POSTCARD FROM CAMBRIDGE

Civility and fairness in the political world are not concepts to be sneezed at. Case in point: Massachusetts teachers and teachers-in-training have been having a rough time of it lately. First, the facts. Three weeks ago it was announced that nearly two-thirds of teaching candidates had failed a newly required competency exam. In the aftermath of that announcement, politicians had a field day, rushing to judgment on the test-takers and their college teachers. House Speaker Tom Finneran (D-Mattapan) denounced the test-takers as "idiots" and proclaimed college diplomas worth nothing more than a "used Kleenex that's been lying in the gutter." One wonders what school of civility our politicians attended.

The Board of Education lowered the test standards so that more students could pass. Then, at the delayed prompting of Gov. A. Paul Cellucci (fully aware of possible election-year fallout should he not take action), it reconvened to restore the scoring system to its original, more rigorous level. The interim commissioner of the board, Frank Haydu, a proponent of the lower standards, resigned last week, rather than face more interference from the governor and Board of Education Chair John Silber.

The protests of the two state teachers' unions, the Massachusetts Teacher Association and the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers have been largely drowned out as politicians and pundits denounce not only the seeming stupidity of our teacher candidates, but the possible incompetence of tenured public school teachers and the college professors who have trained them all.

Now for the facts not often stated in the coverage of this debacle. The teacher test was imposed upon candidates for the first time this year. Students were informed that the 8-hour, largely free-response exam was a requirement for certification only a few weeks before they had to sit for it. Little information was given as to the structure of the exam, and no practice tests were released. Three weeks after the announcement of the dismal test scores, the Board of Education has only just informed the students, the only people directly involved with the test, of their scores. The board has failed to release a copy of the test so that we may see how hard this competency exam was. It has also failed to describe the grading process, publish a key of acceptable answers or reveal the credentials and preparation of the test graders.

Finally, my bias on this issue is two-fold and conflicting. On the one hand, my mother is a professor of education. Some of the students who have been waiting anxiously to get their test results, waiting as they are called stupid and ignorant by politicians who cared little about education until something went wrong, are her students. She is one of the professors granting the diplomas Speaker Finneran likened to used tissue. She is also someone deeply committed to education, someone skilled in and passionate about the training of teachers. She, like the rest of us, is waiting to hear the results, to see the test. But so far, like the rest of us, she's just heard the bad news, the insults, the calls for massive education reform.

On the other hand, I'm very, very concerned about the apparent results of this exam. I'd like to think that our colleges are preparing our teachers well, believing as I do that teachers (not politicians) are the ones who will shape the future. I know that the public school system needs reform, and I'm in favor of strong state certification requirements to contribute to that reform. So I wince when I hear the percentage of students who failed and wince again when I think about how much we as a state and a nation have to do to remedy the situation.

But most of all, I wince when I hear the politicians and pseudo-educators--Cellucci, Finneran and Silber chief among them--decry the test takers, the professors and the veteran teachers in a sad attempt to divert blame from a history of too-low education budgets and little attention to the decline of the public schools onto an easy target. Yes, I'm sad to find out that teachers are easy targets. Everyone's been to school, and many of us might not have liked some of the teachers we met there. On the other hand, none of us would be where we are (wherever that may be, speaking on Beacon Hill, learning in Harvard Square or teaching at Cambridge Rindge and Latin) without the teachers who spent time helping us to learn.

There are other groups that I would like to see become easy targets--the insurance companies, the NRA, the tobacco industry--but they don't, because they have political leverage. Unfortunately, all teachers do is teach. All they do is show up every day in front of an often intractable group of students and do their best to share knowledge.

A friend once said to me, "If you want to heal, you'll become a doctor. If you want to practice justice, you'll become a lawyer. If you want to share the truth, you'll become a teacher." A hyperbolical, overly optimistic view of the world, perhaps. But some of us can't help believing in it.

So what, you may be thinking, does this mean to us, as Harvard students? Not much, right? After all, we're better educated than most. We could pass that test. That is, if we even wanted to become teachers. But there are better things to do--consulting, I-banking, lawyering, better jobs with higher pay and a great deal more respect. And that's exactly what I fear. There are many of us on this campus with the temperament and the skill to teach. Until now, we might have harbored the desire to try it, to join a low-paid profession for the greater rewards of sharing knowledge with children.

But now, on top of low pay, there is the generic accusation of incompetence, of ignorance, of failure. The words of Cellucci, Finneran and Silber may have been intended to strike fear into educators, to inspire change and improvement. But without the true commitment to education and the decency to inform the test-takers of their performance first before sharing it with the world, they have only done damage to what is, at its best, truly the most noble profession.

Susannah B. Tobin '00, a classics concentrator in Lowell House, is splitting her time between interning at a law firm and working as a research assistant to a professor of English. She still hopes to teach someday.