Believing that teachers are the scapegoats for what is wrong with education
Public education is gets a lot of negative publicity. Teachers might feel like the finger is pointing at them. If teachers are not what is wrong with eduction, what is the problem?
Teachers are only part of the issue. Part of the blame must also be placed on the organization of public education, the fact that it is bureacratic, and the education that teachers receive. I can discuss briefly each of these and recommend some very good books.
To the extent that teachers are to blame it is due to their lack of education themselves. They go through education departments where the emphasis is on the method of teaching and not the content of teaching. Consequently, many teachers end up teaching courses that they are not really experts in themselves. In their defense, the system does not encourage them to become experts in content. They can if they choose but they are not required to do so. So, many a high school teach knows little more about history than what is in the textbook. The same holds true for other subjects. My sister was a middle school teacher for years and I always marvelled at the fact that whenever she got together with other teachers the conversation never, I repeat never, included anything about content. They would talk about discipline problems, other teachers, the principal, but never their subject matter!
Academics have known and written about this phenomenon for years. In Thomas Sowell’s book Inside American Education, he points out that education schools are often regarded as the “academic slums” of the university. They are the easiest to get into and graduate from. The professors who teach also went through education schools so we have not well educated professors teaching not well educated students who will go on to teach our kids.
What about good teachers? There are many (I would count my sister among them). But, what chance do they have in a system which punishes teachers for holding to standards? There is so much pressure to maintain good graduation rates that students are routinely passed on without really knowing their subject matter. But, from the perspective of a teacher this is the only alternative. They have no way of getting poor students or discipline problems out of the classroom, they will not be supported by the administration if they try, so what else can they do?
I had a friend who because a substitue teacher. He lasted one day! Why? Because the students were so out of control there was nothing he could do. Send them all to the office? They come right back the next day. What effect does this have on the average, not to say great, teacher? They are suffering from burn out.
I think a large part of the problem is not very bright administrators who also happen to be spineless. You want to improve education, formulate some standards, demand that they be met, impose consequences when they are not. Students have a right to enter the school by law but they don’t have a right to disrupt other students who want to learn. You’ve got to get them out of the classroom. What you do with them can be discussed and debated all day long. But first you have to allow the learning process to occur for those who want to learn and those who want to teach. That is not happening now.
You also need to fundamentally change how teachers are trained. This is occuring in modest ways now. Focus on content and subect mastery. Teachers should be experts in their subject. They need to have passion for their subject. If they do, their students will.
Our education system seems so focused on how students feel as opposed to what students know. Everything seems to be about self esteem. We can’ give them bad grades it will ruin their self esteem, we can’t correct their grammar and spelling it will ruin their self esteem. So, American students graduate feeling good about themselves and not knowing much. Meanwhile other countries are focusing on content and knowledge. They are getting results and students are mastering content. As a result of that mastery their self esteem takes care of itself. They don’t have to phony up self esteem as we seem to need to.
There’s much more that could be said but I’ll let my book recommendations do that as they will provide much more detail with much more eloquence.
read here.
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