Planning and education

[n0ro]

I had an interesting discussion with a close friend of mine yesterday. Long story short, he is opposed to teachers' unions, suggesting that incompetent educators receive undue protection in the form of tenure, resulting in a gross disservice to students. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the recent lawsuit in California regarding how teachers' unions were placing incompetent educators in already economically depressed areas with marginalized working-class families.

Of course, much of this overblown, and is the result of anti-union rhetoric. My question is not about how to combat these kind of arguments; instead, my question is would planning prevent the incompetent from holding posts in education? I imagine that planning would result in a value shift as much as an economic one, i.e. that education would be one of the most highly valued and respected industries, and thus emphasis would be placed on educators' competency.

Thoughts?

[Blake's Baby]

People who are no good at jobs in capitalism are forced to take them because they need to survive. When that's no longer the case, why would anybody be doing a 'job' they didn't like and were no good at? Perhaps those people would be out making blankets or mapping sediment distribution in upland rivers or designing engines or something.

[Hit The North]

There is already an emphasis placed on the competencies of educators, more now than ever. Firstly, it is built into the training of educators. Trade unions are among the only organisations who insist on qualified teachers. Left to the capitalist, any sack of shit could be a teacher if it bought down costs. It also takes the form of regimes of surveillance and evaluation whilst on the job. Meanwhile, the universities are becoming evermore the lapdogs of big business and the curriculum itself is being dumbed-down into measurable sets of competencies.

As an educator, I have been surrounded mostly by hard-working, committed people and only a few "incompetents". It is usually the administrators of the educators who are incompetent as far as I can see.

Educational institutions often act against the wishes and values of educators. After the revolution, education will have to be de-institutionalised like so much else. If we are revolutionising the relations of production, we will need to also revolutionise the relations of our education.

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