Friends,
Yes, I do know that people are often affected by your teaching in ways
you do not know. I have experienced this many times.
In connection with Bill's comments about the origins of our school
system and a focus on encouraging loyalty to the state, here is a story
I wrote which may be of interest. comments welcome.
michael yates
III. Taking the Pledge
In 1991, nearly 30 years after I had graduated from high school, my
twin sons, then 12 years old and seventh graders at a Pittsburgh public
school, read an interesting story in their language arts class. A young
teacher, admired and respected by her students, refused to stand for the
pledge of allegiance to the flag. For this act of conscience she was
fired by the local school board. She filed suit, charging a violation
of her First Amendment right of free speech. The court ordered her
reinstatement, but in the end she decided not to return to her old job.
After reading the story, the class discussed it with their teacher. He
was of the view that it was wrong for the teacher not to stand because
this was disrespectful to the beliefs of others. One of my sons agreed
with the teacher in the story, arguing that no one should have to
stand. Besides, he said, there was not "liberty and justice for all" in
the United States, so the pledge was a lie. My son's comments were met
with stern criticism by his teacher who quickly shut off further
discussion.
A few days later, my wife and I met with our son's team of teachers.
We mentioned the flag salute story to the language arts teacher and
expressed our disappointment with his reaction to it. Wouldn't this
have been a great opportunity to strengthen the students' understanding
of the importance of free speech in a democracy? The teacher, bearded
and casually dressed, tried to disarm us. He was a product of the
sixties, he said, and did not personally care if the students said the
pledge or not. But out of respect for the beliefs of others, the
students had to stand. My wife disagreed; standing was the same thing
as saying the words. She told him that our son had, in fact, been
refusing to stand for the pledge in his home room and that we had sent
the required note to the school stating that we did not object to his
actions. The teacher said that this would be unacceptable in his home
room; had our son been his charge, he would have had to stand in the
hall during the pledge. My wife told him that if that had happened, the
teacher would have faced a lawsuit, at which point the conversation
ended.
For two weeks our son sat quietly at his desk during the pledge. Then
we received a phone call from his teacher-team leader who left a message
for us to contact her about a problem with our son. We could not reach
her that day, and she did not return our calls. We worried about what
our son had done. When he came home, he told us that his team leader
was angry that he would not stand for the pledge. She had walked by his
home room, seen that he was not standing, marched in and confronted
him. When he refused to stand, she grabbed him by the arm and pulled
him out of the room. I was so incensed that I ranted for three days,
but we let it go because she did not do it again. Then, she called a
second time. Could I speak with my son about his refusal to stand? He
was setting a bad example for the other students. I asked her if maybe
my son wasn't setting a good example by showing his classmates that we
live in a free country, where people must respect differences. I told
her that one of the reasons that we sent our children to the urban
public schools was so that they would get to know children of different
racial and cultural backgrounds and respect differences. If the
teachers themselves did not respect differences among their students,
then weren't we all in a lot of trouble? Finally, I reminded her that
my son could not be legally required to stand for the pledge. In a
distant voice, she said, Okay, she'd let it drop. I said goodbye, and
she said, "Have a nice day."
Our other son, then fifteen, was a sophomore in a city high school. He
wouldn't stand for the pledge either, and he too was hassled by his
teachers. During his freshman year, his home room teacher insisted that
he stand and when he refused, we got a phone call. After some
discussion, his teacher said that we would have to write a letter giving
our approval for our son's behavior. We refused to do this; our son
continued to sit, and nothing happened. Until, that is, a substitute
teacher confronted him and publicly berated him for insulting his
country. Didn't he realize that the city's taxpayers were paying for
his education? He told her that he had a job and paid taxes too. She
persisted. Why wouldn't he stand? He just did not want to. Eventually
he explained that he had moral reasons for not standing, and she gave
up. But during the next year, this substitute became his regular home
room teacher, and we went through another round. This time she pulled
out all the stops to pressure us to get him to stand. She kept asking
if he had a religious reason for not standing, implying that this would
be acceptable. We told her that his reasons were moral, but she did not
appear able to grasp this. Finally, she aimed her big gun by hinting
that other students were harassing him, and there was a chance that he
would be physically harmed. We advised her that she had better see to
it that this did not happen, perhaps by explaining to the class that no
one had to stand for the pledge. Our fears were allayed when our son
told us that he had never been threatened and what the teacher really
feared was that other students would refuse to stand.
We wasted a lot of energy trying to uphold our sons' right to
peacefully refuse to salute a flag in a public school classroom. We
were surprised by the persistence of the teachers, and amazed and
saddened by the ironies which abound here. Our younger son's antagonist
was a black woman teaching in a school which had an overwhelmingly black
student body. Their parents were, for the most part, poor, and they
lived in neighborhoods ravaged by underemployment, substandard housing,
drugs, gangs, and the highest rates of infant mortality in the nation.
They faced the same brutal discrimination faced by all black persons,
and their prospects were bleak. Would it been too much to expect her to
have seen the hypocrisy of the pledge of allegiance with its propaganda
of "liberty and justice for all"? How could any black person believe
this, let alone pledge allegiance to it?
All of the teacher-patriots are members of the powerful Pittsburgh
Federation of Teachers. Through aggressive organizing and bargaining,
punctuated in the early years by long strikes and defiance of court
injunctions, this union has won contracts which are the envy of teachers
across the state. City teachers are among the highest paid wage earners
in the area; salaries in excess of $60,000 per year are common. An
excellent grievance procedure and system of local union stewards have
practically eliminated the power of the School Board and the
administration to arbitrarily discipline teachers. In other words, the
union has secured the civil liberties of its members, their right to act
as independent, self-respecting professionals. One would think,
therefore, that the teachers would appreciate the importance of civil
liberties. Yet this is far from being the case. It is fine for the
teachers to stand up to their employers and demand that their rights be
respected. Yet let a student demand the same and the teachers become as
authoritarian as the steel moguls who once made their parents beg for
their supper.
So, what is going on here? Why, in situations which must have been
common knowledge in the two schools, did not a single teacher offer my
sons support? Why had seemingly liberal and progressive teachers, loyal
union members all, made such an issue out of what was essentially a
mindless act of obedience to the state?
Several explanations might be offered. When teachers do things which
students do not like, the teachers often try to pass the blame along to
the administration. It is hard to see, however, how administrators
could have punished a teacher whose students exercised their legal right
not to salute the flag. If a teacher had been disciplined, the union
would surely have filed and won a grievance. A second excuse might be
that parents would have caused trouble if they had found out that
students refused to say the pledge. Other students besides my sons had
refused to stand for the pledge, but after receiving a call from a
teacher, their parents ordered them to stand and they did. Teachers
might have faced some parental anger, but teachers did not mind angry
parents when they struck to benefit themselves. Besides, parents cannot
do much to teachers so strongly protected by union contract. And, in
any case, is it not the job of teachers to challenge their students to
think critically about all issues, to be leaders who develop new ideas
rather than just followers of old ones? If teachers never step outside
conventional beliefs, they might not face parental antagonisms, but they
also will not help their students to develop the imaginations necessary
to solve the world's endless list of problems.
Another possible explanation might be that the teachers were,
themselves, unaware or unwilling to exercise their duty to promote
critical thinking. As a college teacher for the past 29 years, I can
attest to the worthlessness of much of what passes for teacher
education. Somehow it is imagined that a student who does not major in
a subject area will know enough about a subject to teach it to others.
The ignorance of education majors in a wide variety of subjects is
legendary, yet they all manage to get A's in their education classes.
The person who taught my sons history or economics may never have taken
an advanced course in these fields. Public school teachers are unlikely
to have had a critical education or to have mastered a subject area, so
it is little wonder that they might be incapable of making a critical
analysis or instilling in their students the importance of civil
liberties
Still, blaming the teachers begs a question: why are teachers so often
lacking in critical intelligence? Why are they "trained" in what
appears to be such a thoughtless manner? If, as our leaders keep
telling us, our young people are inadequately educated, then why do our
schools tread along the same tired paths? The time wasted trying to
make my sons conform could have been spent teaching them to think for
themselves.
To know why teachers expended such extraordinary effort to get my
children to salute the flag, we have to ask what it is that schools are
all about. In my view, schools are essentially purveyors of
misinformation and promoters of behavior consistent with the
requirements of the economic system. Most students are going to be
workers someday. They will be expected to work hard at jobs requiring
limited skills and to obey orders. Political and business leaders argue
that the education system is failing because it is not producing people
literate enough to do the work which will help the United States to
compete with our economic rivals. But this is largely propaganda, which
we can see clearly when these same critics also propose a return to the
"basics" and renewed emphasis on discipline, the very things which are
least likely to produce an educated citizenry. The truth is that the
number of jobs requiring extensive technical, scientific, or literary
skills is shrinking as a percentage of total employment. Our schools
have always produced enough workers to fill these slots, and if they do
not today, it is because the good students now want to make as much
money as they can with as little effort as possible. Is there a
shortage of lawyers or bond brokers or accountants? Would none of these
people have been capable of becoming scientists or engineers?
No, what the schools are expected to do is churn out people who will do
what they are told and not expect too much in return. What business
leaders want is people who will work harder for less money and keep
their mouths shut. They do not want liberally educated, critical
thinkers, precisely because such people will ask questions and insist on
their rights. It is one thing to get a few future lawyers to become
scientists instead, but it is quite another to encourage people to
develop themselves as fully as possible.
Flag saluting and the nationalism of which it is a vital part are
perfect vehicles to produce the docile persons the system needs. They
teach that obedience is more important than thinking. Someday students
will have to obey their employers. Someday they will have to march off
to war. What better way to get them ready than to make them pray to the
flag everyday?
When we examine the so-called education crisis with a critical eye, we
see that the schools have not failed. They are doing what they have
always done, preparing people for a lifetime of thoughtless work and
consumption. During the Gulf War, principals gave teachers yellow
ribbons to pass out to their classes. The teachers did it. The
students wore them and wrote letters to the troops. Critical thinking,
much less opposition, were virtually nonexistent. If actual death and
destruction cannot elicit thought, economic warfare won't either.
All of this is not to say that there is no disaster in the public
schools. There is, but it has little to do with the inability of our
students to read and write. Our education crisis is a reflection of a
deepening social malaise. Our society has become more polarized, with a
small stratum of wealthy people confronting a mass of wealthless people
facing grim futures. The poor, largely minority, students in our urban
schools have little to look forward to; there is not and will not be
meaningful work for them to do.
Teachers face sullen and unhappy young people, products of severe
social dysfunction, and instead of trying to liberate them, they make
them salute flags. This is not likely to work, so they will turn the
screws tighter. The schools will become more prison-like. After all,
more black men of college age are in prison than in college. It is an
insidious system and likely to become more so.
