Restoring the Discourse on Education

“Repetition” is the snide title of Bwog’s Feb. 19 edition of QuickSpec, a daily review of the contents of Spectator. Yes, it is true. Spectator did have quite a bit of repetitive material that Thursday. So kudos goes to Bwog for a humorous post and caustic jab at Spec. But even bigger kudos goes to them for a different reason. Bwog made an important point about all academics in general: just as Spectator often resurrects dead topics and presents them in different textual incarnations, Bwog in that very post was ironically recycling another platitude—that all supposedly new intellectual discourse is essentially a repackaging of someone else’s old ideas.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Certain hot-button issues—the economy, politics, race, the Core, John Jay Dining Hall, banality itself—deserve continuing debate, and often the dialectic over them consequently feels hackneyed and vapid. But one issue that is surprising and tragically marginal in the whirlwind of discourse at Columbia—and perhaps even in the nation and the world—is education. It is ironic that the amount of attention we pay to education at an educational institution is so disproportionate to the amount of attention we pay to other issues.

Yes, we do wrangle over some aspects of education a lot—yes, a lot. We discuss the Core to death—we even go on hunger strikes because of it. We fight for financial aid, and our NYU counterparts occupy buildings because the cost of college is too high. And it isn’t as if the education budget and No Child Left Behind don’t spark political conflagrations. But, importantly, when we do try to debate education, we tend to ignore or whitewash the troubling pith of the problem: we just don’t care that much about education. Or at least, somewhat understandably, we care a lot more about our own education than the education of kids aged five to fifteen. The frequency with which we recycle questions on primary and secondary education comes nowhere near how hastily we bicker over economics and politics, and the personal investment in our discussions of lower education hardly matches the ardor and zeal with which we harp on culture, race, or even, say, environmental sustainability.

Sure, we angrily argue over the Core, but where is the righteous indignation over the ignominious $50,000 median salary of a kindergarten teacher? Under our financial aid policy, the son or daughter of that educator would easily qualify for a free ride at Columbia. Sure, our classrooms are small and our space sadly limited on campus, but shouldn’t we also concern ourselves with the largest jump this year in class size in New York City schools since 2002? As classrooms become more crowded, the individual attention students deserve is dissipated, and the burden on already exhausted teachers becomes even heavier.

The pro-teacher movement is certainly out there, and none of my arguments are original or really all that interesting. But the point is that education deserves far louder clamor than it gets, especially at an educational institution affiliated with the nation’s best Teachers College. The economy matters. Politics matters. But so does education: it is insufferably trite but nonetheless true to say that the future of society lies in the hands of elementary and middle school teachers more so than in any other occupational group’s hands.

At a time in which prejudices and barriers that once seemed insurmountable are crumbling, it is time that we tear down the quiet and subtle stigma that surrounds the primary and secondary education workforce. In no way do I seek to imply that teachers face the discrimination many other groups so tragically face. But let’s face reality: in the contemporary world, an elementary school or kindergarten teacher simply doesn’t have the social stature of a doctor, lawyer, or Wall Street consultant. As the questionable business practices those doing society’s most respected jobs fall under greater scrutiny it is time that we rethink our unspoken ranking of different employee groups. Everyone works hard for his money, but teachers especially work hard for particularly little, and because of the important nature of their service for children, they deserve a much higher social rank than they currently have.

Programs like Teach for America are admirable ways to put the children and teenagers of this nation under the guidance of its young elite and to promote the important service teachers perform for our future. But we can do more. By giving education—not only here at Columbia, but also in everyday classrooms from San Diego to Augusta, even Santiago to Tokyo—the attention it deserves in our public discourse, in our activism, and in our personal lives, we can finally give teachers the respect that they deserve. As the popular perception of teachers improves, perhaps interest in the teaching profession will follow suit, and perhaps the wages of these, some of society’s most under-appreciated workers, will too.

Maybe it’s highfalutin. Maybe it’s sanctimonious. And it certainly isn’t original. But the teachers’ cause is a worthy one, and it’s one that deserves sustained support. It is time to rescue education from the shadows of partisan politics and put it under a deserving national and international spotlight. Let’s start to regurgitate the same insipid arguments for the rights of teachers more and more, faster and faster, over and over, until Bwog gets angry about our repetitiveness.