By Michael LaFemina
As fate would have it, I began reading Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence” concurrently with the New York Times articles about the recent deal between the Teachers’ Union and the Mayor’s office. Goleman’s book, which explores the multiple types of human intelligence by evaluating the physiological structures of the brain and its various demonstrations of aptitude, argues that there is much more to students’ abilities than how well they can perform on standardized tests. Goleman makes the case that our current view of performance evaluation and intellectual aptitude are terribly flawed. He cites examples and studies from both academia and the corporate world and argues there is much more to life, especially in the most ‘high-needs'(poor/ghettos/projects/unemployed or inadequately-paid parents/pick something else to euphemize/etc) schools, that the educators in schools need to be teaching their students: emotional awareness, cultural and social responsibility, self worth, nutrition and conflict resolution.
The news coming from the city feels like a prison sentence of poetic justice for an aspiring teacher with a philosophy of education rooting itself in a holistic approach.
The City of New York has just decided that, in addition to the federal government giving funds to districts based on student performances on national exams, it will now give monetary incentives to teachers in “high-needs” “schools that have schoolwide gains in student test scores.”
On the surface, this seems like a good program that will, if all goes according to plan, motivate teachers to instill a value for education in their students, while at the same time attract better teachers to high-needs areas.
For the record, I don’t disagree with the importance of the arts, sciences, humanities, etc, or better teachers in “needy” schools. But, we’re not looking at Wall Street kinds of bonuses; the City negotiated for a $3,000 bonus per union teacher in each school that meets the goals. I have a question: is the potential for a $3,000 bonus enough to attract better teachers to high-needs areas? If the average teacher makes about $45,000 per year, it means that $3,000 is less than a 10 percent increase in pre-taxable income, and that’s even if the teacher will be getting all of the $3,000 (which will probably be filtered by some bureaucracy within each school).
Will this be enough to attract better teachers or is it one of the ultimate insults to current teachers in its implication that they aren’t motivated enough already? That somehow they’ll try harder because there is a bonus at the end of the year?
This deal is not re-thinking the educational model, it’s completing the commodification of education into something that is packaged, shipped, distributed and then asks its consumers to send back at least 65 percent of the original: regional managers to be rewarded for properly returned items. If this continues, if outcome assessment is going to drive the profession, maybe we should start calling ourselves ‘trainers’ rather than ‘teachers.’ What happened to the esoteric value in learning? The beautiful process of academic and personal achievement that comes not from meeting the generalized goals of a national education system, but of completing something you put your heart to or coming to realize that something you’ve learned in the classroom really means something in the outside world. That’s the bonus teachers seek for their efforts-and that’s priceless.
Michael LaFemina is a graduate student. You may e-mail him at [email protected]