Modest Proposal : ‘Put Educators Into Classrooms’

It is teachers, the lowest-paid professionals in the L.A. school district, who serve as surrogate parents, keepers of the abandoned, mentors to the immigrant, mediators of racial conflicts, comforters to those suffering traumatic grief, givers of hope to the suicidal, feeders of the hungry, nurses to the sick, chief givers of sexual information, confidants to the pregnant and sexually abused, and pillars of stability to those who have very little of it in their young lives.

So, if children were really the No. 1 priority in our schools, the most desired professional position would be classroom teaching. No longer would educators aspire to climb the administrative ladder where “paying one’s dues” implies cultivating the right acquaintances, not making waves and ‘This negative attitude about the classroom taints priorities and budget decisions, giving the highest salaries to those removed from the children.’

learning the proper phrases to impress those who do the evaluating and promoting into non-productive educational positions loaded with prestige and removed from daily contact with those 640,000 squirming, wiggling kids in classrooms.

I know one person who years ago stepped on the first rung of the upward mobility ladder and said: “I’ll do anything it takes to keep from ever going back down there into the classroom, even give my soul to the devil if that is what it takes.” Today he is a principal, aspiring to even greater heights.

This negative attitude about the classroom taints priorities and budget decisions, giving the highest salaries to those removed from the children and the classrooms.

Let’s put all professional educators into the classrooms with the children. For those not wanting to be there, let them become the lowest-paid professionals, thus insuring more education per buck, saving millions of dollars and putting rhetoric and actions into agreement.