Thursday, October 14, 2010
Trying to fix education
A friend of mine sent me an article today written by some reporter who believes he has the answer the "fix public education." His entire article was about how America should recruit high school and college students in the top of their class to be teachers the way Finland, Singapore, and South Korea do. He believes that we should stop trying to fix "mediocre teachers" that are in the classrooms now and actively recruit teachers that are academically smarter. (Sigh) It is always perplexing to me why people who are not in education feel the need to fix education. Teaching is the hardest job there is, and every year with every new law, every new initiative, every budget cut, every public criticism, every teacher who does something stupid, and every child that brings a weapon to school, the job only gets harder. I firmly believe that unless you walk in the shoes of a public school educator, then you do not have the right to voice an opinion on how to "fix public education." As a 17 year veteran educator I can offer numerous ideas on what needs to happen to fix public education, but to date, no one has asked me. I find it ironic that reporters, congressmen, business executives, and lawyers all feel that they know what is best when they have never been a teacher. I do not even begin to try to fix the American economy or find a solution to the growing health care problem, or even try to mandate how to stop frivolous lawsuits because I don't know the answer to any of these things. I leave these problems to the experts who spend their days eating, breathing, and living these issues. As far as filling the schools with "teachers that are academically smarter than the present mediocre ones," I find this entire premise to be inaccurate and unfair to the countless professionals that spend their life making a difference to a child and giving that child hope for the future.
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Hey...where's the "like" button on this? Although my 8 years cannot begin to compare to your 17, I feel the same way. I generally say to these people, "let's see how you would do facilitating a presentation every day, evaluating if not just one, but all of your 130 participants completely understood your presentation, attended pretty much the same amount of meetings (if not more than any other job), had constant contact with parents, held interventions for the participants that didn't understand your presentation (often times against their will), all the while your job performance is often evaluated on how well each of these 130 participants in your presentation did on a standardized test."
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