My university has partnered with a dozen major corporations to outline curricula for us. They believe a CEO is more qualified to decide what students should be learning than I am. They’ve hired a dozen consulting firms to decide everything down to when we should teach.
Almost every school does the same.
They love consultants.
They hate teachers.
Demoralization is what happens when you spend years becoming an expert in a subject area, and nobody cares. They’d rather hire another MBA to make all the important decisions, while they stick us on committees writing reports for ghosts. That’s when teachers start to withdraw from their jobs, when we realize it doesn’t matter what we think, and it definitely doesn’t matter how amazing we are at what we do.
So, we give up.
A number of factors are causing this crisis, including low pay and a lack of discipline in classrooms. But the biggest reason is that all too many teachers feel they aren’t getting the support they need to succeed in their jobs.