The National Teacher Shortage, Urban Education and the Cognitive Sociology of Labor

Abstract

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (Fast facts: back to school statistics, 2018. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372 ), there are over 50.7 million students enrolled in the nation’s public schools, which is an all time high. At this rate, within the next decade an estimated 1.5 million new teachers will be needed (American College Testing in: The condition of future educators, 2014. http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/CCCR-2014-FutureEducators.pdf ; Barshay in: The hechinger report, 2016. http://hechingerreport.org/national_teacher_shortages_overblown ; Carroll and Fulton in: Threshold 8:16–17, 2004; Flynt and Morton in: Natl Forum Teacher Educ J 19(3):1–5, 2009; Pennington and Hanna in: Teachers stay in the profession during Obama-era policies, Center for American Progress, Washington, DC, 2014. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/news/2014/01/21/80846/teachers-stay-in-theprofession-during-obama-era-policies/ ). The teacher shortage has become a national concern, which has drawn the attention of policy makers and citizens alike (Ashley in: Our stories, our struggles, our strengths: perspectives and reflections from Latino teachers, The Education Trust, Washington, DC, 2018. https://1k9gl1yevnfp2lpq1dhrqe17-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wpcontent/uploads/2018/02/Our-Stories-Our-Struggles-Our-Strengths-FINAL.pdf ; Bernardo in: 2015’s best and worst states for teachers, 2015. https://wallethub.com/edu/best-and-worst-states-for-teachers/7159/ ; CCTC in: Program evaluation: a report to the legislature, 2003. http://www.ctc.ca.gov/reports/CalTeach-Report-March2003.pdf ; Sutcher et al. in: A coming crisis in teaching? Teacher supply, demand, and shortages in the U.S. Learning Policy Institute, 2016. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/product-files/A_Coming_Crisis_in_Teaching_BRIEF.pdf ). To address this issue, it is crucial to examine the reasons for the shortage of teachers in public K-12 schools and the resultant relationship between cognitive divisions of labor and the cycles of the economy. Zerubavel (Social mindscapes: an invitation to cognitive sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1997) defines cognitive divisions of labor as the way people mentally segment and group labor and assign meaning to it based on its functions. In this sense, this article argues that at the social level, conceptions of labor are narrowly conceived on economic principles where a profession like teaching, which is not directly connected to the market, has a very low status in the broader society. Consequently, these economic tendencies act as tools of cognitive socialization and sociomental control that restricts and governs the way work is viewed in capitalist societies (Schutz and Luckmann in: The structures of the life world, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1973; Zerubavel 1997). The article argues for a shift in the way the teaching profession is viewed, as well as for policy surrounding better preparation, compensation, support, and recruitment of diverse teachers. To that end, the article brings new analyses to the teacher shortage with the cognitive divisions of labor framework.