Kurt Dupree, a senior at Emory College, majoring in Psychology and Educational Study, is a great friend of mine.
We met at CS170 class and we clicked right away. He is very nice and always helps me with problems in and out of classes. We had our interview right after one of our intense CS exams so that was very nice of him to accept my request of a interview too. |
“You don’t mind me recording, right?”
“No, no.”
“So I am pretty against teacher… tenure…” His slow pace of speaking tells me that he is thinking and remembering something.
“…for the fact that I don’t see more pros in it than cons. People argue that teacher tenure protects good teachers but base on the fair amount of good teacher so its not hard to keep them around. And some teacher can argue that ‘Oh they are gonna fire good teachers because they are gonna get fired because they get paid more so then bad teachers are getting hired’, but then you can just pay them with deduction and still teach at the schools instead of getting laid off completely.”
“Yeah that’s a good point, you don’t always have to pay the good teacher that much to keep them around. I mean, if they are good teachers they must love teaching and should not leave the school and stop teaching just because they are not getting paid at super high salary. ”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Do you have any personal experiences or person around you that relate to this issue?”
“Yeah, in fact, I had quite a few. They are pretty memorable. When I was in high school, our Chemistry teacher would swear, he would tell random stories. He wouldn’t teach us anything…”
“He would swear? What ?!”
“Yeah he would curse at us, he would tell stories about messing with games and seeing people get killed. We didn’t learn very much in Chemistry… well I mean I still don’t know very much. And he says ‘oh, I only have two years till tenure I don’t care.’”
“Woaaat? That is ridiculous, I have never had any teacher like this in my life. Wow, I wouldn’t even imagined any friends of mine would have teachers who curse at them…”
“Yeah I even heard that here at Emory, some language professor said ‘well I don’t care what you say on my teacher evaluation cause I have teacher tenure and I will teach however I want.’ So they…”
“They? Sorry.. ” I was mind-blown and felt sorry for cutting him off.
“This is at Emory yeah. So the class syllabus says one thing and the teacher teaches something else. I wont say what language it is just to protect the teacher’s privacy but. Its supposed to be a language class, a high level language class actually. But they all speak in English, and all they talk about is really symbolic artsy stuff. So you would think it’s an art history class instead of a language class. Even the papers they write are in English instead of a foreign language. So that’s a problem with teacher tenure. Cause you see a lot of teachers, em, instead of staying diligent, they are lazy and start slacking off, and doing weird stuff once they get tenure. If teachers are paid base on their merit, they have to behave the best the whole time, and students would benefit more. And this would also create a more competitive teaching market. And that would attract more teachers. And in recent years, it wouldn’t even make sense to fire a good teacher because the better the school is doing, the more money they get. So firing a teacher and hiring a cheaper one would ultimately hurt the school and result in them getting less money so I don’t believe in that argument either. ”
“what about the chemistry teacher that you talked about?”
“Yeah with him, he would like scream at us. After giving us handouts to sign he would just go to his computer and sit down and play computer games during class, he would tell us about when was a kid in college and how he went to parties and finding out people having sex in the house and ended up slamming a guy out of a window from like 3 stories up and killed him and throw him into the Hudson River…”
“What?!”
“He was not appropriate and certainly not Chemistry material. And he has nothing indeed to care about because he gets tenure, and he gets his retirement money after teaching at school. That’s right he already have tenure and he was only teaching towards the thing that makes you get paid the rest of your life after you retire I forget what that was called. Its like a retirement fund. ”
"I see I see. Thank you so much for your time! You must be really tired after both the exam and this talk.."
"No problem! I am happy that I can get my ideas out. Thank you!"
“No, no.”
“So I am pretty against teacher… tenure…” His slow pace of speaking tells me that he is thinking and remembering something.
“…for the fact that I don’t see more pros in it than cons. People argue that teacher tenure protects good teachers but base on the fair amount of good teacher so its not hard to keep them around. And some teacher can argue that ‘Oh they are gonna fire good teachers because they are gonna get fired because they get paid more so then bad teachers are getting hired’, but then you can just pay them with deduction and still teach at the schools instead of getting laid off completely.”
“Yeah that’s a good point, you don’t always have to pay the good teacher that much to keep them around. I mean, if they are good teachers they must love teaching and should not leave the school and stop teaching just because they are not getting paid at super high salary. ”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Do you have any personal experiences or person around you that relate to this issue?”
“Yeah, in fact, I had quite a few. They are pretty memorable. When I was in high school, our Chemistry teacher would swear, he would tell random stories. He wouldn’t teach us anything…”
“He would swear? What ?!”
“Yeah he would curse at us, he would tell stories about messing with games and seeing people get killed. We didn’t learn very much in Chemistry… well I mean I still don’t know very much. And he says ‘oh, I only have two years till tenure I don’t care.’”
“Woaaat? That is ridiculous, I have never had any teacher like this in my life. Wow, I wouldn’t even imagined any friends of mine would have teachers who curse at them…”
“Yeah I even heard that here at Emory, some language professor said ‘well I don’t care what you say on my teacher evaluation cause I have teacher tenure and I will teach however I want.’ So they…”
“They? Sorry.. ” I was mind-blown and felt sorry for cutting him off.
“This is at Emory yeah. So the class syllabus says one thing and the teacher teaches something else. I wont say what language it is just to protect the teacher’s privacy but. Its supposed to be a language class, a high level language class actually. But they all speak in English, and all they talk about is really symbolic artsy stuff. So you would think it’s an art history class instead of a language class. Even the papers they write are in English instead of a foreign language. So that’s a problem with teacher tenure. Cause you see a lot of teachers, em, instead of staying diligent, they are lazy and start slacking off, and doing weird stuff once they get tenure. If teachers are paid base on their merit, they have to behave the best the whole time, and students would benefit more. And this would also create a more competitive teaching market. And that would attract more teachers. And in recent years, it wouldn’t even make sense to fire a good teacher because the better the school is doing, the more money they get. So firing a teacher and hiring a cheaper one would ultimately hurt the school and result in them getting less money so I don’t believe in that argument either. ”
“what about the chemistry teacher that you talked about?”
“Yeah with him, he would like scream at us. After giving us handouts to sign he would just go to his computer and sit down and play computer games during class, he would tell us about when was a kid in college and how he went to parties and finding out people having sex in the house and ended up slamming a guy out of a window from like 3 stories up and killed him and throw him into the Hudson River…”
“What?!”
“He was not appropriate and certainly not Chemistry material. And he has nothing indeed to care about because he gets tenure, and he gets his retirement money after teaching at school. That’s right he already have tenure and he was only teaching towards the thing that makes you get paid the rest of your life after you retire I forget what that was called. Its like a retirement fund. ”
"I see I see. Thank you so much for your time! You must be really tired after both the exam and this talk.."
"No problem! I am happy that I can get my ideas out. Thank you!"