{"id":738,"date":"2013-04-19T12:49:04","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T17:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foreignersview.wordpress.com\/?p=738"},"modified":"2021-08-20T16:56:01","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T21:56:01","slug":"we-dont-need-your-missionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2013\/04\/19\/we-dont-need-your-missionaries\/","title":{"rendered":"We don’t need your missionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

A version of this article first appeared on\u00a0<\/em>North by Northwestern<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At Northwestern, we love to talk about leadership. We are a \u201cleading institution,\u201d educating \u201cstudent leaders\u201d to be the \u201cleaders of tomorrow.\u201d If you haven\u2019t heard at least one of these phrases in the time you\u2019ve been here, you really need to take your headphones off more often. Leadership defines us as an institution, it\u2019s how we understand our position in society, and the roles we will come to play when we graduate. At least in part, it is also how we justify our relatively privileged position in the American social hierarchy: We aren\u2019t here just to get rich, but also to become great leaders who will make the world a better place for everyone.<\/p>\n

At Teach For America, a program which sends young college grads to teach for two years at the most impoverished schools in the country, the talk of leadership has been raised up to an art form. In their mission statement, they describe themselves as\u00a0\u201cgrowing the movement of leaders who work to ensure that kids growing up in poverty get an excellent education.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0They \u201crecruit leaders.\u201d They \u201cinvest in leaders.\u201d They\u2019re in the leadership business. Wendy Kopp, the founder and board chair of TFA, frequently speaks of leadership \u2013 it might be her favorite word in the English language right after \u201ctransformational<\/a>.\u201d She sees TFA and its alumni as \u201ca lot of the leadership driving the change<\/a>\u201d in the way we do education in this country.<\/p>\n

But what if the problems we face can\u2019t be solved by better leaders? What happens when these problems are structural, and have their roots at the deepest foundations of our society? It then appears that our constant talk of leadership is merely a way to avoid talking about the real challenges. More than that, it\u2019s a way to see ourselves as part of the solution, and thus without moral blame, while the biggest moral questions of our day go unanswered.<\/p>\n

Nowhere is the bankruptcy of this obsession with leadership more obvious than in the field of education.\u00a0Studies<\/a>\u00a0on the subject have shown that social class and family background are the biggest predictors of educational outcomes. No amount of leaders recruited by TFA from \u2018elite\u2019 schools can change the fact that students grow up in the context of a society with colossal gaps between rich and poor, white and black. This isn\u2019t avoiding the issue, as Kopp frequently claims it is \u2013 it\u2019s facing the facts. Teacher quality is the next most\u00a0important<\/a>\u00a0factor.\u00a0But the biggest variable for ensuring teacher quality is teaching experience<\/a>, which a two-year program can\u2019t provide. While some TFA alumni stay in the profession after their two-year stint,\u00a0more than 80 percent leave after three years<\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0much more than the\u00a050 percent of overall teachers who leave the profession after five years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And who blames them? The pay is poor, the hours are long and working conditions are far from ideal. The teaching profession has lost any prestige it may have once had, with teachers more often used as scapegoats for achievement gaps<\/a>\u00a0than objects of admiration. Teaching is no longer about instilling a sense of wonder in young people, but about teaching them mindless skills to pass tests. As one teacher recently said in his\u00a0resignation letter<\/a>, the profession \u201cno longer exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

You might think that this does nothing to discredit TFA and its \u201cleaders.\u201d After all, they don\u2019t (usually) pretend to be the be-all and end-all of solutions to the educational gap. But it is not clear that they provide even a short-term solution, with\u00a0no significant improvement<\/a>\u00a0in the short term in any area when compared with teachers in similar positions. Even more importantly, TFA and its supporters push directly against the structural changes we need. They give us two years when we need life-long educators. They give us college grads willing to work for a little cash before they move on to more lucrative careers, when we need to make the teaching profession attractive enough for people to dedicate their lives to it. They give us idealistic young kids when we need experienced, well-trained teachers. By making it look like what we need is a small group of genius \u201cleaders\u201d in the raw, TFA contributes to making teaching the opposite of what it needs to be \u2013 a pillar of our society, worthy of the same respect as the most prestigious profession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A version of this article first appeared on\u00a0North by Northwestern. At Northwestern, we love to talk about leadership. We are a \u201cleading institution,\u201d educating \u201cstudent leaders\u201d to be the \u201cleaders of tomorrow.\u201d If you haven\u2019t heard at least one of these phrases in the time you\u2019ve been here, you really need to take your headphones … Continue reading “We don’t need your missionaries”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"We don't need your missionaries","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,30,49,72,88,96],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-capitalism","tag-education","tag-kopp","tag-politics","tag-tfa","tag-wealth-distribution"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3A68f-bU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":741,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2013\/04\/19\/against-koppitalism\/","url_meta":{"origin":738,"position":0},"title":"Against Koppitalism","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"April 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A shortened version of this article first appeared on\u00a0North by Northwestern,\u00a0as part of a series of reactions to a talk by Wendy Kopp. Wendy Kopp began her lecture yesterday by recounting how she got to the idea for starting Teach For America. She grew up, as did many Northwestern students,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":651,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/10\/18\/daily-columnist-dangerously-shortsighted\/","url_meta":{"origin":738,"position":1},"title":"Daily columnist dangerously shortsighted","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"October 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This piece first appeared on The Protest. You can also read it there, the formatting is way fancier. If you haven't already read the latest installment of Northwestern racism, courtesy of The Daily Northwestern, take a deep breath and read it now. The piece is so awful from beginning to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":361,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/02\/25\/the-million-dollar-degree\/","url_meta":{"origin":738,"position":2},"title":"The million dollar degree?","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"February 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This post was inspired by this post on Crooked Timber, which was in turn inspired by David Graeber's\u00a0Debt: The First 5,000 Years. If somebody asked you to put a price on your upbringing, how much would say it's worth? A hundred thousand dollars? A million? I had a great childhood,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":381,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/03\/01\/letter-to-the-editor-its-time-to-fight-for-our-rights\/","url_meta":{"origin":738,"position":3},"title":"Letter to the Editor: It’s time to fight for our rights!","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"March 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I got a letter to the editor published on the Daily today. Here's an excerpt: Every time the city government does something students don't like, there is a lot of angry talk on campus. \"They have no right to do this! They don't care about us!\u00a0Morty, come save us!\" Read\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":354,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/02\/22\/the-living-wage-fight-continues-at-nu\/","url_meta":{"origin":738,"position":4},"title":"The living wage fight continues at NU","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"February 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I got an article published on socialistworker.org! Here's a taste of it: IN THE fall of 2009, a group of students from the Northwestern Community Development Corps circulated a petition that called for the university to pay a living wage to all its employees. The students gathered more than 1,000\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":469,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/05\/25\/what-is-asg-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":738,"position":5},"title":"What is ASG?","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"May 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This article first appeared on The Protest. Pick up a copy if you can, they're all around campus. If you can't but still want to see it with all the fancy formatting, check it out on issuu.\u00a0You can also find it here on The Protest's website. We call it student\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"ASG logo","src":"https:\/\/foreignersview.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/05\/asg-logo-w-text.png?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1060,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/1060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}