Academia Nuts

According to a Time.com article, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan claims that students’ bad marks can be traced back to not only the teacher, but the school where that teacher was taught how to teach. In a recent speech given at a university, Duncan recommended the Louisiana model of using a student’s academic success to determine the efficiency of his or her teacher, and that teacher’s own alma mater. In Duncan’s opinion, many if not most teachers’ colleges do an average-at-best job of preparing newcomers to the profession’s 21st century challenges. Duncan suggests that veteran teachers could monitor the work of new teachers much like resident physicians are supervised by senior staff early on in their medical careers.

Public school teachers are overworked, underpaid, and have to compete with iPods, cell phones, and the attention span of a generation that cannot commit a sentence to short-term memory if it’s longer than 140 characters. There is no doubt in my mind that today’s teachers face very different challenges than their predecessors, but I’m not convinced their capability should be brought into question, especially in such an off-hand manner.

I think a shortage of financial resources is a bigger concern for most schools than their teachers’ course credits. How are you supposed to build sharp minds with dull tools?

Tagged as: education, politics