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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Teacher Wars A History of America's Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein Dana Goldstein. Dana Goldstein is a reporter for the New York Times and the author of the bestseller The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession (Doubleday). She has contributed to Slate, The Marshall Project, The New Republic, The Atlantic, and many other publications. Dana writes about education, gender, race, social science, inequality, criminal justice, health, and cities. She has received a Schwartz fellowship from the New America Foundation, a Spencer Foundation fellowship from Columbia University, and a Puffin fellowship from the Nation Institute. She is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award, which honors outstanding reporting by journalists under the age of 35. Previously, Dana was an associate editor at The Daily Beast and The American Prospect. She graduated from Brown University and grew up in beautiful Ossining, New York, alongside the Hudson River. She lives in Brooklyn. Click here to contact Dana and here to subscribe to an occasional newsletter about her work. Connect with Dana on Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr. Cookie Consent and Choices. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. See details. You may click on “ Your Choices ” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. If you click “ Agree and Continue ” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. Goldstein, Dana. 2015. Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession. Has the teaching profession changed over time? Are teachers dealing with the same issues as in the past? Dana Goldstein's Teacher Wars takes an astonishing look at the teaching profession in the United States from its early beginnings in the early nineteenth century to its current trials and tribulations. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the newly established American Republic faced the challenge of creating a common system of tax-supported "common" or public education while keeping the delicate bonds of democracy intact. At the core of maintaining this institution were teachers. Over the course of history the profession has gone through its fair share of struggles, triumphs, and adversities. Have the "teacher wars" or "wars on the teachers" changed much over the course of history? This reader was left pondering this question after reading Dana Goldstein's book. Teacher Wars is divided into fourteen well-written and insightful chapters. In her introductory chapter Goldstein discusses how she came up with the idea of writing a book on the teaching profession. As a journalist who covered matters on education, Goldstein became interested on how the teaching profession ". had become one of the most controversial professions in America" (1). Chapter one of her book begins with the common school, and Catherine Beecher's early work of recruiting young, privileged female teachers from America's northeast to open and teach in schools in America's ever-expanding western frontier. Horace Mann, America's first Secretary of Education shared Beecher's belief that women were ideal candidates in educating America's youth. As such, the field became quickly sex-typed as a profession meant for women, mainly because women were seen as natural nurturers and caregivers to children. According to Goldstein, ". teaching became less understood as a career than a philanthropic vocation or romantic calling" (31). For the greater part of the nineteenth century, the teaching profession was viewed as missionary or volunteer work and as a result, teachers earned unfair wages and were expected to leave the profession once they were married. Equal pay was a contested issue for much of the nineteenth century. Much of chapter two looks at the struggle of equal pay for women teachers. According to Goldstein, "In 1850, four-fifths of New York's eleven thousand teachers were women, yet two thirds of the state's $800,000 in teacher salaries were paid to men" (36). Susan B. Anthony was one of the first to advocate for equal pay and for women to be allowed to become school administrators. More job security was also important to teachers. Charles William Elliot, president of Harvard College, advocated in 1869 for a tenure system for schoolteachers. Later efforts by Beva Lockwood, (an early feminist and staunch supporter for equal pay) led to the milestone H.R. 1571, the first equal-pay law for women in the United States. The struggle of African American teachers became much more prevalent after the Civil War. Chapter three of Teacher Wars looks at Charlotte Forten's efforts to encourage black teachers to enter the profession. An early Afrocentrist, Forten's lessons uplifted her students' spirits by providing them with a sense of racial and ethnic pride. A fourth generation descendant of freed black slaves, "Forten's sojourn south was in the same spirit as the voyages of the northeastern white women who volunteered to teach in western frontier schoolhouses" (51). Other African American teachers later followed Forten's lead by traveling south to help struggling black children. But the struggle for southern black children would continue for much of America's history (later chapters look at the integration of schools in the south). Many early African American leaders questioned what type of education was best suited for the black child. Here Teacher Wars delves into the debates on black education between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Du Bois believed that African Americans should receive a classical education in the Liberal Arts much like their white counterparts. Moreover, Du Bois advocated that a small group of college- educated blacks, "The Talented Tenth" would serve as leaders to the black community. Washington on the other hand, believed that the African American community had to study more practical subjects in the crafts, industry, and farming, and later generations of African Americans would later move into other fields. Worthwhile in the chapter is also Goldstein's discussion of Anna Cooper, and her tireless work as principal of M Street High School in Washington D.C. The following chapter, Chapter four, is perhaps Goldstein's most interesting chapter--at least for this reader. With the advent of mass immigration to the United States in the later part of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, teachers begin to organize and demand better job security, better wages, smaller class sizes, and a fair teacher evaluation system. The emergence of teachers' unions and calls for teachers to be treated as respectable professionals led to a struggle that arguably continues today. Chicago was the epicenter of teacher unionism. As a defender of teachers and women's rights, Margaret Haley helped found the Chicago Teachers Federation, a movement that quickly spread to other cities in the United States. Just as important were Haley's legal victories against tax evading corporations (monies that would have gone to schools), and her work in getting women in Illinois the right to vote. Fears of the spread of communism, as well an economic depression put teachers under the microscope from 1920 to 1960. Much of chapter five looks at what Goldstein calls "teacher witch-hunts". Goldstein states, "Between 1917 and 1960, several waves of patriotic moral panic convulsed the nation's schools. that targeted tens of thousands of teachers" (96). During this period many teachers were fired for their so-called communist ties. The male teacher workforce also increased during this period to 30 percent, and the teaching profession became one of the most educated professions in the United States. Moreover by the 1950s teachers propose revisions to school textbooks as well as a more culturally relevant curriculum to be taught in schools. But the profession was still dealing with the issue of racial integration, a deep-rooted issue that would transform not only the teacher profession, but also the entire institution of public schooling. The impact of school integration on the teaching profession is discussed in Chapter five. After the landmark Brown vs. The Board of Education decision in 1954 many black teachers lost their jobs and many black students continued attending all black schools. It was not until the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that the U.S. government was able to sue school districts that acted against integration. To further assure integration federal funding was tied to public schooling. Once schools were integrated many white teachers found it challenging to teach black students. Goldstein says, "White teachers were more likely than black teachers to report discipline problems with black children, and white teachers complained that black parents had different values . " (120). Even today many white teachers report black students more often than white students for discipline and behavior problems. As noted by Goldstein, Gloria Ladson Billings has called for "Culturally Relevant Teaching" a teaching approach ". that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes" (18). It is also an understanding of students' diverse cultural backgrounds as well as their lives outside of the classroom. The period 1960-1980 was dominated by antagonisms between community activists and teacher unions. In Chapter seven, Goldstein shows how teacher unions were accused of advocating more for teachers than for children.

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