School Nazis

Great Debates
1

THIS THREAD kind of reactivated some thoughts I’ve been having lately about my chosen career path.

Y’see, I teach in the public schools. I’ve taught in several schools, now… and there seems to be something about schools that spawns Nazis.

Either that, or people who embrace their inner Nazi tend to be drawn towards education as a career. Not to say that ALL teachers are Nazis – far from it – but durned if I don’t tend to see more’n a few.

I mean, I did restaurant work for years. Aside from one manager type, I didn’t meet any Nazis.

I did sales work for years. Aside from one incompetent manager who was terrified that his bosses would find out what an idiot he was, I didn’t meet any Nazis.

I did manufacturing work for a while. I met a few Nazis there, but these guys seemed more driven by the need to make money than any inner drive to control their underlings.

Buddies of mine in the military have spoken about Nazis they’ve known… but Nazis in the military tend to either get encysted to the point where they can’t do any real damage, or they tend to self-destruct, apparently.

But now I’m in public education… and it seems like every school has three or four Nazis, at least. Sometimes in administration, sometimes among the faculty, sometimes both.

By “Nazi,” I mean three things:

(a) A control freak who is driven to control other people on a level that goes beyond “micromanagement,” to the point where one’s subordinates’ most trivial actions are scrutinized, and/or:

(b) A person whose controlling tendencies seem malicious; a person who uses negative means (fear, punishment, etc.) to achieve control over others, and/or:

© A person whose drive to control others causes him/her to issue orders that would seem to have no purpose, ASIDE from controlling others, and to remind others of that person’s authority (Halloween will not be observed in any way; it detracts from learning. All clothing in any shade of green is banned from the workplace. No newspaper cartoons or artwork of any kind will be posted on cubicle walls, by authority of the management.)

I’ve known administrators whose sole goal in life seemed to be to impose as much stress on the teaching staff as they could manage.

I’ve known teachers who seemed to think that if their students weren’t miserable, then education was not really happening.

I’ve known district personnel whose sole function seemed to be to interfere with the education process as much as they could manage… for no reason whatsoever.

I’ve met more Nazis in education than I’ve ever met in any other line of work in which I’ve served.

So… does education attract Nazis? Or does it create them?

Opinions?

2

I agree.

I don’t believe that they come into the system as Nazis, but get converted by the beurocrats and all the petty politics that’s going on and they then soon forget why they are there in the first place. Then again, to teach properly, you must have a bit of control to do so. So maybe they are subconsciously Nazis?

Whatever the case, I am against Nazis.

3

How many fields have you actually worked in? I would be willing to bet that you find as many or more control freaks in law, medicine, finance or any other high stress field.

But, I can imagine a higher percentage of “nazis” either being drawn to education or created by the education field for a number of reasons:

  1. Educators tend to like shaping other people’s minds

  2. Most educational facilities are set up like prisons

  3. The best and brightest tend not to go into the the public sector

  4. It seems like a field where you can get burnt out and resentful

  5. Educators learn to “manage” at the lower levels in an environment where students are expected to follow instructions with little or no ability to push back. This management style follows them as they advance to a more administrative position

4

I think msmith’s 5 is the critical reason, followed by 1. I don’t think 2 and 3 are quite relevant. 3 is true of the overwhelming number of managing positions, not just the “public sector”.

5

I humbly submit that, in the interests of fairly tarnishing Nazis (German National Socialists), that we make a distinction between that defunct political party and totalitarian or authoritarian leadership and management styles. You can even call them “control freaks”. Calling someone a Nazi just because they’re petty dilutes the venom of the word, and reduces an important historical lesson in evil to a farce.

6

2 is relevant because if you create a prison environment, expect your management style to immitate a warden/guard/inmate model.

3 is also relevent because while you are correct that all industries have weak or incompetant managers, the nature of the education field - little employment mobility, beurocracy, no economic incentives, tenures - makes the field much more forgiving of incompetance. When I worked at a Big-5 firm, we had asshole managers too. But once a managers behavior affected the project team - which means affecting the partners money - that manager is quickly brought into line.
let me also add

  1. the tenure program creates a sense of entitlement and makes it very difficult to remove incompetance
7

I think the job attracts Nazis. K-12 education is a Nazi job, really. Students are stripped of their rights routinely with no recourse, and forced to obey the word of The Teacher, The Principal, etc., without question. Anyone who questions The Word is singled out as a troublemaker, while those who mindlessly fall in line are rewarded as ‘good students’, later falling on their face in real life because they have no mind of their own, too accustomed to being their higher-ups’ bitch. (FWIW, I did fairly well in school, but always thought the whole system was a little messed up.)

As if that weren’t bad enough, the teachers themselves are often nearly forced (or entirely forced) to teach what the faceless Man wants them to teach, and are subjected to Nazi administrators. Those teachers who fall in line are rewarded, while those who think for themselves are castigated. (That’s my impression, anyway.)

Seems like no matter how far you go up, you see someone who’s frustratingly held down under somebody else’s foot, and must take out such frustration on those below them.

(For more on this, read “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher” by John Gatto, a teacher who boils down the system into seven discouraging lessons teachers teach their students. Highly recommended.)

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are certainly exceptions. You seem like one of them, from your posts and your stories about class. I’m glad. But most people in education seem to be under constant pressure to conform, and that’s not natural, and doesn’t feel right. So they feel bad, and they take it out on those under them with oppressive policies. YMMV.

8

I actually work in a prison. The term we use is “cowboys” for the employees who go overboard in enforcing rules just for the sake of demonstrating they have the power to do so. Noticably, cowboy officers are more often encountered in minimum and medium security prisons rather than maximums. We encourage them to transfer to maximums and “try that shit on some guy who’s already doing eight life sentences.”

I think this is also a relevant factor in the OP’s situation. People who are into this kind of bullying are looking for a place where they can minimize the worry of retaliation. Schools are such a situation.

9

Even “freakish fascists” - but agreed that “Nazi” over-use is Godwinization right off the bat.

That said, as a former student and current parent of four kids, I’ve seen fascist teachers and superb caring creative ones. The best appear fascist at the start, and once the rules are laid down and respected, allow for allow much freedom. I have no idea how it compares to other industries.

10

Worked in a few hospitals. Can’t really say I knew any Nazis there; viciousness and/or pointless inexplicable rules didn’t really fly. Plenty of control freaks, though.

Never worked in finance or law.

Mmm… in a sense. Most educators tend to be pretty wild about their specific subject areas, or (in the case of el-ed majors) pretty wild about children in general. Still, you do encounter those who insist that you not only learn what they teach… but BELIEVE it, take it into thy heart as Ghod’s truth…

Regretfully, this seems truer with each passing day. Still not sure, though, if this is indicative of whether schools turn their employees into Nazis, or if Nazis are drawn to education.

Horse pucky. If anything, the public sector’s BS factor can tend to drive away those who can do as well in other fields… who are not particularly dedicated to what they do, or those more interested in money than in the work.

True… but is this because of Nazis? Or is it what creates 'em?

Ahahahahahaha.
Respectfully, I must disagree. Doesn’t work that way. Try saying the F word in a classroom full of kids, and you’ll see VERY quickly what ability the students have (or do not have) to push back…

11

“No soup for you!”

12

I think a large part of it is the odd dynamic that arises between the teachers and the students. Imagine an adult who is in charge of thirty other adults. They wouldn’t really be in charge, they’d be managing thirty separate individuals with distinct sets of motivations.

When a teacher is given a class of thirty kids, they are expected to control them to a certain extent, to treat them like children and manage what happens in their school life. But after a certain age (10, 12), the children are no longer children. They are small adults with their own motivations, opinions and wills. Yet the teachers are still expected to “manage” them like they are small children. So Nazi-esque tendencies are brought out in people (or Nazi-esque people are attracted to the positions) so as to be able to keep up with the mindless rigor that the public school system imposes on the kids.

13

I work in a high school after 20 years or so in the private sector. I think that Master Wang-Ka is onto something for a number of reasons.

Theory number 1. A young person is educated in this environment. He or she graduates and goes to college, which is not the real world either by any means. They get a degree in education and return as a teacher. They have managed to go from student to teacher without ever leaving the cuccoon of the education world. And now, by god, they have the power. Tremble before them as they wield it.

Theory number 2. An older person started out being able to handle the environment…maybe even enjoying it. However, the antics of hundreds of students over the years have embittered them and they are too emotionally immature to resist the temptation to pass thier misery on.

Theory number 3. Some of them are naturally anal and they are able to flourish in an environment that encourages it.

14

I have no profound comments. However, I think that parents and the community must play some sort of a role in creating an environment which encourages these kinds of "Nazi"s. In particular, in the course of my studying to be a librarian, I have heard many stories about librarians who are so afraid of how someone might react to a book, that they are reluctant to share any book which might be controversial or that someone might claim to be lacking in literary merit.

I think one of the other problems is that in a perfect world, all that would matter is that children learn the things they need to learn to be productive citizens. (Or at least successful college students). In practice, the need to prove that children are learning what they should be seems to promote a lot of standardized testing and standardized curricula, which may drive some of the creative and empathic teachers out and may attract some of the "Nazi"s.

But, I’m not even sure if what I’m talking about is what you are talking about.

15

The Medical field is justied in this conduct.

Sterility, drug verification, dosage control, & many other aspects of treatment require the strictest controls.
If the Physician or Nurse fails, patient death results.

16

I’d chalk it up to psuedo-intellectualism plus the kids’ search for some outlet to rebel with. shrugs Same thing happens at colleges, only they have read Atlas Shrugged.

17

If you look at the original documents passed back and forth between government and business leaders around the turn of the twentieth century, you see that the idea of a school as a soulless factory was more than just a metaphor, it was the orginal design plan.

The raw material was the uneducated child, and the product was the factory worker.

In his book “The Third Wave” (1980), Alvin Toffler says that the underlying curriculum being taught in American schools, whatever the specific subject matter of the course, is:

  1. How to obey orders
  2. How to do repetitive, menial work
  3. How to stay on an automated schedule

In other words, the entire system is meant to be authoritarian. So it engenders authoritarian behavior in those who must implement the system, and attracts people with those tendencies.

18

Interesting. Can those be found online?

19

I don’t know what standard practice is in your area, but around here only classroom teachers have tenure. If a principal, assistant principal, superintedant, football coach or whatever manages to make the school board mad, that person doesn’t have a job at the end of a school year. If that person also happens to have been a tenured teacher in the district, he/she can apply for an open teaching job, but if they came from another district and don’t have tenure, or there aren’t any openings in the area they’re certified to teach, they’re out, period.

We had one school district that was so notorious for firing superintendents, I think at one time they had more former superintendents still having their contracts paid off than they had school board members.

You can blame tenure for bad teaching if you want, but not for bad administration.

20

I read about this in A Different Kind of Teacher by John Taylor Gatto and wasn’t sure what to make of it. Somewhere along the last 50 pages he started rambling on about how appliances and other devices were making our lives worse, not better, and for me, that removed some of his credibility. It’s one thing to critiqe our schooling system, quite another to ramble on about the evils of technology. Anyways, it’s very offputting to actually read the notes you speak of. Gatto’s book had a number of such quotes, and I imagine most people would have a hard time believing anyone with power in the US would write such a thing and be serious. If these quotes were to ever be announced in a news broadcast of sorts, I don’t even think it would make a big difference as most people would be in a collective state of disbelief.