There's no need for another voice condemning Rutgers men's basketball coach Mike Rice; he's been fired as a result of an enormous public outcry over his "coaching methods." In light of the recent revelations about long-standing sexual abuse at Horace Mann and other schools, however, it is time to start talking about how to hold teachers accountable for important stuff.
First and foremost, the best way is decidedly not to link teachers' evaluations to arbitrary statistical performance. Test scores do not make a teacher, and won-lost records do not make a coach. Both of these measures are arbitrary because they do not take into account "distance traveled" by the students in the charge of teachers and coaches. A good coach brings his players from one level of play to another; as players improve, they ought to win more games than before, but only if the schedule and other factors allow it. Won-lost records can measure the talent of players, and some test scores can measure the talent of students, but they are not good ways of assessing educators.
On the other hand, eccentricity and bizarreness are not teaching methods. Being self-involved and weird is neither necessary nor sufficient for good teaching. I don't buy the Dead Poets' Society model of excellence, in which the teacher inspires kids to "be themselves" by himself being entirely different from anyone else. High-quality instruction also requires patience, discipline, and hard work. Individuality, free-thinking, innovation, and a certain amount of quirkiness often do reflect and allow excellent teaching. Teachers have to dig new ground and push students beyond their comfort.
But both Horace Mann and Rutgers confused extremity with originality. Kicking kids is not quirky, it's violent, undisciplined and ineffective. Rutgers should have recognized that fact immediately. Athletic Director Tim Pernetti, also fired in the wake of the scandal, should not have entertained for a moment the idea that Rice was just "intense." Convincing kids that they only have value except insofar as they worship the teacher is not avant-garde, it's abusive and selfish. Horace Mann administrators chose to interpret clearly bent behavior as a "method," when it really was pathology. In both cases, the supervisors in question were lazy and unprofessional.
As a private school teacher myself, this stuff angers me personally. The number of comments I have seen recently suggesting that sexual abuse is rampant at prep schools, that only someone with similar pathologies would be interested in working at one, and that all students in such places are snot-nosed are not only unfair, but harmful. The comments come from the ignorant, but they are the responsibility of the bad teachers who created the impression.
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