Is It Time to Rethink the Role of Teachers?

For a long time, many people have blamed public school teachers for the decline in student learning. But nearly every move they make must follow government protocols. Some who try to make improvements are blocked by bureaucracy, regulations, and ideological mandates. Yet others seem to care only about their union contracts while pushing social agendas that are antithetical to parents’ values. Regardless of motives, most teachers nowadays are overworked because schools are drastically understaffed. So perhaps it’s not the employees but the system that needs to be fixed. Or could it be both?

The Limits of Teachers

Neeraja Deshpande, a policy analyst and engagement coordinator at Independent Women’s Forum, authored a new report titled “Give Teachers a Break: Cutting Red Tape to Unleash the Potential of America’s Great Teachers.” She outlines some obstacles educators face and offers suggestions to help them succeed, a tough task when just 26% of them report being very satisfied with their job. Also unhelpful is that only 16% of teachers would recommend the profession to others. No wonder there’s a nationwide shortage. That 85% of public schools during the 2023-2024 school year reported having difficulties hiring suggests the problem is much bigger than the quality of the staff.

How can teachers be a driving force behind improving kids’ ability to meet grade-level standards when they have little choice about what they can and cannot do inside classrooms? They must answer to school boards and superintendents and follow state, local, and federal guidelines. They often can’t even discipline students for misbehavior. Instead of issuing suspensions or expulsions, they typically have to lean on methods like “restorative justice,” which involves a “sit down” with the “victim and aggressor” in an attempt to repair the relationship. Unruly kids have become a major issue, too. They disrupt classrooms and have led many educators to quit the profession, making the already dire shortage worse.

“Over the past decade,” said Deshpande, “federal guidance and Dear Colleague letters from the Department of Education have swung wildly back and forth between presidential administrations, leaving schools in the dark about what they are and aren’t allowed to do to discipline students.”

It’s not just discipline, though. Teachers also lack the authority to hold kids accountable for low grades. The No Child Left Behind Act has increased graduation rates but weakened standards, passing students whose scores don’t meet requirements. “In far too many districts,” said Deshpande, “teachers have little leeway in giving out grades, thanks to so-called ‘equitable’ policies that essentially mandate grade inflation.”

Mood Bracelets

“The school is and has been an instrument of social, economic, and political control,” said Joel H. Spring in his book Education and the Rise of the Corporate State. That sounds like it was written yesterday, but it was published in 1971. “To understand the power of the school, one must not confuse the learning of traditional academic subjects with the process of schooling.” What he meant was that the primary purpose of school was not education but socialization. The concept is far from new, yet the methods have changed.

Spring believes the socialization aspect was all about “refining the nature and power of the school as a controlling institution.” One way that is done today is through social-emotional learning (SEL), “a therapeutic approach to education that emphasizes feelings and progressive ideology over learning,” explained Deshpande. “SEL is also a highly ideological form of therapy, one that leverages the activist language of ‘equity’ to justify its existence.”

One might think schools would seek to lighten the workload for teachers and make it easier for them to focus on math and reading, subjects with which students are struggling. Fourth- and eighth-graders have declined in reading. A third of eighth-grade students can’t even read at a basic level. Perhaps discussing children’s feelings during class isn’t the best way to improve literacy. Students aren’t learning math and history by assessing their mood bracelets, a practice one Delaware teacher boasted about to Time magazine.

Teachers aren’t responsible for the rise in SEL, though. They are merely doing as they’re told. This is what Deshpande means when she says we need to cut the red tape and unleash educators’ potential. They are too restricted. “[I]f we want students to succeed, we should want teachers to succeed,” she said in her report. “To assign teachers the entire blame for student failure is to ignore the actual goliath in education: a bloated educational system enabled and funded by a bloated government that teachers have little control over or ability to influence.”

The government has been involved in public education for well over a century, and it seems that, as the two have intertwined, the teaching process has become more complicated – and students have become less educated.

1. Teachers have very little freedom to choose their own methods thanks to the many strict local, state, and federal rules regarding public education.
2. The US government has been involved in education for well over a century, but the many years of government regulation have not made the job any easier or increased student academic success.
3. A survey of teachers showed that only 26% report being happy in their jobs and only 16% would recommend the profession to others.