For the oppressed teacher: stay real!

Abstract

This article addresses teachers’ challenges in relation to other stakeholders, in light of funding policies and evaluation mechanisms. In particular, a condition where pressures toward high pass rates or ‘throughput’ in the degree system provide a good negotiation position for students with little learning orientation as to their aspirations after credit units is considered. This condition is intensified by the fact that the mere completion goals of non-learning-oriented students align with the collective goals of administration (university), given the throughput-based funding policies. A teacher willing to honorably exercise the profession is, then, ‘squeezed in between.’ Daily teaching endures by the incorporation of the wrong kind of flexibility, which undermines the education system. This problematic pattern is reviewed, and a remedy proposed by drawing on Freire and considering a recent theorization by Sutton on the position of an academic under a neoliberalist condition.