It's The Teacher, Stupid! Thoughts on Restructuring Education in the United States

About the Book

Imagine, if you will, a group of doctors trained in 1850 seeing for the first time a modern operating room. They would, of course, be overwhelmed - and not just with the equipment! Even the process of diagnosing the patient's problem would be totally alien.

We can probably all agree that change for the sake of change, whether in education or elsewhere, is not necessarily desirable. In fact, Melcher's logic frequently takes us back to some of the successful structures and patterns of education which have been abandoned in a decades-long, discouraging parade of failure: our attempts at curriculum reform, the introduction of more and more social programs, the growing dominance of athletics and the ever-less-demanding levels of academic achievement. In the course of these observations he makes us realize that without substantial qualitative changes in the structure of the school "system(s)" themselves, the general quality of public education will continue its descent to ever-lower levels of mediocrity.

And nothing of this accelerating process, which has been characterized by others as "the dumbing down of America," is as critical as the ever-shrinking pool of high quality teachers. Always in short supply, the number of bright and well-educated young people who graduate from college and enter the teaching profession is shrinking rapidly. Mostly because teaching salaries have never kept pace with the economic development in this country, a situation which in turn has been encouraged by the lack of professionalism projected by teacher unions, the young people who should be exercising their talents in the classroom are entering other businesses and professions where their efforts are more respected and better compensated.

This is a book by a man who has worked with schools and school children for forty years, a man who appeals to our common sense to begin the painful process of necessary change.

About the Author

A child of The Great Depression and World War II, Pete Melcher was born just three years prior to the stock market crash of 1929. Thus his life spans the last three quarters of the 20th century and the staggering changes which have occurred during that time. As a child he saw horse-drawn vehicles performing most of the transporting of goods in Philadelphia, while gas street lights in some places were still lighted by hand every night. Air travel was a rarity in relatively primitive planes. Then like just about every other male citizen he was thrust into the maw of the greatest war the world has yet seen, moving around many of the now-fabled islands of the Pacific Ocean with the Army Air Corps.

After a very brief flirtation with the insurance business, he chanced into a teaching post and never looked back. Teaching English in New Haven, CT, Carpinteria, CA, Austin, TX, and St. Louis, MO, while also picking up administrative experience were all preludes to his becoming headmaster at a school in Los Angeles, CA, with the task of converting it from a family run proprietary school to a non-profit school. From there he went to another school in Waterbury, CT, to bring some new life to the dying cause of girls' single-sex education. That in turn led to his founding and constructing a girls' boarding school in Southborough, MA, a school noteworthy for its fresh and successful approach to single-sex education. When that school was absorbed by its sponsoring neighbor, a single-sex boys school, he went on to Jacksonville, FL, to repeat the revival of a girls' school.

Mr. Melcher finished his career with an additional seven years as a school management consultant to over 100 schools in every part of the United States. These consulting assignments gave him a depth of perspective in school operation and management which ultimately persuaded him that independent schools had much to offer the nation as illustrations of different models of management, both good and bad. It also made him realize that the general citizens' view of public schools competing with independent schools was preventing a deeper and richer relationship in which cooperation and mutual exploration of new ways of doing things could help all children in all schools. Finally, his wide and deep experiences also brought him to the realization that the United States is at risk of losing its edge in the world economy unless it reexamines the principles on which the education system was founded.