A few years ago, I
remember reading a news article about the school district I grew up in, the
Clark County School District. The district needed to “surplus” (read: layoffs)
about 1,000 teachers to meet their budget for the upcoming year. The layoffs
were not surprising; the teachers they let go were. Clark County had honored
six new teachers with a “New Teacher of the Year” award. Half of those teachers
were let go a few weeks later. The following year, the district let go 419
teachers, but only thirty-eight were fired because of performance issues. The
rest were let go because they did not have seniority, just like a majority of
the 1,000 teachers the year previous.
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| CCSD members protesting layoffs. (From the Las Vegas Sun) |
The idea of seniority makes sense on a basic,
theoretical level. People with more time in a position should have more
experience and be better qualified than their younger counterparts. A
construction worker with twenty years’ experience should be better at pouring
concrete than a rookie. However, that theory does not always translate well to real
life. Some younger teachers may teach better than an older teacher. Some
construction workers may perform the work more effectively than their older
counterparts. Some business people may end up outperforming more experienced
employees.
Currently,
our society seems to value seniority more than it does productivity or
excellence in some instances. Maybe this dogma stems from society’s reverence
for the older generation. It is assumed that older equals wiser, and in the
workplace, older equals more experienced. That works, most of the time. But does it make sense for the
better, albeit younger, employee to receive worse treatment than the tenured
employee? Should the better employee experience layoffs or earn less money
simply because he or she has spent less time with a company?
That is an interesting dogma that I had never really thought about. It is especially interesting in the case of education. Like the world around us education should be changing and evolving, especially with new technology that is coming out. Younger teachers are going to more equipped with modern knowledge to help the younger generations that growing up in the technological age. Unfortunately seniority hurts the education of these young students because there is a gap. There is no doubt that these teachers who have been around for a long time know how to teach but are they properly equipped with technological knowledge to better cater to their students needs? It is a tough question to be resolved.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I am against this dogma or not. In some specific cases the answer would be clear but in others, not so much. If an individual has worked for a company for 20 years, I wold expect there to be some loyalty to that person. The job market is difficult for 20-somethings, imagine how difficult it would be for a 50 year old teacher who has taught at the same high school for 25 years. But individual growth is something that also should be required of employees. If an employee has worked at a company for several years but a new employee is much better... then the decision gets a lot harder.
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