Prior to the introduction of teacher tenure, teachers were often fired for non-work related reasons. Demand for special protections for teachers …show more content…
According to Carl E. Van Horn and Herbert A. Schaffner, “ Before tenure, teachers could be dismissed when a new political party took power or a principal wanted to make room to hire his friends. Women were dismissed for getting married, becoming pregnant, wearing pants, or being out too late in the evenings” (1). Without teacher tenure, principals and administrators were basically free to fire and hire whoever they wanted. There were not a lot of laws or regulations surrounding job discrimination, so teacher tenure was the first step in implementing job discrimination laws for all occupations, not just …show more content…
But on the other hand, I still insist that laws against job discrimination execute the same goal without instilling uninspired teaching habits and without wasting time and money. Now, not only is tenure still in practice among educators, but there are state and federal laws that protect against job discrimination that include what grounds an administrator or principal can fire an employee for. Scott McLeod states that “[f]or this reason, few other professions offer tenure because employees are adequately protected with existing laws” (25). Tenure used to be highly effective in protecting teachers because it was the only form of any sort of law against job discrimination, but now with existing laws, tenure is not needed. Tenure now only makes it more costly and time consuming to fire teachers and encourages mediocre teaching style among