Teaching the Meaning and Meaninglessness of Life

ABSTRACT Anthony T. Kronman, in his book Education's End, both critiques the current teaching trends in the liberal arts and argues for a return to teaching “the meaning of life in a deliberate and organized way” (2007, 74). While I will use Kronman's work as a springboard, I will diverge significantly from his work as well. First, I will discuss some of the key distinctions that need to be made in order to even start to address something as substantial as the meaning of life, including an examination of the possibility that life is meaningless. I will look at the work of philosophers, literary works, and other disciplines to aid in this examination. Reflecting on the likes of C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures, I will argue that the liberal arts/humanities provide the best means for truly making sense of the meaning/meaninglessness of life. Finally, it is only the liberal arts/humanities that can provide the narrative structures, the creativity, and the collation of other disciplines, including the natural sciences, necessary to address such a substantial issue.

Is the Grass Greener? Current and Former Music Teachers’ Perceptions a Year After Moving to a Different School or Leaving the Classroom

This study is the fourth in a series investigating the retention and turnover of music teachers using nationally representative data from the National Center for Educational Statistics. I identified records for music teachers in the Teacher Follow-Up Survey and determined how they viewed their careers one year after moving to a different school or leaving teaching altogether. The most important reason teachers cited for leaving and connections between post-teaching career status and a willingness to return to teaching were also examined. Results indicated transferring music teachers experienced numerous improvements to their professional careers, including making a difference in others, working at a school with better operating conditions, and feeling a sense of personal accomplishment, intellectual challenge, and support. Music teachers transferred mainly because of school personnel actions, a desire for a better assignment, and dissatisfaction with administrators and working conditions. Former music teachers experienced improved opportunities for advancement, manageable workloads, and work/life balance. Personal reasons, college enrollment, staffing actions, and retirement were principal motivations for leaving. Only 1% of former music teachers were dissatisfied with teaching as a career compared to 5% of non–music teachers. The willingness of former teachers to return was related to their career status.

Who Comes Back? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Reentry Behavior of Exiting Teachers

While a large literature examines the factors that lead teachers to leave teaching, few studies have examined what factors affect teachers’ decisions to reenter the profession. Drawing on research on the role of family characteristics in predicting teacher work behavior, we examine predictors of reentry. We employ survival analysis of time to reentry for exiting teachers using longitudinal data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth. We find that younger, better paid, and more experienced teachers are more likely to reenter. We also find that women are more likely to return to teaching than men. Child rearing plays an important role in this difference. Women are less likely to reenter with young children at home. We conclude that reentrants may be an important source of teacher labor supply and that policies focused on the needs of teachers with young children may be effective ways for districts to attract returning teachers.

A “More General Crisis”: Hannah Arendt, World-Alienation, and the Challenges of Teaching for the World As It Is

Background/Context This article is part of a special issue on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt's essay, “The Crisis in Education” and her book The Human Condition. Despite the proliferation of books and articles on Arendt's work since the mid-90s, “The Crisis in Education” does not figure all that much in writing on Arendt. It is important to situate the arguments that Arendt makes rather cryptically in this essay in the broader context of her work. Doing so not only explains the problematic in more detail but also complicates Arendt's exhortation to teachers to take responsibility for the world. How can we expect teachers to do so under the more general conditions of world-alienation to which we are all susceptible and for which we have little in the way of conceptual guidance? Purpose/Focus of Study My article explains the shift in thinking about the purpose of education from being primarily about and for “the world” to being for “life.” Arendt holds progressive educational ideas responsible for this shift, although she concedes that in so doing, the progressives were simply reflecting the “prejudices” of the modern age. My article explains what these prejudices are, how they have contributed to world-alienation, and the difficulties we are likely to encounter if we think that a simple “return” to teaching “content knowledge” rather than “life skills” will solve the problem. Research Design This article is a philosophical analysis. Conclusions/Recommendations If world-alienation is the fundamental problem, then the educational solution would seem to be to make education more worldly. However, my reading of Arendt's critique of the most worldly disciplines—political philosophy, history, economics, and the behavioral sciences—shows that each of these disciplines has contributed to the phenomenon of world-alienation. This suggests that simply returning to an education based on “the disciplines” (or “content knowledge,” in contemporary educational discourse) will not be all that helpful unless the “return” to the disciplines brings the problem of world-alienation to the fore and shows how each of these disciplines has, at times, contributed to this phenomenon.

National Estimates of Retention, Migration, and Attrition

This study was designed to estimate the magnitude of retention, migration, and attrition of music teachers; the transfer destinations of those who migrated; the career path status of those who left; and the likelihood that former music teachers would return to teaching. Data, which were analyzed for music ( n = 881) and non-music teachers ( n = 17,376), came from the 1988—1989, 1991—1992, 1993—1994, and 2000—2001 administrations of the National Center for Education Statistics's Teacher Follow-up Survey, a national survey designed to compile comprehensive data concerning changes in the teacher labor force. Results indicated that between 1988 and 2001, 84% of music teachers were retained by schools, 10% migrated to different schools, and 6% left the profession every year, in rates similar to non-music teachers. Transferring music teachers migrated primarily to different school districts in the same state. One year after leaving the profession, former teachers were attending college (28%), retired (23%), out of teaching (21%), in education but not as a teacher (14%), or working as a homemaker (12%). Approximately one third of former music teachers planned to return to teaching within 5 years, and an additional quarter planned to return after 5 or more years.

PROFESSIONS, ELITES, AND UNIVERSITIES IN ENGLAND, 1870–1970

The relationship between the ‘growth of professional society’ and the growth of new universities in England from the later nineteenth century is more often asserted than examined in detail. This article examines the policies towards graduates of three large professions, those of schoolteachers, solicitors, and accountants. The crucial first stage was the growth of an examining society during the second half of the nineteenth century; exams were necessary for almost everything and middle-class children, girls as well as boys, stayed at school longer to take them. This process provided the students both for women's colleges and for the new universities. However, graduate employment remained a problem: solicitors resisted large-scale graduate entry until well into the 1950s, accountants for a decade longer. Teaching was exceptional as a large profession that accepted graduates in large numbers. As a result, the secondary school system produced teachers, who produced university students, many of whom had little option but to return to teaching. This applied to Science as well as Arts students, male as well as female. Secondary school teaching rapidly became a graduate profession, while interwar elementary school teaching moved quite rapidly in that direction. The restricted occupations available for graduates created a vicious circle that significantly restrained the Redbrick universities' opportunities for expansion from their foundation until after 1945. Thereafter, with their traditional intake now going to university, solicitors and accountants were increasingly compelled to accept graduates in large numbers. The post-war growth in student numbers was bound up with a widening of social access to universities, particularly within the middle classes.

The Rate of Return to Teaching: How does it Compare to other Graduate Jobs?

The problem of recruiting graduates into the teaching profession and retaining them has bedevilled recent UK governments. An obvious question to ask is why is teaching so relatively unattractive for graduates. This paper presents a careful analysis of this problem. We compare the earnings of qualified teachers who choose to teach with the ‘opportunity wage’ for those who do not teach. We find that the ‘rate of return on career choice’ for teachers has been declining for both men and women over the past 25 years although teaching is still relatively well paid for women. From our net present value analysis we estimate that males who enter teaching lose, on average, earnings of £40,000 to £67,000 over their lifetime while females could stand to gain average earnings of £42,000 to £65,000 if they opted to become school teachers.

Once is Not Enough: Former Special Educators Who Return to Teaching

This research examines the career paths of 2,700 former special educators to see whether they returned to the public schools; the results are based on longitudinal data (13 years) on all special educators in Michigan public schools hired between 1972 and 1985. Analyses focus on teachers' decisions as they faced two key turning points—whether to reenter the schools, and if so, how long to stay during this second spell. An estimated 34% of the former Michigan special educators reentered a Michigan classroom within 5 years of leaving, and an estimated 58% of these stayed for more than 7 years. I conclude that a return to teaching after a brief interruption may be a common career path, and the pool of former special educators is a viable source of teacher supply.