Thanking Teachers in our Lives

To Those Who Have Increasingly Thankless Jobs

It shouldn’t have happened this way. Several years ago, I got a Facebook message, I think it was in a comment on someone else’s post, from my 7th grade science teacher, Neil Miller, who is now in his 90s, saying that not only did he remember me but that he had been following my career (along with another much more famous Wichita native and former Miller student, Dan Glickman, former Secretary of Agriculture and for many years a US Congressman). To say I was touched by Miller’s note was an understatement. Of course, I remembered how I was challenged in Miller’s class and how much I enjoyed it. But I was also embarrassed. That it took a teacher to essentially thank me, when of course it should have been the other way around.

And not only with Miller. But numerous other teachers, in public school, college and graduate and law school, who literally changed my life. Inspired me throughout my professional career. Most importantly, gave me confidence that I lacked that I could do things that I thought were out of reach for me.

In my defense, I have reached out during my life to a few teachers who have had one or more of these life-changing effects ((Here I will mention some other names that deserve this: Bruce Ackerman and Bill Nordhaus. For those who don’t know who they are Google them. Two others, known to a smaller group, by my Penn class: Jamshed Ghandhi and C. J. Burnett). But candidly, not anywhere close to how many I should have contacted. And now that I’m 71, I’m sure a number are no longer with us, and I’ll never get that chance.

If any of this strikes a chord, I am sorry if I have also just made you feel a bit guilty (can’t help it, it’s a trait Jewish mothers are very good instilling in their children, and one that mine succeeded at). Perhaps some readers of this post younger than I am and have had inspiring teachers who are still alive may now rush to give their own thanks to their most influential teachers.

It turns out that you’re not alone if you haven’t done much of this so far. Only after I started writing this column did I find that others have regretted not thanking their teachers. Read this by Fay Vincent, the former Commissioner of Major League Baseball: https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-should-have-thanked-my-teachers-11569183898. And this letter to the editor thanking Vincent: https://www.wsj.com/articles/fay-vincent-reminds-me-of-teachers-i-should-thank-11569526410.

Now that I think of it, you don’t have to wait to thank the teachers who taught you. What about some of those incredible teachers who found innovative ways to do their best to keep your kids or your grandchildren engaged in learning through zoom or other web-based video platforms during the COVID pandemic? Sure, not every teacher has adapted well. But for those who have, including those who have been required by their local school boards to physically go back to their classrooms while the delta variant has raged, the least one could do right now is to thank them.

There is a broader lesson in all this (aside from the fact that when you reach the 70s, as I did a year ago, you begin to think of all things you should have done or done differently). It’s not just what teachers do for us as individuals that count. It’s what they do for society.

Economists often call education at least partially a “public good,” because its benefits redound not only to individuals but also to the public at large. We are all better off when our communities, our country, and even the world is better educated. That is because the more trained bright minds there are out there, the more likely it is that some of them will invent or discover things that will help us all live better lives: like antibiotics, other new life-extending drug therapies, and innovations like air conditioning, cars and airplanes, and all kinds of software, and so on.

National defense and law enforcement, when properly done, are more “pure” public goods, and of course so is much of our physical infrastructure, like roads and bridges, which literally provide the foundation for our modern economy.

But just as our physical infrastructure is crumbling – and who knows at this writing whether or when Congress and the Biden Administration will eventually arrive at a deal that at least will pass and sign into law the bipartisan infrastructure bill that has passed the Senate – I worry that our K-12 educational infrastructure, consisting of teachers who operate under such increasingly severe pressures that teaching itself has become a thankless job, will crumble too.

 When my generation went to school, we didn’t have to worry about getting shot – in school. Teachers were not as much in the political crosshairs as many are today, in a growing number of states, when teaching certain subjects – history, for example. School boards insisted that students in middle and high school when we were in school learned the fundamental elements of our democracy – they called it “civics” remember – before becoming voters. Thank goodness there is a growing movement in some states to bring civics back into schools, which in principle, is a welcome development, but only if the courses stay true to foundational principles of our democracy, like separation of powers, independence of the judiciary and a free press, and are not distorted, under political pressure by parent- voters who either didn’t learn civics themselves or have forgotten it.

I worry that under the economic pressures under which our state and local governments operate, compounded by decades of rising income inequality that have pressured the middle class, K-12 teachers will not be paid anything close to what they are worth (they never have been in my lifetime), but certainly not enough to put up with all the pressures on teachers that keep mounting. If this happens, fewer people will go into teaching who will be capable of making the kinds of differences in lives that we have experienced and that have improved our society and economy.

I fully realize, of course, that not all teachers are great, but is true in any profession. I also realize that teachers’ unions have many flaws, which I suspect many teachers themselves are fully aware of. To take just one small example, unions have negotiated a growing number of “professional development days” during the school year for PD courses of dubious value, while interrupting the schedules of two-parent working families who have difficulties taking care of their kids on the days when PD is in session, while both parents must go to work. During the pandemic, when much teaching was done remotely, this was less of a problem for parents who had the luxury of being able to work from home, but not for about half of those in the labor force who still have had to show up at work.

But teachers’ unions do some good as well, no more so than during the pandemic. I’m totally with them in their efforts to protect their teachers and students from COVID in states and school districts where teachers have been compelled (on paid of losing their jobs) to go back to in-person learning where mask mandates are not strictly enforced or even prohibited. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/15/us/teachers-mask-mandates-trnd/index.html.

Despite all this craziness, many amazing teachers press on. I can attest to this personally, admittedly on an anecdotal basis, but through contact with enough teachers to give readers some good news. As you will learn in greater detail in a future post, I have been spending much of my last three years researching, writing, and publishing a book (Resolved: Debate can Revolutionize Education and Help Save our Democracy, https://www.amazon.com/Resolved-Debate-Revolutionize-Education-Democracy/dp/0815737874/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Resolved+Litan&qid=1634486992&sr=8-1) about how education can be much improved – for the benefit of students and teachers alike – by adapting techniques from competitive debate in all classrooms. By this I mean in every subject throughout middle and high school, and even as early as late elementary school.

Since the book was published, I have been working with an amazing group of highly committed teachers with debate backgrounds to teach other teachers from around the country how to do this. All of them have signed up voluntarily, at their own expense, because they truly care about wanting to make learning fun, engaging, and truly educational. And those who have been running this instructional project have done it largely pro bono because they, too, care about these things, too. It has given me hope, and it should do the same for you.

By the way, I’m happy to report that five other former Miller students of roughly my vintage have recently visited him in person to thank him for all that he did for them. Can you imagine how great that must have made Miller feel? A lot more teachers deserve such thanks, and many more of us should be giving it, not just through one-on-one communications with our former teachers, but in supporting teachers more broadly at a very difficult time for our country.