Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama
My first thought after reading ths was "Why?". Why do they need masters degrees etc? Most are teaching 11 year old kids not grad students. I'm willing to get a lot of flak on this one but I would suggest that the first thing a teacher needs is the ability to teach kids things and the passion to do it, not an advanced degree. Running them all through grad school (and I know they do a bunch of field work) would seem to produce people at the end who can handle more years of school vs. great teachers. And frankly, I think I could determine if somebody had the ability to teach in a 30 minute interview, not by reviewing their grad school transcript.
That's just it. I don't think you can.
Can you get a sense of whether someone would be a decent corporate trainer, dealing with other professionals? Maybe. Can you get a sense of how well they interact with students of whatever age, in all the sorts of classroom situations that arise? No way.
Your solution is cutting off your nose to spite your face. If there are problems with the programs that train teachers, the solution is to fix those problems -- not to let in anyone with a Bachelor's degree and enough charisma to con their way through a short interview.
Sure, there are examples of good teachers without master's degrees, and lousy teachers with. But I think when you set policy its better to play the averages than to play to anecdotes. Training requirements are a selection device. Lower the requirements, and you get an increased proportion of potential deadbeat teachers. Make job candidates demonstrate a commitment to the vocation, and gain classroom experience, and you weed out the folks who aren't serious about the job. You also weed out those who meant well, but realized that the classroom wasn't for them. Better for them to learn that before they take a job.
If you're concerned about too much dead weight in public education, you want job candidates who have options -- folks who are choosing to teach because they want to, not just because it pays marginally better than waiting tables at the local Olive Garden.
Incidentally, this explains why there were fewer requirements "back in the day." Because back in the day, women didn't have many career options, and very few went to grad school. There was no point. So you had teachers with bachelor's degrees.
Of course, there were also more "teachers colleges" back in the day, and those graduates still had more training in teaching than the average person with a 4-year degree today.
