New movie recommendations for July 1. Read Trey’s recommendations for Brothers, Father of the Bride, and Super 8. Read them at legacyworksproductions.org on The Cheetah Chronicles

The Producer and founder of Legacy Works.

This is not the time to enter the field of education as a teacher or principal. The politicians, school boards, unions, foundations, private industry, career central office administrators, state, and federal education agencies have made it clear that education, the art and science of guiding, assisting, and inspiring young people to learn is finished. Education, teaching, learning, and so many ideas associated with schooling in this country are dead. The death has been slow and excruciatingly painful: subjecting families and their school aged children to intolerable acts of persecution, condemnation and instiutionalized thievery.

When historians reflect, review, and write about these times they’ll come to realize that as the nation grew into a world power, it failed to fully enact its founding principles. The current tension between the words of independence and the actual implementation of reasonable laws, policies and practices is so volatile that it is destroying the institutions needed to maintain an intellectually engaged and informed body politic. Unlike the recent minister who predicted that the world would end on a certain day in May, the death of this great nation is occurring in “deliberate speed” time.

As public school systems around the nation close for summer vacation, many well educated and dedicated classroom teachers are retiring, being riffed, or just leaving public schools in large numbers. They are being pushed out by the scurrilous indictments of elected officials, business people, and others who don’t have a clue about how to effectively manage schools. These decisions have so negatively impacted the image of public education in America that it is doubtful it will ever rebound.

These powerful detractors fail to understand that schools are people centered institutions that require teams of people with distinctive behaviors and sensibilities who can humanely manage the day to day social, intellectual, and physical development of students. Instead of supporting, developing, and providing professional development that was aligned with the knowledge demands of students, these external influences selected curricula, strategies, and materials that represented their particular interests. Their choices often reflected the rather manic behavior of the society at large rather than what students and families needed from local schools.

No, this is not the time to enter education as a teacher or principal. It is not the time to enter a profession that has been torn asunder by the politicians, teachers’ unions, school boards, central office bureaucrats, higher education, and credentialing boards. No, this is not the time to enter a profession that has no way to measure or honor those who have engaged, inspired, and educated countless numbers of young people. No, as long as the nation continues to work against our best interest, this is not the time to become a professional educator.

Sylvia L. Peters