activities of the BTA, the Blame the Teachers Association, which has blamers everywhere. The most persistent are principals and vice principals in the public schools. Because they directly handle disciplinary referrals from teachers, vice principals do a lot of blaming. In early encounters with vice principals regarding disciplinary matters, new teachers soon learn that to a man or woman, vice principals almost never had disciplinary problems when they were classroom teachers, but on the very rare occasions when they did, they handled the problems themselves without asking for administrative help. Thus the implied blame: “Hey teacher, what’s wrong with you? Can’t you control your classes?”

That fault finding discourages all but the most tenacious from asking for help with disciplinary problems, which is the vice principals’ goal and who can blame them? When they can pass the buck back to teachers, why should they confront troublesome, disruptive, and disrespectful children?

Teachers in these impossible situations do one of two things: they quit, or those who can’t quit – people with college loans, children, or mortgages – develop classroom management techniques designed to keep disruptive students occupied. That’s why one sees so much use of copy machines in the public schools. Study sheets with lots of blanks to fill in or lots of simple questions to answer occupy students with busy activity that they can do (the work must be easy), which keeps them from hurting others, breaking the furniture, or in many cases harassing the teacher. Finally, passing administrators see busy students quietly engaged, making their jobs a lot easier, and most people want to make their jobs easier.

Others inside the school system also belong to the BTA: especially sensitive guidance counselors who give serious, uncritical attention to student complaints about teachers, department heads (called coordinators in some systems) who blame teachers for not teaching, school board members who become instant experts when elected, other teachers, and officials of the NEA and AFT (the teachers’ unions).

Teacher members of the BTA are those who teach only the cream of the academic crop, such as teachers of French or calculus. They don’t understand why other teachers have problems; they never have problems! (That’s because difficult students don’t take difficult courses; they’re too difficult.) NEA and AFT blamers exist mainly to obtain or to protect jobs in the bureaucracy and to perform as activist arms of the Democratic Party. They help teachers the way Jimmy Hoffa helped the Teamsters.

Myriad BTA blamers exist outside the schools: political and media commentators of all stripes, business people, county commissioners, state legislators, and, of course, parents. Someone is always beating on teachers for the failures of the public schools.

Anyone who teaches in the public schools soon encounters the BTA. That’s why teacher turnover is high. Teachers are alone in their struggles, a situation not likely to change.