Contrary to popular notions, teacher licensing in public schools does not insure teacher quality. A license also does not even insure that a public-school teacher knows much about the subject she teaches. In fact, in our upside-down public-school system, licensing often leads to ill-trained and mediocre teachers instructing our children. As we will see, it turns out that teacher licensing is a protection racket.
The notion that only state-approved, licensed teachers can guarantee children a good education is proven wrong by history and common sense. In ancient Athens, the birthplace of logic, science, philosophy, and Western civilization, city authorities did not require teachers to be licensed. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle did not have to get a teaching license from Athenian bureaucrats to open up their Academies. A teacher’s success came only from his competence, reputation, and popularity. Students and their parents paid a teacher only if they thought he was worth the money. Competition and an education free market produced great teachers in ancient Greece.
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Teacher Inservice Workshops And Professional Development Courses Are What University Teacher Trainin
Today’s teachers are prepared for yesterday’s students. The truth is that college and university teacher training has been stuck in the 1950’s for the past 50 years. Content and testing have remained the central focus of teacher preparation, while students’ behavioral and emotional problems became the central focus of the classroom. In essence, most teacher training programs prepare teachers to work with a student who no longer exists. Contemporary teacher training gives today’s teachers yesterday’s tools, leaving even the most talented educator sometimes feeling ill-prepared to cope with students of the 2000s who have moved far beyond a time of bobby sox and poodle skirts to cyber sex and nipple rings.
While it is unlikely that teacher college and university training programs will change dramatically any time soon, there is no harm in speculating about what the curriculum should look like now. Subjects that are currently covered only in teacher inservice workshops, professional development seminars and education conferences, should be routinely included as a major focus of professional training for educators. When this type of practical training is left to be an optional add-on that must be sought out, located, and often paid for with a teacher’s own personal funds, it becomes far less likely that most teachers will ever update their skills. I know this is true because many participants of my popular Problem Student Problem-Solver Workshops tell me that they have to pay for their own training, beg for days off so they can attend, and sometimes even use vacation time or forfeit their pay when their school can’t or won’t fund the costs.
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