The Educated Elite vs The Country – Part I: Elitism and Teach for America
As anyone who follows this blog—or who has sat in on any of my university lectures, for that matter—knows, I am a big fan of Teach for America (TFA).
And in this—its 20th anniversary year—it’s getting a lot of justly deserved attention in the media, both mainstream and new.
But along with all the praise, some folks have been raising the issue of whether or not it’s too elitist in its recruiting policy.
At just about the same time Angelo M. Codevilla, a retired professor of international relations at the non-elitist Boston University, has published a long essay in the conservative American Spectator, arguing that the main underlying problem with America is its rule by a closed, elitist “educated class.”
And a few weeks before that Paul Berman, a board member of the socialist journal Dissent, published a book based on his earlier article in the uber-progressive New Republic arguing that this same group of elite intellectuals is lacking in courage, honesty and integrity especially when it comes to dealing with islamofascism.
First, the criticisms of TFA’s recruiting policies.
The Tenured Radical puts it this way:
In fact, TFA has a highly traditional view of education, in which those who have the good fortune to have been born with, or acquired, elite culture (the bourgeoisie, or haute bourgeoisie) transmit it to the children of those who are perceived to be without culture (working class and poor people.)
And:
I think the real shuck that groups like TFA have sold to us, hand in hand with the free market worshippers in both political parties, is that only they can solve this problem! Only the best and the brightest can fix it! Just look at what well-intended, Ivy League genius policy-makers did for Viet Nam in the 1960s if you don’t believe me.
And in an earlier post:
Why do I dislike Teach For America? Because it has nothing to do with permanent investment in our schools, or thoughtful reform of education. Because it is one of many organizations that seem to exist more or less to give privileged young people the “life experience” that will qualify them to go on to their next advanced degree. Because it relies for its prestige on the idea that people who are middle or upper class naturally have something special and intangible to offer to the poor. Because it activates our not so thinly-veiled social contempt for people who chose the hard work of teaching public school as a career, often doing it for decades in places where they are forced to buy books and classroom supplies out of their own salaries.
I should note here—as I have before– that not all TFAers are from elite schools, that one of the goals of TFA is that its recruits not remain in the classroom so that they will exert influence in other sectors of society, and—despite conflicting research data–that there’s plenty of evidence that shows TFA teachers accomplish amazing things in the classroom. They are exceptionally hard workers.
And as Kevin Carey notes at The Quick and the Ed:
To be clear, elite status is no guarantee of success, either at the student or institutional level. TFA screens out a lot of very smart people for good reasons.
But that still leaves us with the matter of elitism. Exclusivity is, after all, one of TFA’s recruiting tools.
