"It is always in season for old men to learn." (Aeschylus)

…..Last night I went to dinner with good neighbors who, when the discussion got around to the subject of tenure, they felt that no one should ever get tenure, and their opinion of it as applied in schools was malicious, vicious, virulent, rancorous, venomous, and vituperative. When I pointed out that teachers were evaluated every year, they wanted to know who did the evaluations. The answer to that is board members, their superintendent, their principal, their colleagues, their students and their parents. A new teacher teaches five classes each day, twenty five each week, one hundred each month, and one thousand classes each school year. If tenure is granted in the sixth year, that new teacher has taught five thousand classes prior to that—and the teacher is not “new” any more.

.....By that time, they ought to have gained experience and skill. If the experience has not helped them to gain skill, then they ought not to be granted tenure; otherwise they require job security, or the good teachers will gravitate elsewhere, where they don’t have to be worried about being fired, willy-nilly. My neighbors claimed that the academic world was not the real world, and they were right. The “real” world deals with “products” on the job; teachers deal with young minds. There’s a difference.

.....Spinoza was villified and excommunicated because he came up with a different idea about the soul which annoyed his teachers in the synagogue. If he were a teacher, he'd be fired. When Galileo said that the sun was the center of the universe and not the earth he was censured by the Spanish scientists and clergy and when he later defended his views he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. If he were a teacher, he'd be fired. When Columbus declared the thought the earth was round and not flat, he was a source of amusement as a lunatic. If he were a teacher, he'd be fired. (Then where would we be). These guys should have been granted tenure and encouraged to continue to develop their ideas. But there will always be Philistines standing in the way who think they know better.