Where are the Professors?

Texas is engaged in a tempest in a teapot regarding a curriculum management system used by most school districts in the state.  The system, CSCOPE, is not controversial.  The opponents are.  Led by radio talk show host and state senator Dan Patrick, who happens to be the charter member of the Senate Tea Party and chair of Education Committee, a war has been waged on this large, wonderful and complex software system.  The war is ideological.  It is not instructional or technological.  The first shots in this war were fired by conservatives who argued that some of the lessons in the system were ideologically impure, they did not represent “right think” and they may encourage kids to think outside the very limited Tea Party box.  In the name of holy self-righteousness the senator forced the producers of the curriculum management system to remove all the lessons from the software, and he set about dismantling the software system in general.  Can you discern babies from bath water?

No one is asking about his ties to Pearson, a company that offers a competing system.

No one is pointing out that the senator is not an educator and at best is micro managing as he wants to control available lesson plans for teachers in Texas.

No one is pointing out that at worst the senator is practicing demagoguery and McCarthyism.

No one is pointing out that this is outright censorship based on an ideological foundation that assumes the proponents are morally right and have as their cause ensuring the rest of us subscribe to their belief system and have no resources to the contrary.

No one is pointing out that there could be nothing further from the basic principles of democracy, civil rights and a public education than such attacks on a software program.

Well, I am pointing that out, but my position is tenuous.  That does not mean I have tenure.  It means I am subject to Board evaluation and dismissal for a variety of reasons including political beliefs.

I am not a professor in a college of education.  I do not teach curriculum and instruction nor do I teach educational leadership. I do not have tenure. It is not safe for me to take a public stand in opposition to a powerful, though in my opinion scary, senator.  That could cost me my job and may have already done so.

But a professor with tenure could do that.  He or she could stand up and say “grow up”.  Allowing teachers a resource that includes ways to promote critical thinking and problem solving by looking at issues from another perspective is not un-American, it is American and it is a mission of public education to do so.  Of all the players in this little tempest, college professors have opted to remain on the sidelines when in fact they are the safest ones to enter the fray.

Do they support academic freedom?  Do they support teachers having a variety of uncensored resources to use to construct lessons of meaning and purpose to fulfill the state mandated curriculum?  Do they believe that educators should make instructional decisions, not senators or talk show hosts?

Evidently not.

Perhaps we should change the name of this group from those who profess to those who regress.

So sad.

Come on Profs.  You are doctors of education.  Help heal this sickness.  If you sit this one out he will come for you next.

Where are you?