Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
Read pretty much any article online with a comments section when a teacher might have made a mistake. Comments will overwhelmingly defend the teacher. Facts will appear that turn out to be assumptions based on the idea that teachers can do no wrong. Most Americans simply refuse to acknowledge that teachers make mistakes.
In reality, teachers are constantly making numerous mistakes. We frequently use selective logic when teachers make the news. We assume that the teachers have to be right, so we adjust our logic to support what we want to believe.
I don't take notes on every instance when people mindlessly back teachers who have done wrong, so it's difficult to point out specific examples. Additionally, most of these stories are light on information and never receive any follow-ups. While I have seen numerous examples of people stating facts that have no basis, I don't have a long list of examples of these people being proven wrong. I'm going to stick with a simple example of what I'm trying to show.
Years ago, I read a story about children who were sunburned during a school's field day. The school had a policy about not giving students sunblock unless the parents signed a form, and the parents decided to fight the policy. This made the local news. Numerous people said that the real problem was that the children should have asked for sunblock if they thought they were going to burn.
The reason that I'm bringing up this relatively insignificant story is because I saw it in multiple locations and written differently. One of the websites I saw mentioned that the kids had asked their teacher for sunblock and were denied. The kids' failure to request sunblock was a "fact" that many people assumed based on the seriously flawed idea that teachers are perfect.
I could also bring up a teacher strike we had years ago in Tacoma. Teachers broke the law when they went on strike. Everybody supported them. They were ordered by a judge to go back to work. When the teachers openly defied the court order, an overwhelming majority of the public supported them. They were then fined by the courts for defying that order. Again, they received public support. Name one other profession that can get away with that kind of behavior and still have everyday citizens standing behind them.
Most people will not say that teachers are perfect, but the general population seems unwilling to acknowledge any wrongdoing from the world's most unethical profession. We are always defending teachers no matter what they do. When they screw up, it's always someone else's fault. We will even invent facts to support their mistakes.
I could go broader with this. Teachers are destroying minds, yet we insist that they are fully responsible for any mental development that we see. They receive praise for anything learned by a student who attends, even if the learning has nothing to do with the schools. Teachers never receive blame for the numerous mental issues that they cause. This isn't entirely the fault of the teaching profession since teachers are pawns who don't know what they are doing, but it is the fault of teachers that they take education for granted and don't realize the consequences of their actions.
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