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For professors: yes, tenure is useful and protects freedom of speech in academia. That said, there still needs to be a way to fire bad profs.
For most other professions: enforced no-termination is a bad thing that encourages laziness and incompetence. There's nothing worse than a terrible employee who can't be fired.
Tenure doesn't protect someone from being fired. It just protects someone from being fired without just cause. With respect to teachers, tenure prevents school systems from replacing experienced (=more costly) teachers with new (=cheaper) teachers fresh out of college, just to save money. In most school systems, a high salary is not considered just cause for terminating a tenured teacher.
For professors: yes, tenure is useful and protects freedom of speech in academia. That said, there still needs to be a way to fire bad profs.
For most other professions: enforced no-termination is a bad thing that encourages laziness and incompetence. There's nothing worse than a terrible employee who can't be fired.
I'll give you a particular case. In NYC I went to a high school that had this teacher there with a mean disposition and a crazy look on his face. I figure he had to be tenured.
Never had him for a teacher, but what made him personal is he was a fellow neighbor of mine in an apartment building I lived in (he lived with his mother who didn't seem to be a prize either, personality-wise).
An example as to how rough he can be, he was walking up the walkway to get to the hallway of my building. A fellow neighbor was just leaning against the building leaving him enough room to walk around. Instead the teacher pushed into him so the neighbor pushed back sending him across the fence that surrounded some grass.
You can call it another name, but the idea's the same. For example, in unions such as electrical e.g., if your father was an electrician, then you get to be an electrician and if you father wasn't, then you don't get to be an electrician or at least it used to be that way. I regard that as a form of tenure.
I'm probably going to be the most hated person around here, but I have to say it. I find no rational reason for tenure.
I believe (much like Napolean) that holding a job has to be on merit and job skills, not based on who your mom and dad was, not on tenure nor belonging to a union. Basically the best man or woman for the job.
I'm taking a poll on this. I can guess how the voting will go, but an actual poll is much better. You're free to give your opinion, I just gave mine.
Note to mod: please leave this thread in this forum as I have other occupations in mind besides teachers and professors. Thank you.
The purpose of tenure is to allow for one to do their job as they see fit without being dictated by their employer. Tenure plays a large role in higher education as it allows for professors to have the freedom to perform research and teach their work without having to worry about losing their job. It is this variation and freedom that leads to students taking diverse views and methods as they perform research. The result is faster innovation.
Guess what, you arent going to change how the world works so get used to it. Learn to play the game because whining and trying to change the rules doesnt make you any more competitive. Even under new rules, whiners will still be at the bottom
I don't think we should get rid of tenure, but the privilege shouldn't be abused. Schools need to be documenting whether or not teachers are following a set of standards. Then, there is a paper trail of what's really going on.
I don't think we should get rid of tenure, but the privilege shouldn't be abused. Schools need to be documenting whether or not teachers are following a set of standards. Then, there is a paper trail of what's really going on.
This is the problem. The entire purpose of tenure is to make sure that educators can't be forced how to educate. Which works well in higher education. But we want standards for elementary and high school. So tenure doesn't make sense there.
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