WHY OUR TEACHERS SEEM SO DISAPPOINTING

There are five basic groups of teachers in our public schools. Understanding these categories will help to provide parents with a clearer picture as to why lousy teaching is so commonplace in our nation:

Oblivious Teachers

We acknowledge that not all public school administrations are evil. There are some visionary administrators that really want good teachers and would applaud NAPTA. (So far only one has contacted us and another one wrote an introduction to the Breaking the Silence book. We think there are more than we can count on our hands, but we are not sure.) Therefore, there are some teachers working in excellent environments. However, they HAVE TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON.

It is as impossible to teach without knowing about teacher abuse as it would be to live in this country and not realize there is racial prejudice. Teachers attend seminars with other teachers and hear about it. They have relatives with horror stories. However, there could be a handful of teachers who teach in excellent districts and have been sheltered from this, but surely not more than a few. Given the circumstances that most teachers know, the question remains: can a teacher be considered a professional when they are apathetic to their colleagues?

Also, considering the numbers of abusive principals and superintendents roaming this profession, even if a teacher has a decent job for a while, the odds are that a new administrator will join the staff and expose them to teacher abuse later in their career. Keeping a good teaching job is like playing Russian Roulette. Few could culminate a career in teaching not knowing the dark side.

Lastly, if an ethical administrator ends up in an unethical district, he or she either conforms or has to leave. So just as good teachers sell-out, administrators sell-out. Some, very few we would suspect, remain and fight the system as in the case of a superintendent in Georgia who was awarded the Profiles in Courage Award for his fight to assure equal rights for all children. His experience, as described in Caroline Kennedy's book, More Profiles in Courage, was identical to what teachers experience when they stand up for what is right. It is even less likely that an administrator could stand up to the pressures, considering the potential loss of the substantial salary that accompanies administration. Therefore, the best case scenario is that only a few of the authentic administrators that exist manage to avoid being corrupted. Therefore, it follows that most teachers are working in dysfunctional districts.

This also means that some children have good teachers, but not very many and that these good teachers are not being proactive about making sure other good teachers remain in teaching. Considering that they are clueless about the darkness occurring in their profession, they facilitate decay around them. Few professionals would be content to do their work in a world where most of their peers were having problems. In fact, one wonders if they could be professionals and not be aware and supportive? Then consider the damage abused teachers cause to their students. Could a good teacher stand idly by while abused teachers are cheating children of a proper education or worse, while abused teachers abuse children as their anger explodes? We don't think so; being true to one's profession includes a responsibility to those around them.

Sell-out Teachers

In the majority of districts, some degree of abuse is taking place. One would have to describe sell-outs in a continuum in the same way those who are oblivious to what is happening range from sheltered from abuse to simply ignoring abuse. Some will be nice to the victim and behind closed doors be supportive and caring. However, some will avoid the targeted teacher as if their life depended on it, (not an illusion), and some will join in on the abuse. It is a rare teacher who will continue to speak the truth. Most NAPTA members knew of none or one at the most. This fact speaks as much to the victimization of non-targeted teachers as it does to the targeted teachers, since for the most part, people who enter this profession are decent people. Being forced to be indecent is scarring to those with a conscience.

Many teachers learn early in their careers that they can avoid being a target by joining the principal's brutal brigade. By working as a quisling to report their colleagues, they can secure safe haven, for a while at least. Teachers will pretend there is no harassment. IF directly confronted with a colleague who has experienced unfair treatment, they might express sympathy, but they will not help. They will give the, "You have to understand I need my job," excuse and proceed to betray their colleagues. Others will distance themselves from the victim so they can actively participate in his or her demise for the brownie points it will accrue. Some will lie to reporters, parents, the Board, and to anyone who asks if there are problems at the school. They will do what it takes to survive. In spite of the fact that they had initially thought they had avoided the workplace jungle by avoiding business, they learn the tactics to avoid the brutality in education so they can survive.

Their impact on the students is even more serious than their false sense of professionalism they use to justify abusing their peers. They serve as models of competitiveness and self-interest rather than good citizenship. Children do not overlook a lot when they observe adults, and from the age of middle school and higher, children frequently discuss the pecking order in schools that favors the teachers popular with the principal, meaning players, over the quality teachers who are usually popular with the students.

Being that this behavior contradicts the values of kindness, fair play, honesty and a sense of right and wrong, children often react with anger and the negative choices that accompany it, including withdrawal. Hypocrisy is a major obstacle for children and our public schools provide an overdose of it daily. When teachers are frauds, children are left with seeing too much too soon, and our schools damage them with this trauma - being cast into confusion too early in life. It is painful for a child to see a beloved teacher bullied and watch the phony teachers survive. Often they internalize this experience without ever discussing it, and grow up believing adult values are worthless. Most adults would agree that if they had spent day after day watching the bad guys win and the mean survive, they too would reject the high road. We do see a lot of rejecting of the high road amongst adolescents. We cannot merely blame family values when teachers continually prostitute their values at school. We cannot merely blame rock music. Consider who writes most of the violent music - people just out of our dark schools. Is it any wonder that black clothing, skulls and symbols of death prevail amongst many of our teens? Our schools have fallen prey to the evil side of life from the top down. Frankly, NAPTA believes these anti-establishment, lost souls suffer from being too perceptive, and not being able to ignore the hypocrisy that surrounds them. We don't blame them for wanting to escape from our society. We just wish we could have stayed in the schools to give them some hope that there are some people in our society who know right from wrong, and that there are rewards for choosing what is right over what is easy. Instead, as they see us cleansed from their midst, they validate their thoughts that it doesn't pay to do the right thing in this world. With these insights, they find their own evil, from drugs to bullying.

These interactions set up children who are defenseless within the system for being bullied or becoming a bully, thus explaining a fundamental reason why so much bullying takes place in our schools. Columbine was about uncontrolled bullying as were many other violent occurrences in our schools. Whether a child goes the bully or the bullied route, the message is the same. Both are victims for having been taught by example that power games are the American way. We cannot expect our children to not copy their teachers' actions when next to parents, teachers play a primary role in shaping values. It is ironic that people who choose teaching to make a difference in children's lives, end up making a detrimental difference. And we cannot expect our children to accept the values taught to them, when they make no sense and when, on a daily basis, they are the opposite of the actions they see adults following.

In addition, as they close their eyes to good teachers being carried off, they assist in depriving children of good teachers. The system is so cleverly orchestrated; not only does the terror turn parents against teachers, it turns teachers against teachers. Most of the targeted teachers have won awards or have been highly acclaimed at their schools. One has to wonder whether the motivation for teachers to side with their superiors comes solely from fears of retaliation when it also provides an opportunity for teachers to watch those teachers, who were superior to them, knocked down. The vicious nature of our administrators suggest that this is all part of the scheme, capitalizing on human weaknesses to enhance their power.

Run-away or Deserter Teachers

This group of teachers are people who discover the corrupted system in their first couple years of teaching and quietly exit the career, hoping for a new chance at their work life. They are the potentially excellent teachers who realize that excellent teachers are the targets and their future is dismal. They are the least likely to discuss what they see, since admitting it would carry guilt for running away from a profession to which they had made a commitment. Many of them speak about their past, once successful in other careers and often mention regrets that they did nothing. But few believe they could have done anything about it anyway, and can accept their choice with comfort. Unfortunately, they are more than likely correct.

Children lose, as they are left with the teachers who compromised their teaching, or the revolving door types.

Revolving Door Teachers

This is the group that is demonstrating the most growth. These are teachers who choose this profession knowing they do not want a career, merely a job for a few years before they get married or have children. They do not have a sense of investment in their positions knowing the job is temporary. Most do not have children, so they they do not relate to the parents who are thus cut out of the loop. They survive in this distorted world partially too shallow to take any responsibility for the crumbling world around them, and often too limited in brainpower to be effective if they cared to be. Because they do not establish roots, they are not threatening to those in power.

Additionally, teachers are hand-selected for their tendency to be temporary factor. When parents complain about the high turnovers and the prevalence of so many young teachers, principals pretend they have no choice - the market of teachers is limited they claim. However, principals, in addition to harassing out the experienced, more established types, intentionally avoid the teachers who might establish roots and care about what goes on beyond their classrooms and paychecks. Not being able to find experienced teachers and the TEACHER SHORTAGE are additional lies they propagate along with you can't fire a teacher.

Without an investment in a future, and thus no motivation to make waves, this type ignores unpleasantness, incompetence, or abuse around them and takes their paycheck and rarely develops into more than a one-dimensional teachers. Thus, they deprive children of an experience that goes beyond the superficial.

In addition, due to women's liberation opening real professions to bright women, and leaving teaching as the fallback profession, education has become the discard profession for women. There was a time when very bright women chose teaching, as their only option other than nursing. Now teaching draws from the pool of women who can't get through medical or law school. With less dynamic people choosing teaching, it has created an atmosphere that resembles a social club more than a serious profession. Decriptions of airheads, Barbie dolls and stewardesses abound when discussing our troops of teachers; in fact, today our stewardesses look more like teachers and our teachers look more like stewardess. There are no accidents! As administrators seize more and more of the power, they might just limit the teaching profession to blondes or those who embody the traditional blonde persona.

These types may be nice, but their impact is so shallow, only the together children thrive under their tutelage. The complex children, particularly the gifted and special needs children, often become disillusioned when their teacher doesn't have the depth or interest to understand them. With so many revolving door types permeating the field, children with special needs seem to becoming more common. It has been said that our Attention Deficit children might be akin to the canaries that miners used to send into the mines before they ventured in, knowing the possible presence of poisonous gas could kill them. If a canary died, the miners knew to avoid that mine. Some are suggesting that this increase of Attention Deficit children, with their heightened sensitivities, is signaling to the public to beware of the danger that lurks in our schools.

Terrorized Teachers

We acknowledge that not all administrations are evil, but far too many are. Also, amongst those that are, their travesties form a continuum from abuse due to incompetence to downright viciousness. In Breaking the Silence, the authors determined that 49 out of the 50 abused teachers researched admitted that their teaching was compromised due to the abuse foisted upon them. Abused teachers, like abused people in any area of life, have a tendency to repeat the behavior on someone they can control. This self-perpetuating aspect of abuse makes it even more evil.

NAPTA Teachers

There is no mistake saying there are five basic groups of teachers in our public schools; the sixth group, or NAPTA teachers, do not remain in our schools for long. It appears that the group of teachers who remain in teaching and accept the torture, tend to be able to pass their anger on, whereas the group of abused NAPTA teachers tend to direct their anger inward and become depressed and emotionally ill. The extent a teacher's principles compel her or him to remain ethical in spite of being treated brutally, determines the degree to which the anger is self-destructive and the likelihood they will blow the whistle on the evildoer, thus setting the brutal harassment plan into motion. NAPTA teachers - those teachers who aren't players - are pushed out of teaching with accelerated retaliation while the teachers, who are selected victims but are able to remain and endure the abuse, experience a more moderate level of harassment for remaining silent and playing the game. One can only imagine the negative effect having damaged teachers has had on our children, not to mention the loss of the principled teachers who speak out. NAPTA teachers have a skewed rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to their inability to pass the abuse on. It appears there is no positive way to deal with abuse, as it either hurts others or the victim. It is a force that comes from evil and creates either evil or sickness. It has a life of its own.

Bearing in mind the various situations in which we find our teachers, there is no wonder our schools are increasingly dysfunctional and our parents are increasingly angry. They have every right to be angry. We just wish parents understood that they need to redirect their anger at the real culprits - our administrations, rather than against the teachers who are being purposely placed in the parents' line of fire.

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PARENTS NEED TO KNOW