Frank McCourt: Listen to teachers; politicians know nothing about education

July 20, 4:00 PMSF Education ExaminerCaroline Grannan

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New York City public education advocate Leonie Haimson comments on the Huffington Post about Frank McCourt, the eloquent and witty Pulitzer prizewinning author and teacher who died last weekend:

“I remember a great speech McCourt gave at the UFT spring conference in 2006--- telling a packed audience at the Hilton a hilarious story about how he was once so overwhelmed with all the homework he had to correct that he threw all 175 student papers into a dumpster.
“He also went on at some length about how elected officials and top administrators never listen to teachers, but unfortunately by that time, all of those who had been there … had left the room.”

Haimson quotes from a 2005 radio interview with McCourt:

Interviewer: "If you were named Schools Chancellor what would you do?"
Frank McCourt: "I'd certainly go to Albany and get more money for the teachers' salaries...and I'd cut the school day and certainly cut the size of the classes, because they're monstrous. And I've have a parliament of teachers, no supervisors and certainly no politicians."

More pointed observations from McCourt, 2005:

“Teachers here are treated like second-class, third-class, fourth-class citizens. They're told to come in the back door. ....
When you do see … a panel on education, you see someone from the board of education, you see a professor of education, or you see a bureaucrat, someone from a think tank, a politician, but never a teacher. Never. Imagine a panel on medicine without a doctor? The uproar there would be from the medical profession!
But all the politicians think they own education. …. The politicians have the keys to the educational system, they control the purse strings, and they don't have a clue about what education is. I know they've been to school and all themselves, but what goes on in the classroom is another story.”