Teachers in our country rarely
get the respect they deserve — a uniquely American pathology.  But this
year they’ve endured not just indifference, but disrespect – and
from Congressmen, no less.    

Teachers are now blamed not
just for falling test scores, but failing state budgets and rising healthcare
costs.  

There was once a politician
who took a different view.  In 1787, Thomas Jefferson’s Northwest Ordinance
– what some scholars believe to be one of the three most important
documents in the founding of America, along with the Constitution and
Declaration of Independence – provided funding for public schools
and universities. In it, he declared, “Religion, morality, and knowledge
being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools
and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”  

The idea is so central to American
public education, the University of Michigan has it engraved on the
façade of its central building, Angell Hall.  But few of the people
walking by Angell Hall even know the line is there, or why.  Ignorance
makes it easy to take what’s good for granted.   

While Congress rewarded Wall
Street’s “Masters of the Universe” with millions of taxpayer dollars
after they ran the economy into the ground, the same politicians tell
us the real economic villains are public school teachers, who educate
our children for an average of $45,000 a year.   

I don’t think George Orwell
himself had the power to imagine such a twisted interpretation of reality.
  

The claim that teachers are
under-worked, overpaid parasites could be made only by people who have
never taught.  I would be hard pressed to name any group that gives more
and takes less from society than do teachers – who, after all, prepare
us for what we’re going to do next.  Even politicians.     

Teaching is one of those jobs,
like waiting tables or coaching sports, that everyone thinks is easy
– until they try it. True, teaching is one of the easiest jobs to
do poorly – but it’s one of the hardest to do well.   

Part of this problem the teachers’
union brought on itself, by defending the worst teachers to the hilt,
and not even allowing principals to watch their employees work without
making an appointment months in advance.  At my high school, one teacher
set what I hope is a record by showing movies and film strips for 170
of the 180 school days.  

But we also had college professors
who decided teaching high school students was more important, and others
who could have done anything they wanted – one of my English teachers
had a law degree — but devoted their lives to teaching us.    

And it wasn’t just out of
noblesse oblige.  When I was student teaching, I learned the job is not
just demanding – it’s intellectually challenging.   

But because the unions didn’t
make the obvious reforms they should have made, now they’re at the
mercy of overconfident, under-qualified politicians, who wouldn’t
last a week in front of the classes I taught – let alone the inner
city classrooms now packed with 35 students six hours a day, thanks
to their budget cuts.   

I can still name almost every
teacher and coach I’ve ever had – and I bet you can, too.  But we’d
have a hard time naming our last three Congressional representatives. 
  

I learned about Jefferson’s
Northwest Ordinance from Ed Klum in U.S. history, the same year I read
Orwell’s “1984” in Jim George’s class.  I learned how to write
from Dave Stringer and Andrew Carrigan.  And I learned critical thinking
from all of them – which is why it’s not too hard for me to figure
out what Jefferson would probably think of those teachers, and the politicians
who bash them. 

Which brings me to my final
line, something public school teachers hear far too rarely: THANK YOU.