Today’s Topic

When policy-makers offer up solutions to the nation’s social problems, education often is the No. 1 cure. Gangs and crime? Education. Drugs and alcohol? Education. Teen-age parenthood, unemployment, the economy? Better education, of course. Right on these pages, we describe how Bell Gardens seeks to send more of its residents to college (In the Neighborhood). Yet the people who do the educating are often treated as an underclass. Even in the best of situations, teacher salaries are low compared to those of lawyers or accountants, for instance. In the worst situations, teachers are grossly underpaid and work in overcrowded classrooms full of barely literate students. The result, at least in Los Angeles, is more teachers than ever quitting to teach elsewhere or take other kinds of jobs.

In today’s Working People, high school teacher Barry Smolin defends his profession. But why does teaching have such a hard time gaining respect?

“The most honored and respected professions in our society are those that have status based on power, privilege, prestige and possession,” says Jon Johnston, a sociology and anthropology professor at Pepperdine University. “Teachers just don’t have those four ‘P’s.”

In fact, many teachers complain that they are not even treated as professionals. “We in this country think that teachers shouldn’t be paid for the time they are not standing in front of their students, without paying attention to their need to keep abreast of their field,” says Peggy Funkhouser, president of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, a business-funded group that helps public schools and teachers.

“Doctors and lawyers must be current and companies wouldn’t decentralize without massive training,” Funkhouser says. “At the same time we’re loading teachers up with responsibility, the school and education becomes the whipping boy (for society’s problems).”

In fact, teachers face a Catch-22 when it comes to earning respect. As long as the educational system is blamed for not meeting the needs of its students, teachers will be regarded as the problem and not the solution. But unless the community supports the public schools, teachers will not be able to overcome the perception that they are powerless to influence the next generation of adults, the experts say.

“The plight of the teacher has everything to do with the cultural value shift in this country,” Johnston says: “Our Judeo-Christian values have disintegrated and we have a humanistic model where good and right are relative. The schools are being called upon to meet many of the needs that were previously reinforced by the family. The schools are doing more because the family is not doing the job right, but the ‘thank you’ is not forthcoming.”

“There is a problem of perception and schools don’t have a public relations office,” acknowledges Linda Clinard, staff development liaison at UC Irvine’s Education Department. But “there are a lot of teachers who are individually respected and students will remember them.”