Irony of Ironies

The irony of all ironies is education as a field and its failure to reform, it’s failure to otherwise innovate despite inquiry, creative and bold thinking, and intellectual risk-taking—that is to say, “innovation” itself—serving as its very charge, purpose, and mission, a mission that still remains one of overall enlightenment.

And yet, there are many reasons why this may be the case, chief among them, the degraded nature of the teaching profession overall, at least here in the United states, where it’s well known that a majority of our nation’s teaching corps finds itself overworked and underpaid—in other words, completely undervalued and exploited.  In response, unions were created as a mechanism for supplying much needed advocacy and protection.  

Blame it on the resulting strength of the unions or on the understandable skepticism of the teaching corps, but change or innovation—i.e. “reform”—of any measure is greeted with automatic skepticism and resistance, out of fear that the necessary disruption which such shifts are meant to produce, could also yield a corresponding collateral effect of leaving teachers further vulnerable and exposed, and so, yet again, open to exploitation, which, sadly, is a condition our nation’s teachers know all too well.