10 Maxims for Teachers by Maurice Englander

The public has been promised educational reforms, although based upon false assumptions about teachers and learners. Standardized testing and scripted lessons are proposed substitutes for the teachers' grades and lesson plans. Neither manifests the slightest understanding of what teachers do or how learners learn. At minimum, this is what teachers do know about learners:

1-Not all learners learn at the same rate. California and federal testers mistakenly assume that al learners start from the same place in life and can be goaded or enticed into reaching the same learning goals at the same time.

2-The learning curve is not fiction. For some, the climb is too steep. Lacking the will, the intellect, and the sustaining energy, some will never get to the out-of-reach summit.

3-College is a means to ends many do not choose for themselves. As herding sheep and goats differs from herding cats, so pointing all learners toward college is a misguided effort to turn reluctant cats into willing sheep.

4-However well devised, tests measure a fraction of what a learner learns or is intended to learn. Often, the most important is the least of what the teacher planned for. There is no single, straight line from what the teacher teaches to what the learner learns.

5-In almost all classrooms, the most eager sits next to the most reluctant. Both need and deserve the teacher's time and attention, but what the teacher can give to each varies for learner to learner. Enough for one might not be enough for another. No teacher can be equally attentive to all.

6-The most desirable teacher-pupil ration is one-to-one. The more learners per teacher, the more limited the time and attention she or he can give to any one learner. The most demanding are not always the most needy. The most needful are often the least demanding.

7-The best teacher in the world can't reach all learners equally well. Some cannot be reached at all. Neither teachers nor learners come in standard sizes and shapes. Expecting the same results for each on standardized tests is the equivalent of expecting each to tip the scales at the same weight and attain the same height.

8-If doctors were judged by the percentage they heal or lawyers the percentage of their wins in court, many of the sick would receive no care and many of the innocent would be jailed for lack of a lawyer. If the teacher must be judged by the learner's performance on standardized tests, fewer of the most able will be willing to teach the least able, until finally there will be none of either in a public school.

9-As guide to learning, the teacher can show the learner the path, but the learner must walk that path. The teacher can't do it for him.

10-As a proposed teacher substitute, the newest fad promotes a process by which a curriculum factory produces a word-for-word script the teacher must follow. However, a script-reader is no a teacher but an actor pretending to be one. The learner isn't a passive member of an audience at a performance, but a direct participant in the learning processes. A metronome does not conduct an orchestra, nor a script conduct a class.

Current efforts at school reform are a cover for the legislators' failure to provide and an excuse to demand more of the schools than the politicians demand of themselves. It is they who must assure that the present generation will add to the foundation upon which future generations can care for themselves as well as earlier folks provided for them. Failure to do so will cripple generations to come.

The bottom line is that public school isn't a frill; it is the most essential contributor to the nation's future. Without it, there will be no future worth the having.

Maurice Englander was chair of the English department at Lowell High School in San Francisco. He served as president of the California State Federation of Teachers from 1962-1963.