Warren Lee Culpepper
Hungry Teachers, Legal Shakedowns, and Callous Aphorisms
Since my father used to warn me that teaching was just a slow way of starving to death, you might imagine my angst when I spurned his aphorism and decided to teach high school English anyway. I had just completed my service as a Marine officer, and I was making my transition back to civilian life. My sublime ignorance regarding the muscle flaunted by those smug Marxists of public education (you probably call them teacher unions) shielded me from further discouragement concerning my decision. Being a Marine, I ferociously attacked the career — undaunted by its bureaucracy.
I knew only a modest amount regarding the serious issues facing our nation’s public schools: issues like qualified teachers (a phrase with murky connotations); school choice; grade inflation; and school accountability. Furthermore, I knew absolutely nothing about how shamelessly and vigorously the unions fight to stymie practical solutions to those problems. I simply took for granted my school had hired me because it needed someone who could do the job in the classroom – I presumed that meant teaching my students to think. After wedging my foot in the interview door (thanks to my volunteer work with the wrestling team) I had reasoned that a Marine officer, even without a teaching credential, could handle any potential challenge a high school classroom presented.
The artistic science of the Marine Corps’ officer training program has a proud history. The Corps has engineered legendary leaders. The process begins by immersing and evaluating officers in the study and application of leadership principles. The honor to have led Marines fueled my confidence to lead students. I understood that leadership came with the obligation to challenge and inspire others to tackle goals they normally wouldn’t attempt on their own. Respecting that obligation, I believed (and still believe) that our best teachers are in fact more accurately defined as proven leaders.
Although I did get the job, I had to infiltrate the Marxists’ ranks to keep it. The union took my money, but I held on to my soul. My hiring was a unique situation because this particular district suffered no shortage of credentialed applicants. I knew that the union could shanghai me and insist a loyal member, already wielding a credential, take over my classes. But my instincts told me that the unions don’t honestly care about credentials. They just want to collect the cash from membership dues.
Despite brandishing my English degree and leadership experience, I consented to the system’s sham to extort more of my money — only because the system legally coerces every aspiring teacher to comply. In theory, I was paying to learn how to teach — even though I was already teaching! Meanwhile, before I received my official credential, the system required that I also purchase an emergency credential. I was whirling inside a money-looting machine.
After coughing up my cash grudgingly, I eventually received a certificate that still exists only so employees of the teacher unions and ivory-tower education departments have somewhere to go Monday through Friday. Through the current system, a teaching credential fails to denote adequate teacher preparation. In fact, the only meaningful requirements in the whole process involved passing two subject-mastery exams for English, the discipline I was teaching. However, the exams were outsourced to a national testing agency, which cheerfully took more of my money.
Overall, the credentialing process involved studying dopey theories stoked by politically correct invertebrates, like those who run teacher unions. As a result, the mere fact a teacher possesses a teaching credential carries little meaning. Still, many amazing public school teachers exist — along with other quite capable teachers who would benefit greatly simply from pragmatic leadership training. However, there are also many teachers who are entirely inept, but nevertheless hold valid teaching licenses. These teachers simply lack what it takes to lead. Their lethargic failures overshadow better teachers’ inspiring successes.
Why am I asserting that current teachers’ licenses are insignificant? Well, primarily because the required curriculum in education is ridiculous: EDUC-504 Diversity in the Classroom: “Using your brain to judge other people based on their specific actions and behavior is wrong! Bad behavior can masquerade as culture if it wants to, so you better tolerate everyone’s bad behavior (err, culture). Tolerance rules! Thinking is strictly forbidden.”
EDUC – 420 Secondary Teaching Strategies – “Assign politically-correct, socialist projects to pollute student learning and to minimize teacher responsibility grading: everyone should share the community grade, which is on average above average. Smarter and more competitive students will not be tolerated (my emphasis). All students must conform to the average- above-average-diverse class.” The foolishness of this idiotic doctrine goes on.
However, the process’s worst reality is how once having both a teaching credential and a union affiliation essentially makes removing unfit teachers about as enjoyable as voluntarily digging into your own legs with an ax! Consequently, both events rarely happen, but when they do, the details are always nauseating – less so regarding the ax incidents.
Moreover, many highly skilled people opt to teach in private schools or not to teach at all rather than to submit to the credentialing programs’ shameful indoctrination to political correctness, multi-cultural nonsense, and the neutering of American successes – like capitalism.
Recognizing that the credentialing programs and teacher unions clearly do not offer aspiring teachers serious training — none concerning valid leadership — requires only a casual glance at government schools (once known as public schools). In fact, the education programs and unions can frequently undermine true leadership. Our public school system is in real trouble as students are falling behind in core subjects, particularly at the high school level where classroom leadership plays an even more critical role.
As teenagers are beginning their awkward search for personal identity, they need teachers who can inspire students to learn and to handle real responsibilities. Leadership holds the remedy for public education’s illnesses. For now, however, the education programs continue pilfering aspiring teachers’ cash while the unions continue bilking money from their victims (well, members) and the government.
The bottom line is that now more than ever students need teachers with leadership experience and leadership traits who embrace the obligation to inspire their students to learn and to succeed. Mediocrity and apathy have to go. It’s past time to bust the teacher unions and their partners in crime: the current credentialing system and the government’s monopoly on education.
Revive an American success story for education – the success of competition. Let truly capable teachers compete. Grade their schools on success. Reward them on performance. These are the hungry teachers who will nourish students’ learning.
Although there is a hitch – the solution would spoil my father’s callous aphorism. But he always had another one waiting. He’d tell the teacher unions, “Well I guess if we don’t see you anymore, to hell with ya.”
____________________
Warren Lee Culpepper is currently writing his first book, Alone and Unafraid: One Marine’s Counterattack Inside the Walls of Public Education. Additionally, he is a contributing columnist for The Publius’ Forum, The North Carolina Conservative, and The Hinzsight Report.
A 1991 graduate of Virginia Tech, Culpepper majored in both English and Communication. He was also a varsity wrestler. He attended the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Virginia, and received his commission in 1993. He served four years on active duty before settling in southern California to begin his teaching career. He taught high school English in both California and Texas. He recently moved to eastern North Carolina with his wife, Heather, and their bulldog, Shrek.
Lee can be reached at drcoolpepper@yahoo.com.
Visit Lee’s blog at http://wlculpepper.townhall.com/