The most talented woman would teach for half

of what men of the ‘poorest capacity’ would demand.

It grates on me when I hear someone say “everyone is a teacher in some way, right?” Nah, not really. Until you’ve worked under bell constraints, with after-school mandatory IEP meetings, lawmakers’ curriculum opinions, angry parent phone calls, oppressive (or absentee) administrators, surly teenagers, 27-minute lunch “breaks,” an unworkable benefits package, also hilarious teenagers, thoughtful colleagues, supportive school counselors, rejuvenating community events, and the gratifying feeling of doing an important job every damn day…you can’t call yourself a teacher. 

I don’t ever want to forget that. I want to be my best teacher advocate self, but I’m no longer an on-the-ground teacher, in the classroom and experiencing all that. Not that I miss it. I don’t. But no mistaking my new role with its good benefits, bathroom breaks whenever I might have to go, travel support, and comfortable office space: it’s not public education. I did give up that long summer break, but you know what? I no longer NEED a summer off the way I did back when I was a teacher at the end of May, when I was whole-body shredded from…see above.

My all-time favorite teaching meme. It’s not wrong.

Teacher shortage problems have existed for decades and are certainly worsening…but so many things have led us to this point. As a female educator I find the feminization of the American teaching corps particularly illuminating. In the mid-1800s when the common school movement (think today’s public schools) was flourishing, schools of education began admitting women. They were thought to be better nurturers of children, and they were much cheaper to employ. Dana Goldstein’s 2014 book The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession spells it out:

An 1842 manual for local schools…[said] that the most talented women would be willing to work for half of what men of the ‘poorest capacity’ would demand.

Furthermore, because women were themselves hardly educated and widely believed to be less intelligent than men, it felt like a bridge too far to expect them to teach actual content. So common schools moved toward character building and very basic literacy and numeracy, not advanced material. Goldstein again:

During an era of deep bias against women’s intellectual and professional capabilities, the feminization of teaching carried an enormous cost: Teaching became understood less as a career than as a philanthropic vocation or romantic calling.

And here we are. Nearly two centuries on, and teachers face the same attitude: teaching is for weak-minded people who can’t be trusted to make decisions or be paid like other professionals for their work. Remember “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”? That hateful aphorism might as well have started as a non-controversial commentary on female educators. This sourness has spread to public attitudes toward education in general. It infects legislatures across the nation, school boards, Florida governors’ pronouncements: it says, teachers don’t know what they’re doing, so we’ll need to club them over the heads with our superior ideas. 

The assault persists, in the form of bullshit bills. See SB 235 in Montana as an example of legislators trying to ban the use of theory in science education - but how do we then explain physics?¹ Good luck producing some engineers, Montana! So-called Critical Race Theory - we’re tired of explaining that this isn’t anything but some idiot’s idea of a way to get noticed.² It’s still being discussed; here is a 2022 map of legislative efforts to control CRT, and just a couple of weeks ago Nikki Haley made her predictable stand on that hill…since she knows so much about it, of course.

Nikki Haley @NikkiHaley

CRT is un-American.

…all this stance-ing while continuing to pay teachers next to nothing, offering insane working conditions, and heaping abuse related to extended “vacations” and other unreasonable benefits of teaching. 

The worst part is, many teachers buy into their own abusive treatment. Monica Washington, 2014 Texas Teacher of the Year and Voices for Honest Education fellow, wrote about this:

Let’s please stop saying, ‘I’m here for the kids. I’m not here for the money.’ We know that we do the work for kids, but we also deserve a good wage that doesn’t require us to moonlight on the side. When we say this so often, it provides justification for those who don’t want to pay teachers what they deserve. We don’t have to be suffering martyrs. Many of us have internalized the toxic culture of the profession that teaches us to give and teach until we drop…We have to stop legitimizing others’ disrespect of our work.³ 

I’ve written about this before too. It must be said that there are always teachers who will use their voices honestly and loudly to express their love for teaching and their support for teachers: Love Teaching Week happening this week (!) is one such expression. But those vocal educators are a minority, and it’s pretty easy for politicians and ignorant community members to drown them out. Here’s Washington again, with the eloquent near-final word:

The teacher retention issue is not related to numbers of humans. There are wonderfully talented humans who stand ready to enter classrooms, but they are peeking into schools, watching the news, watching current legislation, and asking themselves why they should take their hard-earned degrees and specialized training into a profession in which they will be disrespected.

Nobody wants to work in a field like this, where they are fundamentally expected to do more, ask for less, and obey self-serving politicians, ignorant voters, and feral humans who just want someone to shit on.

How did we get here? As it turns out, we’ve never not been here. 

1. This bill was tabled on Tuesday, February 7. Happily, some people still have sense.

2. Read more about this fucking guy, Chris Rufo, here.

3. Read more of Monica’s awesome post here.