The Teacher Trap

 That is, if we take the Parent in Nate Hilger's title to be a noun rather than a verb; otherwise, it's the teach (v) trap we're talking about about, the same one that Ranciere points out to such effect in his tricky little book.

I still have to read Hilger's. Yet in the course of marketing it through podcasts and articles--see our last couple of Thoughtful Dad episodes--he's proven so competent a thought partner and such a handy nemesis to have around I'll keep acting on the assumption that it's worth the attention. 

What I mean, then, I want to say in the sense of the trap he talks about: both the difficulty of teaching and the turgidity of the discourse around teaching, and thus the immobility of attempts at reform. And still in line with the argument as I understand it, this implies that just as parents cannot be left to do an impossible job alone, so teachers will need help. Not the nosebleed of funding we saw with pandemic response, or not only that, Stanch it, pump it towards daycare, public service tutors and aides, therapists and coaches. Train teachers in the schools, paying the mentor teachers rather than professors. Or rather, bring the professors of ed back into the classroom to show us how it's done. Subbing, at the very least, since many of them are retirement age anyway, and that pool of retired teachers seemed like it used to be a reliable source of substitutes. 

Along with the image of the trap, I can't help but think of the experiments with food on one side of a little door, and the subjects trying to grab it and pull it through. When they grab a big handful, they can no longer bring their hands back out the doorway. That's the sort of experiment we've been engaged in for the past generation or two of state-mandated curricula and testing regimes: grabbing huge handfuls of a bunch of resources that no one can use, paying their providers for the privilege and serving the students poorly. To get out of the trap, it might suffice to give more student-centered funding a try. 

Free up teachers to make their own decisions and quit paying for tests and curricula; turn that money and micromanagement toward the availability and retention of experienced early childcare workers and afterschool programs for kids in need. And again, knit together the work of childcare and teaching more closely at all levels, from pre-K to post-grad, focusing on the evident desire on the part of all parties to do better, and alleviating the strain on the system as a whole by giving everyone involved a better idea of what their colleagues are up to. Such that programs of early identification and support of prospective future teachers in high school, or even middle and elementary peer tutoring and mentorship programs, should be the norm rather than an exception or charitable intervention worthy of applauding. Students learn best and most willingly teaching one another. Let's foster those interactions, provide the necessary guidance to students, and otherwise get out of their way--and out of the trap.