Newspaper Declares War on Teachers

It is only logical that in an era of The Big Lie, an era of powerful, quasi-fascist, anti-intellectual leaders, teachers would become the most maligned people in the culture.

There is simply no other way to explain The Daily Oklahoman’s continued war on educators. Relentlessly, the newspaper distorts the facts, omits crucial information, and demonizes the state’s leading teachers’ organization for no other reason than to ensure the state lacks quality, enlightened educators. Those educators, the newspaper argues, need to head for Texas, California, or New York if they want to get paid a decent wage.

There is truly an ongoing Republican Party war on education in this country, and as the state’s GOP Propaganda Ministry, The Daily Oklahoman leads the war effort here.

The newspaper’s recent ideological attack comes in the form of an editorial (“Bad math: Merit pay for teachers overdue,” June 24, 2007) that argues salaries for Oklahoma teachers should be based on a corporate-based, winner-take-all merit system. It is the same old corporate ideology. If you do not challenge authority or speak up, you will make more money based on "merit." If you want to do what is right for students and your school, you will make less money. This argument is a part of the continued corportization of education that has damaged the intellectual quality of our schools and colleges for years now. It is part of the GOP’s and President George Bush’s Dumbing Down of American Schools Program to increase middle management positions for ideologues and corporate sycophants in education.

Here are reasons why a major merit pay structure for Oklahoma teachers is unwarranted at this time, if ever:

(1) Oklahoma teachers remain some of the most underpaid educators in the nation. Recent raises for teachers have helped the situation somewhat, but the state needs to meet regional average salaries for teachers. Oklahoma teachers did not even have paid health insurance until just a few years ago. Their health insurance program is terribly inadequate. Oklahoma teachers have one of the lowest funded retirement pensions in the nation. None of this is good for recruiting intelligent, enlightened teachers. But the corporate toadies want to ignore all this, and corporatize and politicize a system that already contains major structural problems. It is like they want to trick out the car before it even has tires or an engine.

(2) The country faces major teacher shortage in the future. A recent article ("U.S. Schools Pinched in Hiring," June 24, 2007) in The Washington Post reveals, “The growing paucity of talented recruits comes as federal policies are tightening requirements for teacher qualifications.” So as the teacher shortage develops, the corporate types want to increase teacher qualifications and lower pay for some teachers who might, say, practice free speech at their school. The true aim of this push for merit pay then is actually to gut public education. Who will want to teach under these conditions?

(3) It is unethical and immoral to compare corporations and schools. In corporations, the bottom line is as an employee you support the company in its effort to make money. For example, say the company is a monopoly. Perhaps, then, the “merit” of your job is to increase the immoral stranglehold of the company’s monopoly and make profits for the company’s owners based on nothing more than supporting the idea of wealth disparity and lack of competition. Perhaps, this job does not even require work as we know it, only a promotion of an ideology. This is certainly the case with many of those employed at The Daily Oklahoman. How is this “merit” that same of the “merit” of a teacher trying to teach a child to read? How can you in all honesty compare the two?

(4) Merit pay systems in schools are notoriously political and uneven and will serve to drive even more enlightened people away from teaching in the state. How can you expect to attract teachers in Oklahoma with low starting salaries, shoddy health insurance, terrible retirement benefits, and no promise of regular raises? Who will judge the “merit” of a teacher? How do we assess this? No one, no group, no institution has ever come up with a decent answer to this question. How can you assess the actions of a teacher when those actions might not become apparent for years? There are so many human factors that go into the educational development of a child that it is impossible to quantify it.

The Daily Oklahoman long ago declared war on the state’s teachers. The war is based on rhetorical subterfuge and deceit. Why would the Broadway Extension Warmongers even write about this issue when there are so many other pressing problems in the state and world? Here is why: The newspaper owners and the rest of the state’s Hillbilly Aristocracy want to gut public education and increase wealth disparity. There will never be enough money to appease the greedy Gaylord family and their associates. Never.