There is no crisis

Today, for the first time in my short teaching career, I thought seriously about what I would tell my students if I were to lose my job.

I thought about this today because I, along with thousands of teachers at schools across the country, am facing the possibility of being laid off due to proposed cuts in education spending. Before, I had been able to ignore the thought long enough to continue doing my job every day without letting the fear or anxiety get to me; today, I had my first real conversation with students about what might happen to their school next year, and I am worried for them.

Also, there is a good chance that I will lose my job.

Before I go any further, let me first explain the purpose and title of this blog. I've been meaning to start it for a long time--mostly as a way to refine my own thoughts on education and share ideas with other teachers and colleagues. I've tried more than once to write the perfect "first post," so it seems ironic that my actual first post is about how I might not be a teacher for much longer. The title comes from my belief that kids learn more from their teachers than we think they do. They forget most of the content. What they remember is what they watch us do: what we prioritize, why we do our jobs, how we respond when there is conflict. They can see us even when we don't think they're watching.

So since the example teachers set for their students is so important, how should we act when we learn we're being laid off? I want to be as honest as possible with my students; but they're also 12 years old. Is it fair for me to demoralize my students to relieve my own stress?

What does a parent tell her child when she loses her job? As difficult as it is to answer this question, I think it's even more difficult to answer the inevitable question that follows: Why?

Answering a child when he asks this question is so difficult because the adults who are supposed to have the answers do not always have them. "Budget cuts," "this recession," "tough economic times"--these words are as hollow for adults as they are for children. Most of us do not really know why we are let go--but we accept the decision because the economy is in a state of crisis and the decisions being made about our jobs and our schools are out of our control.

The truth, however, is that there is no crisis.

We have been led to believe that there is one by repeated claims both that we are facing a major fiscal shortfall and that our schools are terrible. In Texas, for example, legislators who advocate cuts keep hammering the fact that the state is facing a $27 billion budget deficit; these same legislators also repeat the refrain that too many of our schools are failing due to incompetent teachers. 

What is happening in Texas is the same thing that is happening in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho, and other states where government has simultaneously ramped up attacks on school funding and teachers--the only difference is that we're facing a more advanced stage of attack, since Texas is a right-to-work state and there are no real unions to bust. Here and elsewhere, our leaders are using the illusion of crisis as a pretext to expand corporate control of public institutions and redefine the relationship among corporations, individuals, and government.

So then what do I tell my students if (when) I am let go? Can I be honest with them and not explain how there is no crisis--that the $9.8 billion deficit in education could easily be balanced with a slight tax increase, or by dipping into the state's $9.4 billion rainy day fund? How do I tell my students that their leaders are refusing to pay for the education they deserve?

A few years ago, I picked up Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine because I had heard the book gave an incisive breakdown of how corporate-styled "disaster capitalism" came to dominate United States foreign policy in South America, Asia, and most recently Iraq. Since reading the book, I have watched as the same ideology has been directed towards public institutions in the United States. Busting teachers' unions, decreasing job security, expanding charter schools, slashing public school funding, and increasing racial and economic segregation of students, all in the name of escaping a fabricated catastrophe--this is the shock doctrine at work.