In The Idaho Statesman’s Reader’s View of 10-9-2011, Darrel Deide makes several assertions about teachers’ unions that deserve examination.
Is the teachers’ union (IEA) a monopoly, as Deide says it is? Yes, in the sense that the other large teachers’ union, the AFT, has little if any presence in Idaho. Perhaps this is what Mr. Deide means by a monopoly. However, teachers are not required to join. Locals may change affiliation to the AFT or some other organization, or may dissolve entirely and abdicate all union functions. But these seldom, if ever, happen. If this is a monopoly, it is only so by default and in accord with the wishes of its members.
Of course, a union protects its own interests. A union is made up of its members. It represents those members, giving them a voice by advocating for their interests, and it wishes to continue to do so. Why should it not? If it didn’t, it would be a poor union, not worth the time, effort, or dues money. The IEA’s “monopoly” suggests that it is doing right by its members. So far, there is little here to disagree with, except that it is not nearly as sinister as Deide makes it sound.
The motives that Deide attributes to the IEA for opposing the state’s new on-line learning mandates are mistaken or deliberately misrepresented. They have nothing to do with on-line learning per se.
If the IEA opposes this on-line learning mandate, it is because its members are skeptical of the efficacy of the mandate and the motives behind it. To stay in teaching, one must be a bit of an idealist; to be successful one must also be a pragmatist. What works is good, and it is built upon. What does not work must be fixed, if possible, abandoned if not. We always look for new approaches that promise to improve and facilitate instruction. We have learned to be wary of the value of the “next big thing” foisted upon us by administrators building resumes and policy-makers building political talking points.
Nor do we see it as necessary. Mr. Deide says “Students already use technology for research, reading and basic course work.” On-line learning is proving invaluable to the home-bound and home-schooled. It offers the possibility of full and varied big-school course offerings to small and remote schools. Mandarin in Mackay? Why not? On-line learning has present applications and great potential as a tool useful to teachers and learners alike. It is already happening, without mandates.
I have long observed that curriculum written by classroom teachers, often at the department level in the school, is more workable and more successful in application than any amount of curriculum written by some “curriculum czar” and his lackeys in a district or state office. The teacher who has had a hand in writing curriculum will be evaluating it from day one of implementation, and if something doesn’t work, he will not be afraid to change it, improve it, or replace it because he “owns” it. On the other hand, curriculum that is handed down from on high is usually “carved in stone,” with no “user-serviceable parts.”
Teachers are skeptical of the quality of instruction that will be offered. How much of what is becoming available is “ready for prime time?” Will it be comparable to or better than existing instruction, or will much of it be glorified work-sheets? If instructional software and services must be purchased from a state-approved provider (“The company will then be entitled to two-thirds of the state funding sent to school district for that student for that class period,” The Statesman reports.), the curriculum will be at the mercy of that provider. I fear that we will be taken back to the bad old days when the textbook publishers effectively determined curriculum.
I do not think the IEA opposes the on-line learning mandates because “online education is wrong for Idaho students,” but because these mandates themselves and the ways they are being applied are wrong. We fear they will do more harm than good.
These are reasons why teachers and their union oppose the on-line learning mandates, not spiteful, knee-jerk obstructionism as Mr. Deide seems to want us to believe. But if the last legislative session’s laws were intended to spite teachers in general and their union in particular, it would be understandable that Deide would think in terms of such motives and might attribute them to the IEA.