From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 13

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system, prep school teachers and working conditions for teachers at the U.S. power elite’s prep schools:

“…A high proportion of boarding school teachers are prep school graduates…Boarding school teachers have very little job security, certainly no union to represent them, and in almost all cases no tenure. At most schools their relationship with the head borders on the feudal, and they have little recourse if they fail to receive promotions or are dismissed, even without a stated cause…

“What prep school teachers like least about their job is paperwork, committee work, and busy work—including `administrivia’…Teacher evaluation was conducted by rumor, gossip, how much damage there was in the dormitories they supervised, and general impressions along the grapevine. Basically you either `fit in’ (a favorite administrative phrase) or you did not…

“…Since the 1960s, in particular, the profile of the boarding school teacher has changed considerably. Teacher prospects are more likely to be married, have children, have some public school background, and consider themselves professionals who expect some privacy and time for a personal life…Wealthy bachelors and spinsters are in short supply and the schools have had to adjust to the new boarding school teacher…

“Salaries are still low by public school standards…At many schools, the casual armchair evaluations so favored by generations of heads have been replaced by more systematic methods of evaluation…

“…Schools are particularly leery of college and university teachers when they try to `trickle down’ from higher to secondary education, feeling that the lonely, self-interested scholar usually lacks the flexibility required to cope with boarding school life or adolescent antics…In searching for teachers, heads will rely on informal networks as well as formal channels. Personal references and recommendations from other boarding school heads or teachers are taken seriously…Applicants…will have to meet and impress a small regiment, including in most cases the department head, dean of faculty, and the head…

“If the shape of boarding school faculties were drawn in terms of the age differences of the teachers, it would resemble an hour glass. At the bottom are the young `short-timers’ who come to work at the schools generally right out of college, spend a year or two, then move on to other occupations or go back to graduate school. Those that do remain join forces with the older faculty already in place, causing the upper bowl of the hour glass to swell out. The senior faculty are the role models…for the other teachers…

“Few schools have adequate pension funds…Some older faculty…have no marketable skills with which to start a new profession…”