| | A friend and I recently got into a discussion / argument recently over education reform. It all started when I scoffed at the fact that prospective grade school teachers who lacked a degree specifically in "education" needed to take an three extra semesters of education (get a Masters).
My argument was that if person A went to undergraduate school B, a respected, accredited American university and did reasonably well but majored in something than education, then that person should be not have to borrow more money just to attend another year and a half to two years of school to get the necessary qualifications to teach. The current requirements are in many ways, too burdensome. Not to rely on anecdotes, but, I have multiple friends who excelled in undergrad, got honors, wrote theses, etc. who wanted to become teachers but cannot (at least not immediately) because of the hoops and hurdles involved in entering the system. At least one will not become a teacher any time in the near future because of them. To be sure, I'm not in favor of a simple standardized test that tests nothing but your ability to take that test. But, I think that an alternative combination of a test and a shorter more affordable certificate program possibly coupled with an evaluation period or apprenticeship may be sufficient. (Teach For America aside) | | | I saw two major threads/points in the OP, 1) Reforming the elementary/secondary education system so that more kids are getting a quality education, 2) Reforming the post-secondary education system so that it is more efficient, in the sense that the money spent is going towards learning the skills necessary to get a monetary return on your investment. Obviously, these threads are intertwined, for example, if students come out of high school unable to do basic mathematics, they are going to be at a disadvantage when they try to get into an engineering program. I'll respond to the first section.
Teaching involves more than knowledge of the material. Classroom management, understanding of the child's psyche, diplomacy, the drive to help children (sometimes in the face of enormous resistance from the community/parents), and the ability to develop an engaging curriculum are, in my mind, much more important than a thorough understanding of the material, except for the most advanced classes in the later years of school or technical/trade classes. These are skills you cannot learn by just getting a history, English, math, or science bachelor's degree. When it comes to elementary/junior high education, I would much rather have a teacher with excellent classroom management skills who graduated middle of the class at a state school than a teacher with average management skills who received a 4.0 from Harvard. | |
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> | | | | This is a gross misrepresentation of my point. I'm not suggesting that excellent academic credentials should override every requirement. Besides, I think "classroom management" classes can only teach so much. Perhaps, I should use an analogy: Surely its important to read books about chemistry in order to be a decent chemist. But, you can't learn chemistry unless you enter the lab and do some hands on work. You could read book after book knowing the chemical structures of fancy compounds but until you practice in the lab, you won't be any good. And, for those who are particularly bright, they won't need as much time to read books before entering the labs. This is the crux of my argument: there may be bright people who want to be teachers who should not have to spend as much time on the "book" side of training and actually need to enter the classroom, in some capacity. | |
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> | Your analogy drastically oversimplifies my point. I never said that the person without an education degree would necessarily be bad at managing students or that an education degree ensured success in this regard, and I know there are probably plenty of those bright people out there that could be great teachers without an education masters. In my experience, however, nothing I was taught in any of my classes in high school/college would have prepared me to teach children, and a lot of bright people, brightness being measured in the traditional way (grades and test scores) could never explain those concepts to a child, deal with the 4 or 5 "problem kids" in the class, or handle bureaucracy, parents, and the special interest groups (which I know is inherent in most jobs, but is greatly amplified in the American public school system).
Education degrees are the currently accepted way of identifying people who are committed to teaching kids. These schools try to teach skills to improve teachers' understanding of pedagogy. They may not always be effective, and I agree that a properly designed apprenticeship program would be more effective. In your OP, however, you seemed to imply that your friends were concerned that they could not immediately get teaching jobs with their BA's. Under any system- education degree or apprenticeship program, we should not let them become teachers until some years after college because even one year under a poor teacher can really set children back relative to their peers, you can see this in schools with multiple sections of certain classes who then go on to take standardized tests in those courses.
Under an apprentice system, they would probably have to work longer hours than most teachers (classroom time plus education courses to explain and supplement what they are seeing in the field), and would be paid less than the average first-year teacher (I am thinking something like med school). Would these students, who don't want to spend 2 years getting a masters, do a 3-4 year apprenticeship without a guarantee of a job afterwards? I would fully support such a system if education is ready to evolve in this direction.
The other problem with the apprenticeship program is politics, getting the parents, administrators, politicians, teachers, on board. If this could be done, I see no reason why education masters degrees could not subsumed into apprenticeship programs (rather than the other way around). Figuring out how to get these groups to work together, however, is another matter. | | | I am not familiar with UG/Graduate education programs but they should be teaching child/teen psychology, communications/public speaking (including non-verbal communication which young children respond to much more), political science (to understand how decisions about budgeting get made), sociology, history of education, etc. etc. Failing that, we would need a lengthy apprenticeship program, which would place more of the burden on schools and may not produce effective results in all cases. Would people want to spend two or three years figuring out if they had the skills to control a classroom of 30-40 children?
I had a math teacher in high school who was probably the most brilliant person on the faculty. He worked for years in the private sector and held a number of patents. He'd quit his job after he made enough money and took a teaching position so he could have summers off and travel around the country on his bike. He did crazy stuff like try and get on game shows, and was generally (I thought) an interesting person. The first class I had with him was Trig, and the class was a madhouse. The problem was that his classroom management was awful. He let the students walk all over him. Years in the private sector made him accustomed to a certain level of professionalism that just didn't exist at a large public high school. Additionally, he confided that he was frustrated at the constant politicking involved in every aspect of the school life (we had a school system that approved budgets based on an anachronistic city-wide popular vote). I took Stats with him the next year, and class was marginally better, however, his teaching style seemed better suited for a college level course for students majoring in the material than an intro course for HS students. |
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