Smyrna, GA, September 21, 2024 –Fulton Books author Emmanuel Edouard, PhD, a lifelong educator who began his teaching journey through the Peace Corps, has completed his most recent book, “The Victimization of Public School Teachers in America”: an insightful work that offers a thorough analysis of the systemic challenges and escalating disrespect faced by public school teachers over the past decades.
After obtaining his doctorate in comparative literature in 1982 at the State University of New York at Binghamton, author Emmanuel Edouard received the Edward Weisband Distinguished Alumni Award for Public Service or Contribution to Public Affairs in 1991. He started his teaching journey in 1980 as a Peace Corps education volunteer serving in West Africa at the Ecole Normale Supérieure du Mali, which continued for twenty-five years as a Plan International representative directing, guiding, and training men and women serving poor communities in Africa, South America, and Central America. In 2005, through AmeriCorps, Dr. Edouard became a NYC-certified teacher assigned to serve in the Bronx, New York City. For twelve years until his retirement, he provided services to children with disabilities. The author is also a proud member of the United Federation of Teachers.
“The assault on public school teachers’ integrity, livelihood, and professionalism started in 1983 with the publication of ‘A Nation at Risk,’” writes Dr. Edouard. “Based on the results of our education system performance, they were indirectly accused of failing our children. Still, it peaked in 2004, when Rod Paige, then George W. Bush’s secretary of education, called the country’s leading teachers union a ‘terrorist organization.’ Teachers felt dehumanized then. In 2009, Barack Obama blamed them for ‘letting our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us.’ Teachers felt let down again. In 2017, President Donald Trump lamented how ‘beautiful’ students had been ‘deprived of all knowledge’ by our nation’s cash-guzzling public school system. Teachers felt humiliated and rejected. Currently, in states like Florida, public school teachers are besieged by politically motivated laws and unrealistic demands from parents, politicians, and noneducation experts. They have lost their freedom to teach as they see fit to meet the needs of their students.
“Teachers feel more disrespected, devalued, unappreciated, and under attack than ever. The bad news is that a recent NEA survey revealed that 55 percent of currently employed teachers are seriously considering leaving their jobs. If that rate of resignations continues to grow, the question is, will there be a public school system in America in the future?”