During the next few weeks many towns across our nation will be deciding on how our schools will be funded. Some towns will be deciding if they should build a new school. This is not a happy time for teachers. Many in the communities blame teachers for just about everything. I am not saying most in the communities don’t support what we as teachers are trying to do but the few who don’t hurt the most. During these times I wonder how teachers and their profession became the ‘scapegoats’ of our society.

During this time of year I see many teachers start to wonder why they decided to become teachers in the first place. The new ones wonder the most because they are just starting their careers. The older ones use this stressful time to remember why we decided to be what we are.

I ask my young colleagues why we got into teaching in the first place. My question usually produces silence. The silence doesn’t last long because it is replaced by a unified display of the, who the hell made you king of arrogance, look.

“No, I mean it. Does anyone remember the philosophy that made us all take the vows of celibacy, servitude, and of course poverty? “Well, a young history teacher whose size outweighs his experience asked me to remind them of what their philosophy was. In other words, he took me to task. Being the storyteller I am, I told the group I would use a metaphor to describe what teaching is to all of us.

I told them the beginning of each year was like taking a group of young men and women to the base of a mountain. Always observing my students, I see they are afraid and uncomfortable with what they were expected to do. I tell them for the next 186 days I will show them how to climb the cliffs and reach the plateau that was above the clouds and seemingly out of reach.

We then start the climb by having me show them how to put one foot in front of the other. How to use their hands, legs, and more importantly their minds to reach the next stone. All my kids start to fall. I tell them that it’s OK to fall, to make a mistake, because this is how we all learn and get better at what we are trying to do. Some of my kids give up and simply fall down to the bottom of the mountain. I try and encourage them to continue but they simply do not want to take the chance to fail. I feel bad yet I realize I can’t help everyone. I can only try.

Looking around my small group of young colleagues I notice everyone is listening. I smile, take another sip of coffee, and continue.

Half way up the mountain I see my kids are beginning to build up a confidence in themselves. They help each other climb to the next level. Every now and then a child falls but the farther we climb up the mountain fewer children make the decision not to continue. It is now no longer a case of me showing them how to climb. They work with each other and find easier and better ways of achieving success. Every now and then I fall. I find my students helping me now. Students become teachers. We all become one in the knowledge we need each other to continue and thus succeed.

We finally reach the plateau and are dumbfounded by what we see. We observe the colors of life; the greens of their futures, the reds and oranges of their passion, and the blues of their dreams. The air is new and clear. There are no clouds on the plateau, just an image that everything; anything is do-able and achievable. I walk over to the edge where the view is even more dramatic and beautiful. I tell them to come to the edge with me. They hesitate and tell me they are still afraid. I chastise them; I teach them once more and tell them they earned looking out at their futures. It is because of their hard work and perseverance they have become competent in everything they attempt to do.

They come to the edge of the plateau.

I push them off.

And I watch them fly.

The group surrounding me stays silent for the next few minutes. A young English teacher tells me I should write down my thoughts. I just smiled and said I probably will. I always do. The conversation then turned very positive. It became filled with hopes and visions of a profession they should be very proud of.

Webster defines loyalty as: a true and faithful to promise or duty. This term is used to describe love of country, love of family, and is the cornerstone of our society. Men and women spend their entire lives being loyal to professions that not only include business and the act of supporting their families but also loyalty to their communities and neighbors. In the past this loyalty was rewarded by pensions and medical insurance that was promised toward the end of their professional lives. These promises took the place of lower wages earned that could have been elevated if public sector individuals went into private fields. Can you imagine what our society would be like without the loyalty of public sector employees?
Lets’ begin with policeman. How many of us would want to take a job that entails the possibility of being badly injured or killed. I am not being dramatic here. Any traffic stop or an investigation of a disturbance in any of our communities could lead to the death of a policeman. I wonder how many would volunteer to work the abstract hours many of our police officers work. Many have families but also feel the stress of having an extremely stressful job. Sometimes this stress destroys their family but because they feel loyal to their community and want to insure their neighbors are safe this possibility is accepted.
Thank God, they all do it and in an exceptionally professional manner simply to make their community a better place to live. All they ask is this same community honor the pledge of both a pension and a means of taking care of themselves and their family after their age no longer allows them to successfully complete their tasks.
Our firefighters also have odd schedules in order to protect their communities from both natural and un-natural disasters. I wonder how many of us would run into a burning building understanding the possibility of losing their life and the future of their family. I wonder how many of us would rush to car accidents with the knowledge that what they see and have to help would make most of our stomachs turn inside out.
Thank God, they all do it and in an exceptionally professional manner simply to make their community a better place to live. All they ask is this same community honor the pledge of both a pension and a means of taking care of themselves and their family after their age no longer allows them to successfully complete their tasks.
How could we offer our children an opportunity to live a better life if it were not for their teachers? Many of the wealthy in our society think the Jeffersonian concept of public education a foolish one. Why should the masses be educated? Is it a right for the wealthy to enjoy the better life and the legacy of the not-so-rich to take care of and support the wealthy? Teachers take vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty because they were also promised to be taken care of when it was time for them to step down in order to allow the young to take over their positions.
Thank God, they all do it and in an exceptionally professional manner simply to make their community a better place to live. All they ask is this same community honor the pledge of both a pension and a means of taking care of themselves and their family after their age no longer allows them to successfully complete their tasks.

 We are now living in difficult economic situations. I don’t know of a policeman, fire fighter, or teacher who is responsible for theses conditions. Yet, all across our nation communities; those who were professionally served by their public workers, are being blamed for the economic downturn. I read articles displaying how public employees are literally raping their communities because of exaggerated pension programs. If you look closely at these lists it will become obvious there are exponentially low numbers of public employees taking advantage of their pension programs.
Many communities are now putting pressure on public employees who have years of experience successfully doing their jobs. People of power want these people to retire before they are ready because they are paid according to their experience. I wonder if these same people realize how many years of sacrifice these public employees lived through in order to have built up this experience. I also wonder if these same people understand how effective a veteran police, fire, and teaching staff are to their communities. I wonder if any of the people in power would rely on a heart surgeon who has decades of experience instead of putting their lives into the hands of a surgeon who has little experience but read the book well. The people in power should feel the same way about their communities.
Families, communities, and whole nations survive because of a clear understanding of the concept of loyalty. If this practice is dismissed because of difficult economic conditions the potential of recovering will be forever lost.

Jim Fabiano is a teacher and writer living in York, Maine. You can E-mail Jim at:
James.fabian060@gmail.com

The buses arrive. In come numerous students ranging from age 12 to 21. Their entrance is noisier than a Fenway Park crowd. They are young and youth by definition is synonymous with energy and vitality. The question is how we are educating our children. The programs of public education remind me of Jacques Brel’s anthology of music, Jacques Brell is Alive and Well and Living in Paris”:

Carnivals and cotton candy
Carousels and calliopes
Fortune-tellers in glass cases
We will always remember these
Merry-go-rounds quickly turning
Quickly turning for you and me……

Thirty years ago I remember a means of saving public education was a strategy that eliminated the walls between the classrooms of a school. In fact, whole buildings were built in order to emulate the “open classroom concept”. Within weeks teachers put book cases between their teaching spaces in an effort to undo what many experts thought was brilliant.

And the whole world madly turning
Turning, turning ’till you can’t see

I believe the, “No Child Left Behind”; program had the most effect on my career as a teacher. Whole local districts and states were no longer given the responsibility of educating their own children. The federal government took charge and put major penalties on any school district that dared to not follow their lead.

We’re on a carousel
A crazy carousel
And now we go around
Again we go around
And now we spin around
We’re high above the ground

Differentiated Learning and Multiple Intelligence programs reared their heads forcing teachers to teach all levels of students at the same time within the same classroom. Howard Gardner of Harvard University, who developed the program, never intended it solely for public education. The only people who thought this was possible were the people who never taught.

And down again around
And up again around
So high above the ground
We feel we’ve got to yell
We’re on a carousel

Technology then took hold of the way we educate our children by demanding the teacher get away from teaching their student through their knowledge and use computer technologies that flooded the market. The concept of a teacher being a ‘sage on a stage’ was replaced by an LCD transmitted image of a computer screen. The idea of having teachers display what they are passionate about to young men and women searching for something they can be passionate about is being digitally replaced.

A crazy carousel
We’re on a ferris wheel
A crazy ferris wheel
A wheel within a wheel
And suddenly we feel
The stars begin to reel

NCLB has now failed and will probably go the way of the open classroom. In its place a new catchy-titled program is being forced into public education replacing century old programs that produced innovation and defined our society since the advent of our nation. “21st Century Learning” with its school wide rubrics, Virtual High School, VLACS, and ALECKS systems hope to one day eliminate the necessity of teachers. The idea of placing our children with individual computers in large auditoriums being monitored by non-teachers is not far from reality. I guess what goes around comes around.

And down again around
And up again around
And up again around
So high above the ground
We feel we’ve got to yell
We’re on a carousel
A crazy carousel

The day ends like it began with students displaying the same amounts of energy they showed when they arrived. Some realities of public education will hopefully never change. I remember when one of my students told me that what I taught her about biological relationships between young men and women made a decision she had to make easier. As she was leaving my room she turned and thanked me for being a teacher; her teacher.

Carnivals and cotton candy
Carousels and calliopes
Fortune-tellers in glass cases
We will always remember these
Merry-go-rounds quickly turning
Quickly turning for you and me

I knew every one of those people. I didn’t know their faces or their names but I knew them all. They were husbands and wives working to make their families comfortable. They were children whose hard work and perseverance gave them the opportunities they once had. They were grandparents who were just about ready to enter a new stage of their lives doing something they had worked to be able to do. I still know them.

I am sitting at the same desk I sat at on that horrific day ten years ago. The young men and women of my classroom are different now but they are also the same in that they are striving to become as prepared as possible for their futures; futures that are not as clear as they were a short decade ago.

Looking up at the same television set I remember watching images of brave men and women with unfamiliar faces running toward those giant towers to help; to do what they must have known was impossible.

I remember my students asking me if we were at War. I didn’t know how to answer because, yes, we were at war now…but not a war we had ever seen before. A war with an enemy we are still struggling to define and understand. A war with an enemy that won’t fight by any rules we understand. A war we have to win just to go back to a simpler time that probably can’t exist.

I remember one of my students muttering the words ‘Independence Day,’ a movie about aliens invading earth and destroying our national landmarks, because that’s how unreal it seemed.

I smile as I remember back to before that day when my biggest problem was if my students were getting what I was trying to teach them. A time when words like Taliban or Bin Laden sounded like something I would use to clean my toilet.

I realize those times are gone. They have been replaced by a constant fear that what happened on September 11 could happen again. They are replaced by a knowledge that the most powerful nation on earth is susceptible to people who live in caves and sincerely believe that to die by killing innocent people would give them an eternity in heaven.

In the decade since September 11 many things have changed. The Constitution of my nation has been put in jeopardy because of a need for national security. Economically we, as a nation, are much weaker. The corporate titans of the booming times turned out to have feet of clay. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have lost their life savings to crooks in thousand dollar suits and multi-million dollar mansions.

Some people want to make September 11 a national holiday, which would be a terrible mistake. We don’t need a holiday to remember what happened, just like my parents don’t need a holiday to remember what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. For the rest of our lives we will never be able to forget.

I can’t enjoy the media blitz that is currently underway, forcing us to re-live the shock of what happened only a decade ago. I would much rather see images of our nation rebuilding itself, picking itself up from this catastrophe and moving forward.

I take interest in the plans for the southern tip of Manhattan and I follow their discussions. I want to see something magnificent rise up from this act of hatred against us to demonstrate the strength of our national spirit and resolve. To show the whole world that we, as a nation, are undiminished by what’s been done to us, that we will never be defeated by acts such as this.

My work has always been to build for the future, usually by building young minds. I won’t forget the past but I am ready to move forward now. I need to move forward. It matters more to me know where we go from here than where we’ve already left.

With most political discussion evolving around our national debt and the debt ceiling, President Obama still hammers away at a message of stimulating innovation in education in order to keep the United States competitive in the global economy. “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” Obama said, referring to the 1960s space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. “But today”, Obama continued, “rather than federal spending for outer space, the focus should be on “biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology,” emphasizing that they “will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.”

Webster defines innovation as being, “the introduction of something new or a new idea, method, or device.” With today’s society it is obvious we can’t continue our same failed concepts especially in the education of our children. The question is how can we bring innovation back into our children’s minds? Not too many years ago most young men and women dreamed of being the first to land on a distant planet or be the scientist or physician to finally break through the mystery of cancer. In the past these were exciting dreams whose only hope of realization was earning an exceptional education or being motivated by a remarkable teacher.

We need to go back to those times when teachers motivated their students to their dreams and not to show success on a standardized test. Maybe everyone forgot the definition of motivation. Going back to my beat up old Webster’s Dictionary, yes they do still exist, motivation is defined as, “whatever drives you to do something. You can motivate yourself by setting goals and rewarding yourself and even your society when you meet them.”

For the past decade public education has gone away from the simple act of having a teacher motivate their student to do great things. Public schools and administrators have been given a set of standards to use in order to educate their students. These standards are then tested using standardized tests that have nothing to do with innovation or motivation.

But, have no fear, a report released today by the National Research Council presents a new framework for K-12 science education that identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school. The framework will serve as the foundation for new K-12 science education standards, to replace those issued more than a decade ago. These new standards will set rigorous learning goals that represent a common expectation for all students. They also will be limited in number to reflect the framework’s focus on a small set of core ideas and practices, and should include guidance about what does and does not need to be taught.

In other words, schools and teachers will be told what can and can’t be taught. If a student is motivated to learn about a subject that is not part of these standards then he or she will be told their dreams and expectations simply aren’t important. Once again public education is being told to have all students become proficient in both objective and subjective sciences even though it is common knowledge all students can’t be good in everything but can become exceptional in what they are being motivated to learn. How can innovation become a reality when one is told to learn something that is already known?

The concept of teaching to standards is a failed concept. All one has to do to demonstrate this is to look at what the, “No Child Left Behind Program” did to our children. Our public education system did not get better but rather showed little to no improvement. Many states across our nation are now rejecting a program that was destined to fail before it began. We now have a new program in the horizon that promises better results even though it will once again fill our student’s buckets with facts and data instead of filling them with fire.

I remember he actually scared me a lot. Thirty or so years ago I met my first department chairperson. Back then it was always a department chairman but being forced to be politically correct I have to admit he was a person. I remember him being old and I also remember how he didn’t trust me.

Why won’t the old talk to us? Why is it so hard for them to explain their years of experience to those of us who try not to make the mistakes of those who lived before us? Why is it so difficult for them to look into our eyes and explain how they got to become so old? To paraphrase Harry Truman, “There is nothing new in this world. Only the times that are not remembered.” We can’t remember these times unless the people who lived through them will explain them to us.

After a few months he became my mentor. I think he did this because he knew I had the fire in my gut to be a good teacher. It could also be because few of the other teachers wanted to talk with him. You see he was a curmudgeon and in his time he was considered a dinosaur of education. He didn’t believe in the new found concepts of open classrooms and heterogeneous classes. He understood all children should be given the same opportunity to succeed but also knew everyone will not succeed unless you lower your standards to make them succeed. This is something he would never do.

Needless to say he was overwhelmed by the ever-growing administrations and their initiatives that sounded good by name but had little substance to them. At his retirement he gave me a hug and told me to continue the good fight because he knew I cared about my students and their futures. He also knew I couldn’t care less about policies that made the policy makers look good instead of making our students succeed more.

Thirty years passed before I could figure out how to slow time down. Thousands of students passed through my classes. All of them did very well because they worked to their capacity. I never had a bad student. In fact, I wouldn’t know how to define or even recognize one. But, policies changed that placed the concept of Data over my student’s well-being. The concepts of multiple intelligence and individualized education pushed out the concept of a classroom teacher being a “sage” on a stage. I am actually quite proud of that description.

These programs have now been usurped by the concept of “school-wide rubrics” that demand all children be assessed the same way. Now that its common knowledge the “NCLB” program has failed; more initiatives are being created to fill the void. The only problem is these new programs need more administration and administrators. I am saddened by the fact we are losing more art, music, health, and unified arts teachers every year and in their place are the curriculum coordinators whose responsibility is to coordinate numbers instead of children.

A few days ago I was told I intimidated many new teachers. I guess they were scared of me even though I thought I helped them through many difficult times. I had been a mentor to many of them because I knew they had the fire in their guts to be great teachers. I tell them to be careful and not become friends to their students. Their students have all the friends they need but they have few teachers. My administrators told me I was a curmudgeon who wasn’t a team player doing what I was told to do even though I knew it would hurt my students.

Today I am being overwhelmed by the title wave of new initiatives that have little to do with the education of my students. Even though many of my responsibilities have been taken away I know I can still make difference for my students. But, sooner than later I understand I will be forced to retire and be simply thrown away.

Jim Fabiano is a teacher and writer who teaches in New Hampshire and lives in York, Maine. You can contact Jim at: james.fabiano60@gmail.com

When billionaire brothers David Koch and Charles Koch, owners of Koch Industries funded the Tea Party Movement few questioned why they did it. The Koch’s are trying to shape, control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies. But, what are these policies?

The best way to define the policies would be to check its website. Right away the site defines what the Koch Industries mission is: “Koch Industries, Inc. is a company bounded only by our capabilities, not by specific industries or product lines. Koch companies constantly seek to grow our existing businesses, and build or acquire assets or businesses throughout the world that will allow us to create the greatest value.”

There is obviously nothing wrong with this statement since the primary objective to any business is to make the most money possible. Now, let’s compare Koch Industries mission to what the Tea Party activists hope to achieve.

The Tea Party’s goal from inception has been to replace big-spending politicians from both political parties with common-sense, fiscally responsible leaders. The goals of this grass-roots movement sound good until you investigate what they are trying to cut and what they are leaving alone.

The Tea Party and other political conservatives want to cut entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, legislate less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above. In all of my study of the Tea Party movement and their backers I’ve not heard mention of retrieving moneys lost by the bank scandals, taxing oil companies who are now making record profits, or looking at the possibility of reducing the amount of tax credits afforded to the rich. For after all the Koch brothers are billionaires and any effort to reduce their fortunes would be to say the least; odd.

This is what confuses me most about the Tea Party movement. It is said to be filled with every-day people who are not considered rich and who work in order to have their families survive in our complicated world. Then why do these people insist on destroying what little they have in order to make the rich richer?

For example the elected Tea Party candidates want to weaken if not destroy the union movement in our nation. In a discussion with a tea party supporter I was once told that anyone in a union was technically a Communist. Visions of the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s danced before my eyes. It if weren’t for unions, concepts like minimum wage, child labor laws, workplace health and safety laws, unemployment and workers compensation insurance, paid sick days, vacations, holidays, and health insurance would never have happened. Of course this would have increased the profits of industry and eliminated the concept of a middle class. Is this the reason the Tea Party Movement exists?

Education seems to be another front the Tea Party wants to dismember. First and utmost the movement wants to eliminate the Department of Education. President Reagan promised to de-fund the department, formerly part of the Health, Education and Welfare Department, in his 1982 State of the Union address, and the GOP platform in 1996 backed elimination. This failed but is now being revisited.
With the elimination of the Department of Education many successful programs for our children will also be eliminated. For example the eradication of 200,000 children from an early childhood education program like Head Start. They also want to cut financial aid for 8 million college students. Some states like New Hampshire are talking about eliminating Kindergarten programs that have proved its value the instant it was mandated.
It is common knowledge the more ignorant a society the easier it is to control. George Orwell’s novel, ‘1984’ demonstrated this in fiction but do the powers behind the Tea Party movement also have the same plan. A sexist statement of the past comes to mind. When explaining how to control a woman some people used to state, “Keep them barefoot and pregnant.” Could it be the financial backers of the Tea Party movement have evolved this statement to mean, “Keep them poor and stupid?”
There is little doubt we are in the midst of class warfare. The rich want to become richer by making the middle class poorer. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been greater. The question I have is why are we trying to defeat ourselves?
Jim Fabiano is a teacher and writer living in York, Maine
You can reach Jim at: james.fabiano60@gmail.com

If you don’t believe there is a battle going on in your child’s school you have not been paying attention. This conflict to improve our nation’s public education system has little to do with what is being taught but rather concerns itself with how the lessons are being presented. In the past the concept of content was incorporated in all of our public and private schools. The strategy of ‘sage on a stage’ is now the scapegoat of why our schools are not doing well. Many administrators and education experts want to overwhelm content education with process. The definition of process is how the lessons are being presented by the teacher.

Being a teacher whose experience overwhelms three decades I am concerned with how this concept of process over content will affect our children. For example, if a teacher is more concerned with how the lesson is being taught instead of what is being taught; will less be taught? As a teacher I understand there is only a certain amount of time I have with my students. If I lose any of this time I feel I am cheating my students.

What is meant by process? For example, the idea of teaching multiplication tables to our primary students by making them memorize by repetition is now being questioned. I am told this is not the way to motivate our students to enjoy mathematics. A process could be used by combining different levels of different lessons in order to have the student understand basic concepts of mathematics. This actually sounds like a good plan until the student evolves into higher abstract concepts of algebra, geometry, and calculus. If a student does not have a quick recollection of multiplication tables he or she will take more time with the problem at hand. This barrier will cause frustration and thus have the student dislike what they are asked to do. This new process is called ‘Everyday Math’ that was developed at the University of Chicago. Many of our schools still use this tactic even though it has not reached the achievement level it was supposed to achieve.

Another example of process over content is having our students evolve away from the model of memorizing vocabulary lists as part of their literacy studies. Years ago we turned our backs on the study of grammar and sentence structure because ‘the experts’ told us these concepts would eliminate creative thought. Today our students have a difficult time writing papers or expressing themselves with words. They are very good at communicating through texts that use a language few educators would endorse. This language was learned by our students through repetition. Today we are told to use various literacy games and techniques that seem to attempt to fool our students into learning literacy. I always thought the best way to learn and thus enjoy our language is to read. Schools can’t do this alone. The parents of our students have to instill this art in their children well before they begin their public education experience.

If you haven’t figured it out yet I consider myself a content teacher. I am the sage on a stage that is my classroom. I love what I teach and by doing this I can motivate my students into the wonders of my discipline. I don’t believe process should overwhelm content because the subject I teach can stand on its own. I believe in the wonder of words and understand how by knowing the basics of reading and writing our students will have the ability to read and thus understand and be able to express their own minds.

There will be many changes in public education. Some say in the near future our students will be herded into large auditoriums and given computers in which programs will teach them without having a need for something as expensive as a teacher. Virtual teaching will replace the obsolete sage on a stage. I just pray the new technologies will have our children enjoy the finite realities of numbers and the beauty of words.

On February 20, 2011, Howard Altschiller wrote an article titled, “Teachers must be rewarded for performance”. Being a teacher for the past three decades I agree with him.

I agree when he states, “it’s hard to create a one-size –fits-all benchmark for teacher performance.” He gets to the point of his article by making the statement, “until school boards and teachers’ unions can agree on a way to fairly measure teacher performance, we are going to be stuck with last-in first-out and the inability to reward good teachers and remove bad ones.”

There is a reason why this scheme is used in public education. I know few people who would argue that an experience teacher is more effective than an inexperienced one. All one has to do to prove this concept is ask a student. It takes a long time to get comfortable in front of a class and it takes an even longer time to learn how to cope with the many personalities of their students. For the past few decades most of my colleagues have worked to hone their skills in multiple intelligences and differentiated learning. In order to successfully use these strategies a teacher needs years of time before his or her class.

Teaching is one of the few professions in which the more experience one has and the more skills developed, it loses value. An argument would be this is not true because most teacher salaries are based on a salary scale that is based on longevity and education background. But, if a teacher wanted to change schools and had a lot of experience they would have a difficult time finding a position in many of our public schools. A comment I make when confronted with the value of an experienced teacher I ask, “When a heart doctor is needed would you choose one who has done the surgery many times before or would you rather use a doctor who read the book well.”

Let’s look at the under-belly of Mr. Altschiller’s argument. Cities and towns across our nation are looking for ways to cut municipal budgets. It’s obvious one of the ways to do this would be to cut the municipal payroll even though most payrolls are struggling to take care of the community with the numbers they have. You could cut the education payrolls by getting rid of the experience teachers and only hire less experienced teachers. Without unions this is exactly what the municipalities would do. This is exactly what the State of Wisconsin is in the process of doing.

I agree with Rebecca Emerson’s statement, she is a Portsmouth, NH School Board member, “It’s a shame that, the way the system is set up, we can’t keep the best person for the job.”

I believe there is a simple solution to fix this problem. All teachers in a school system should be paid the same no matter how many years they have in the classroom. My resolution doesn’t mean veteran teachers should be paid less but new teachers should be paid the same. This would make replacing a teacher a non-monetary circumstance as it is today. It would become a decision based on how the community can best educate their children.

I know my comment will rile up many if not most teacher unions across our nation and most municipalities. In my history I was President of two teacher unions. Most of my colleagues want what is best for their students. Most get annoyed when they see other teachers attempting to beat the system by not doing their job. These examples are few because a person doesn’t go into the profession for monetary gains. They do it because they want to help children succeed. If you don’t believe this you never met a teacher.

Finally I hope Mr. Altschiller and Ms. Rebecca Emerson understand municipal workers are not responsible for our current economic reality. Corporate greed created the problem for its own advantage. In fact, this same philosophy is still gaining profits while the middleclass that includes policeman, fireman, teachers, and government workers are being told they have to pay for something they never started.

Jim Fabiano, a teacher and writer who lives in York, Maine and is a past recipient of the Maine Press Association’s award for Best Weekly Column. He is also the recipient of the Theodore William Richards Award for excellence in teaching chemistry and is a member of the AULA LAUDIS Society of the American Chemical Society.

You can contact Jim at: james.fabiano60@gmail.com

In reality, I hope it’s not too late. In education there are two philosophies. One can be based on substance and the education of our children. This education will allow them to compete in any global economy. This means our younger children have to learn basic mathematics in order to evolve into higher thought based on abstract concepts. They have to read and thus be able to write in order to communicate their thoughts. They have to have an understanding of our nation’s history so they won’t make the mistakes of our past and must have a love and yearning for the magic of science.

Today’s public education has decided to take the other philosophy based on appearance. Instead of allowing the teachers to concentrate on content and learning, the new bureaucrats of education force magic initiatives they promise will be the answer as to why we are losing our competitive edge in our global society.

These initiatives take the discipline out of mathematics and replace it with a learning style that has little to do with content. They state it is more important to have their students feel good about themselves instead of feeling good about their accomplishments. In the recent past our public education system was the envy of the world. This was a time when teachers forced their students to learn multiplication tables and geometric theorems. There is a reason why education calls the subject it teaches a discipline. We have to get back to the philosophy of teaching our students study skills and ethics. I agree that some students will do better than others but I don’t know of anyone who knows of anything that does not include competition. Everyone simply can not win.

These initiatives take the discipline out of reading and writing. In fact, the title of what was once English is now being replaced by literacy. Literacy has become a game in which the teacher attempts to fool their students into learning vocabulary and sentence structure. In the recent past our public education system made their students read books throughout the year, demanded they study and learn vocabulary lists, and even dissects sentence structure by a system of mapping so they can communicate what they learned from their reading. This is what worked in the past so why aren’t we doing what we know will work?

In today’s economic situation it is difficult for parents to get involved in the politics of their child’s education. Most families have both parents working and have to rely on the schools to do what is best for their children. This is not the case. Today’s public education system is perpetually looking for a magic bullet to fix the system instead of allowing the teacher’s to teach what they were taught to do.

In the next few weeks I would like to discuss topics that include, “The new charlatans of education”, “Do you know where your children’s teachers are?”, and “What the state has in store for your child’s education”. Many people will not agree with what I am discussing but after three decades in the classroom I’ve earned the title of being a dinosaur.

Jim Fabiano, a teacher and writer who lives in York, Maine and is a past recipient of the Maine Press Association’s award for Best Weekly Column. He is also the recipient of the Theodore William Richards Award for excellence in teaching chemistry and is a member of the AULA LAUDIS Society of the American Chemical Society.