Teaching // Current TV

Getting Raped in College

One of the best teachers I've ever worked alongside tells me that, after we received tenure last spring, he "splurged" to actually buy furniture for his rental house. For the last three years, he and I and several other probationary instructors have been reluctant to put down any roots in this town, because we are subject to being fired at any time, depending upon the whims of the administrators who watch over us. In late summer, we were given contracts to sign that would ensure we could work for another year, so my friend took the big plunge and bought real furniture. Near age 60, after a lifetime of toil in the classroom, he allowed himself the luxury of having a comfortable place to sit down in the evening.

I haven't taken that plunge yet, and I'm now glad, because we got our layoff notices in November, just after the term had started. The newest college president has decided to play with our lives ( and the lives of our students) the way a six-year-old plays with Fischer Price's plastic people. The president makes three times what I do, and rather than take a pay cut, himself, he axed six of us (out of a total faculty of 39). Nine other instructors have been "reduced" or forced into retirement because the geniuses who are being paid over $100k each have mismanaged the school's finances so that ten percent of the total budget has vanished.

The president has repeatedly warned all instructors not to put a bad face on this fiasco, because it may drive away students, and if that happens, he may lose his job, too. We instructors have been cheery little soldiers as we've conducted our classes as best we could, sat in meetings to prepare us to file for unemployment in March, and searched for job openings.

The same situations exist all over the United States as community colleges are being internally destroyed in favor of the creation of corporate job training centers that are "more responsive to local business needs." Now, you won't hear me argue against the need for schools to teach marketable job skills; people must learn useful and substantive information and skills to be valuable to potential employers. However, college administrators are acting as hired guns for political and economic masters who wish to create a class of working clones who cannot and will not question their motivations, decisions, or actions. Administrators target instructors who have not toed the line when it comes to blindly agreeing with administrative decisions, surrendering academic freedom, and abandoning unions. Instructors who persist in standing up for what they know is right are being axed faster than tax revenues are drying up, and administrators are positioning themselves to retain positions which already pay way more than they're worth.

I ask myself why there would be a need for even a single college administrator if there were no instructors. What is a college without a large variety of educated, opinionated, dedicated instructors who model the diversity and vibrancy of the larger society? A college without open-minded and academically free instructors is a warehouse where students shuffle through, accepting piecemeal information fed to them as if they were chickens in a poultry farm. Despite that, the new trend is to push our learning institutions into just that mode, offering a McDonald's menu-style "education" where the consuming world awaits just outside the graduation auditorium to digest the "product." How much should an administrator of such a place be paid? Wouldn't such an individual be better suited to work in a slaughterhouse, where it is much easier to track success by weighing the resulting meat?

So my friend and colleague "splurged," and now he doesn't know if he'll have a place in which to store his furniture. While he and I and thousands of excellent instructors across the nation face the open hostility of administrators who would have no jobs were it not for us, newspapers, radio, and online sources rail about how "selfish" we are and how terrible our schools have become. We are scapegoats being used to deflect the attention of the public away from the crooks and liars who have stolen our pensions, our jobs, and our futures.

As a teacher for many years, I have found that faculty rooms are chock full of gentle, unassertive souls who teach because they like people. Teachers are suckers when it comes to buying used cars, subscribing to magazines sold by kids who come to their doors, and working at bake sales for people who are sick, broke, or who just need a helping hand. The teachers I've worked with are naive when it comes to ramming through a business deal, finding income tax loopholes, and gaming the system. They look up to and trust administrators when it comes to protecting their workplace, supporting them in their right to teach and grade students, and help them continue when their wages are relatively low, given their training and expertise. The new class of school administrators, however, are like foxes in henhouses. They draw relatively enormous salaries and treat the instructors as if they are trash. The arrogance and lack of compassion in many college administrators is matched only by their selective ethical behavior that allows them to thrive while the true college, the students and teachers, slowly dissolves in a sea of red ink and political bile.

My friend and colleague, having been bullied by the college president, will have to be bullied into protecting his own rights, because he is a gentle and sincere man who cares about learning. He hates getting attention, and he is terrified that if he resists being laid off, he will be blacklisted online and never be able to get a teaching job again. He and thousands just like him are a permanent underclass of educated people who have been singled out for elimination by corporate liars who, having stolen the country's wealth, now wish to steal its future. It is a criminally absurd situation that makes one want to scream. But that would be unseemly behavior for a teacher.One of the best teachers I've ever worked alongside tells me that, after we... more

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