Sacrifice: The Unfortunate Persistence of Monastic Tradition in Public Education

During my first year as principal, 1986-87, an unmarried teacher I’ll call Morgan came to my office and told me, “I’m pregnant. On purpose. I’m due in April. I’m not getting married.”

When this happened in the 1980s, public schools were still sorting out the collision between individual employee rights and traditional social values. Morgan gave birth to her child less than two decades after Tucson began allowing married teachers to stay in their classrooms once the pregnancy was obvious.

Before public schools existed, teachers often came from monasteries and convents, where they were bound by vows of poverty and chastity. As schools have developed into secular institutions and the profession has overflowed the bounds of the religious orders, I wonder if an expectation of personal sacrifice continues to undermine not only teachers' salaries but also their status as professionals.

 Once I became a principal, I found that it was part of my job to help maintain the illusion of the chaste and bland teacher. Even as teacher celibacy stereotypes have faded, we as a nation may not have stopped regarding the call to teaching as an implicit commitment to living in worthy poverty, some willingness to occupy a subordinate and humble role.

Ironically, today’s teachers must do far more parenting in their classrooms than previous generations of educators—yet another aspect of the work inside the sacrifice paradigm but outside the job description. Imagine an accountant or a book editor or an architect, both high-intensity professionals, having to work with all their clients together in one room, six hours at a stretch, five days a week. 

Does the tradition of teacher as sacrificial instrument infect public policy and educational decision-making in America? In all the discussion of teacher compensation, does the abstemious monk or the virtuous nun hover in the background, the images against which today’s teachers are judged? I’m not sure we are beyond that yet.

Linda and I Eat Tamales and Talk About Why I'm Retiring

I promised excerpts, so here are a few paragraphs from the Preface:

    “Fifty-four seems too young,” Linda said.

    She and I were sitting in her living room a few days after Christmas of the year 2000, eating tamales from plates we held on our laps. I’d known Linda longer than anyone who was not part of my family, and we hadn’t had a chance yet to talk about the job—the career—I was leaving in just a few months. I had no idea how to respond.

    In the years I’d worked in schools and Linda had worked as an urban planner, I’d heard her mention that educators worked less than a full year, had all those long vacations, and spent only six hours a day working. She didn’t see how jobs in schools could be very hard.

    On that winter day, I didn’t tell her that two principals I knew had simply cleaned out their desks and walked away on days that were not even Fridays, let alone ends of semesters. I didn’t tell her that after fifteen years, my job had come to feel like a game of pinball, one where I was the ball. I’d sat silently for almost a minute when Linda asked, “Do you think it’s futile?

    Surprised at her use of this word, I put my fork down on my plate and said, “No! It’s not futile. But I can’t do it anymore.”

    Growing up in the second half of the Twentieth Century, I had regarded capital-P Progress as a sure thing. My post-war generation would, I assumed, pitch in to keep things moving. By 1967, I had decided to do my part by teaching school. I’d make sure kids could read, write, and compute, and I’d also inoculate them with peace and justice. I didn’t plan on, or even imagine, being a principal.

    Thirty years after I chose to teach, the era that raised me had run into trouble. While racial and gender equality increased in that time, peace did not last. Prosperity became a more elusive goal, less a value of community than a contest to be won by individuals. I did not foresee that in the last years of the Twentieth Century, public education would no longer be everyone’s favorite democratic institution. 

More bad news from Chicago Public Schools

While I was out walking this morning, I heard a story on NPR about school librarian positions being cut in the Chicago Public Schools.

Find radio story here

Chicago Public Schools has delegated staffing decisions to local school councils, supposedly a good thing. But the councils are frequently cutting their librarian positions, not a good thing at all. The Chicago schools CEO isn't helping by mis-stating the issue.

Research studies have shown that active school libraries with teacher-librarians boost reading achievement. Those of us who've worked in schools know that librarians also give teachers a hand in offering kids some particularly wonderful learning experiences. School libraries are far more than a roomful of books for kids to check out. As just one example of what a school library offers that a classroom teacher may not: Many kids don't even know about nonfiction books until their first encounter with a school library. Even the most wonderful teachers tend to read story books when they read to kids because nonfiction isn't always suitable for this. For many kids, the nonfiction books they find in the school library give them their entry point to reading.

School libraries are now the high-tech, complex sister of public libraries, and volunteers can rarely staff them at the level needed to complement and support classroom learning. A school librarian is an investment in student achievement that is next in importance only to the classroom teacher.