Time magazine’s cover art doesn’t warrant backlash
Students will be America’s tomorrow. Today’s education system is failing them. Fortunately, the poor quality of teaching in California is about be a thing of the past. According to last week’s edition of Time magazine, Judge Rolf M. Treu took down California laws governing teaching tenure and other job protections that are more than 50 years old because they “violate the state’s constitution.” Though the article in Time is exceptionally informative and makes valuable points, the cover art for the article has been a major issue for many teachers. It features an image of a gavel suspended in midair, ready to smash an apple, suggesting that the law is now involved in differentiating good teachers from the bad. The reactions from the teaching community have been unreasonably sensitive.
According to Nick Canedo, a contributing writer at Syracuse.com, teachers expect an apology from Time and want a boycott of the magazine because they believe that it has launched a “misleading attack” on educators with the cover art and blurb. The backlash against Time for its cover and blurb — which reads, “It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher” — include tweets such as, “Shame on @TIME for their new cover. All it takes to fire a bad teacher is a principal actually doing their job and providing evidence” and “@Time cover on teacher tenure sends the wrong message! Our teachers need support, not attacks. #timefail.”
According to the actual article in Time that the cover art refers to, Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch made the issue of teacher tenure a major part of his life. Teacher tenure is permanent employment status created to keep teachers from being dismissed unfairly. Welch discovered, however, that it sometimes took years and thousands of dollars to fire bad teachers in some districts. With this in mind, Welch asked a California superintendent what was needed to improve public schools. The superintendent responded with, “Give me control over my workforce.”
Though the practice of tenure in teaching negatively affects the quality of education for students in the public school system, tenure at universities can also cause issues among the faculty. Cecilia Woloch, a former faculty member of USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, spoke about tenure issues at USC. “The administration has gone on record saying that the use of NTT (non-tenure track) faculty is a ‘cost-cutting measure.’ In other words, we provide a low-wage labor pool,” she told Neon Tommy last October. Though the tenure issue needs to be addressed in public schools for the safety of students’ education, it also must be addressed in private universities. Now, administrations can easily manipulate the system to either exploit or promote teachers’ salaries, positions and importance in the university’s hierarchy.
With an understanding of the actual content of the Time article, the controversy over the cover art seems almost ridiculous in comparison. Another image printed in the magazine did feature good and bad apples, so to just assume that the apples on the cover represent bad teachers alone is a break in logic. Therefore, the cover art discussing the implementation of stricter evaluations of the quality of teachers should be respected and appreciated for its creativity and metaphorical value. If a teacher is, in fact, a valuable asset, then he or she should not be so affected by artwork depicting the law coming down on those who give teachers a bad name because they are not a part of that group of educators. Instead, they should be celebrating the acknowledgement that there is, and will be, a distinction between the good and bad teachers.
Amid the outrage from teachers, Time managing editor Nancy Gibbs addressed the issue of the artwork. According to news site Education Dive, Gibbs said that Time “admires the nation’s teachers,” and she expressed “dismay that many may have heard the coverage ‘mischaracterized’ before being able to read it.” In fact, to help have a more informed debate, Gibbs made the story available for free on Time’s website so everyone has the opportunity to read it. It must be understood that opinions regarding the article should not be made based solely on the cover art; the content of the article is too valuable to dismiss because some might find the artwork offensive.
The controversy with the cover aside, the magazine brings up an issue that pervades educational systems in many places, including USC. It’s a problem that hits close to home. Here on campus, teacher tenure needs to end because it creates an opportunity for unequal pay among staff members. We have incredible faculty, and it is disheartening to think that some of the most talented professors are treated unfairly because of the lack of tenure tied to their position.
Chelsea Hernandez is a senior majoring in English (creative writing). Her column, “Foot in Mouth,” runs Wednesdays.