Dereliction of Duty

Or Why I'm going to end up broke, unhappy, and alone.


I should start off by saying I believe in the concept of Duty. I can see that there are flavors of duty. The state may, by the authority we give it, create certain duties for its citizens - military service, jury duty, literal duties through taxation. I'm not concerned with those right now. I am more concerned with individual duties - a duty that I give myself or that I feel is a natural duty or, perhaps, one that is a kind of special situation which creates a duty. I can't really noodle it out so I'll put it to pen and see if that clarifies things. Most of these thoughts center around my chosen career and how I think it is the morally right choice for me. I'll probably relate much of what I write back to my decision to teach and the sense of obligation I feel toward becoming a teacher.

On the subject of duties, I think that my teaching is one of those special obligations. I can't really call it a natural duty because my understanding of a natural duty would give everyone sufficiently similar to myself a duty to become a teacher (or some similar servant of the public). I don't think that's the case. A natural duty would be one which everyone ought obey regardless of the individuals or their external circumstances. I've seen this duty constructed and the duty to warn a stranger that her drink is poisoned. You know nothing of the person other than that she is about to die unless you act. This is a bit weird, though, because your proximity to her and knowledge of the poison give you some ability to act but do not create the moral obligation to act. I see the common humanity between you and she as the only obligating force - the proximity and knowledge are simply constructed for the use of the example. Anyone in that situation should act the same way and warn the patron of her poisoned drink. Another formulation would be that we have a duty to help other people when we can act at very little cost to ourselves. The justification for this can vary - it makes the world a better place, the golden rule, whatever. Most of these rely on some kind of equivalence between yourself and the other person: you're both moral agents, you're both human, you're both drunks in a bar. The recognition of that commonality means you'd expect the same treatment if she knew of poison in your drink.

Being a teacher is not a natural duty. The profession of teaching is not something done without incurring significant costs. Similarly, I think the particular facets of my life make teaching a duty for me but not for every other person. That's why I think it is some sort of special obligation. Another difference from the natural duty is that I find myself obligated to a specific subset of people (unlike the above example where I'm obligated to everyone I might find about to drink poison). I don't want to become a teacher at a private school. I don't want to teach children in Africa. That's not to say that private school students or Africans are any less deserving of a good teacher. I simply don't find myself with a duty toward them. I guess this is a very subjective way to look at duty but that's why I don't think teaching is a natural duty. Teaching requires cost. We simply can't accomplish all those things (teach publicly, privately, and in Africa) because the costs are too high. (I should note that I'm defining costs broadly and not limiting it to money).

So what are the specific ways in which I am duty bound to become a teacher? Some of these reasons rest with me and some with the population I want to serve. The population is easy to tackle and my justification looks similar to the one used in the bar patron example. Children are human beings and are (or will become) moral agents capable of making rational decisions. I am a moral agent capable of making rational decisions. These qualities (as well as others: shared natural rights, shared political rights, shared community and/or citizenship) imply that we are sufficiently similar and therefore deserve similar treatment under the law, by society, whatever.

But our treatment is not always similar. In fact, due to the circumstances of my life, your treatment is far more likely to be worse than mine. Your quality of life will be lower. The state will not always seek to provide you adequate protection under the law. To put it simply, inequality exists in areas where there should not be inequality. The two specific areas I frequently identify are equality of legal protection and equality of opportunity. My natural duty in this situation might be to vote in a way which I think will improve things for you.  Maybe my natural duty is to give to charity or work in a soup kitchen. These are activities with low costs that make a difference. I feel obligated beyond that. This is where the qualities of my life create a special duty to teach. Here's the list that I think contribute:

• Born rich
• Born into a family that vales learning and thinking
• Born into a family intent on providing good schooling
• Born into a family that, despite itself, taught me to care about other people
• Going to schools with good teachers who cared about me
• Developing my own tendency to value learning
• Learning to like reading and writing
• Learning to leverage those into good grades and college admission
• Learning to love people and the art they produce
• Learning that people can learn from art
• Learning that learning creates certain kinds of equality

There are undoubtedly more things about me and my life which can be added to the list but hopefully you get the idea. The biggest points are the first four. I did not choose my family. I did not have any influence on how they raised me or on what they decided to teach me to value (we've all heard of Libertarian Dad getting his kids to bully their way to the top of the playground). These are the choices made for me that helped make me the person I am today. These are the choices which shaped my talents and proclivities but were not my choice. I think that's important because I'm trying to get at the difference between me and most people in America. That difference is, basically, random. Or at least it isn't my fault and I didn't make it that way. If we add to that my developed knowledge and proclivity for Language and Literature, we have a clear set of advantages in a certain area. I can be the most successful when dealing with language or literature. We live in a society where language and clear communication are often signals for competency and intelligence. This is not always true but lacking the ability to communicate in the preferred form (White American English) will keep people out of most professions. This is only one reason but I think it is the one most closely related to equality of protection and equality of opportunity.

So, I am obligated to help people without the same advantages I had and the best way I can help people is to teach them about language and literature. I think it is a good area to focus on not just because I'm competent there but also because they will benefit the most from improving their competence in that area. You need clear communication skills to know your rights, to hire a lawyer, to sign contacts, to enter into all sorts of legal agreements without being taken advantage of. You need clear communication skills to earn a respectable paycheck, to continue your own learning, to help others learn, to enjoy art and life in a country where English is the common tongue.

If my competencies (and advantages) were elsewhere then I'd have a different special duty. If I were good at math, maybe I'd be a math teacher. If I were analytically gifted, maybe I'd work academically and add to the gross weight of human knowledge. Who knows? I'm not any of those things.

That special duty also means I take on a larger cost - increased time, money, effort, patience, etc. Teaching requires more of a commitment than voting or weekend charity work. I've certainly borne much cost and haven't yet had the opportunity to be a real teacher. The closest I've come in 2 years is teaching summer school for a month. I've applied to more than a hundred teaching positions. I've interviewed 3 times. I've worked in schools since 2008 as a substitute teacher, a student teacher, and a paraprofessional. I've earned far, far less than I would have as a teacher. I've commuted 4 hours a day for 5 months straight with gas near $4.00/gal. I've taken out loans to go to grad school and earned a Master's Degree. I've spent thousands of dollars on classroom supplies and certification exams and fingerprinting/background check fees.

The question is no longer "How do I help society?" but "How much more do I have to give before I'm allowed to help society?"

I take my moral obligations very seriously. Indeed, I pretty much define myself by my duties and I am very hard on myself for not doing anything to benefit the society I live in. Even though I know that the state of the educational job market is not my fault, I still think I'm useless without a classroom. I can't leverage my advantages. I can't improves anyone's chances. I can't do much of anything right now. So I sit and I read and I learn but what good is that if it only helps myself? How do I satisfy my duty by enriching myself  (mentally, at least)?

I have two choices (maybe more but only two present themselves right now):
1. Continue to strive to uphold my obligations. Keep working in schools even if I have to go back to being a substitute. Keep applying even though I don't have much of a chance at finding a job. This is the part where I give myself over to my duty and live mostly to satisfy it. That's mostly where I see myself now. It's also the path that seems like it's leading me toward being broke, unhappy, and alone. It appears Sisyphean and creates a lot of temporary states of deep depression.

2. Abandon my duty and seek to stabilize my life. Find any job that pays well enough to support me (prospects are dim) and make decisions which are self centered (not necessarily in a bad way).

I don't know if I could live with myself if I went with option 2. I don't value myself enough to seek things only for my own benefit. I don't see the point: I'm impermanent after all. Maybe I try to go back into education at a later, saner, date. That's the only way I can envision going the second route. I know myself well enough to know that abandoning my duty long term would dramatically reduce my psychological quality of life. I would feel guilty forever.

That's where I'm at. Thanks for reading if you got this far.