Posted on 01/30/2007 5:45:59 AM PST by wintertime
(snip)
1. The practitioners know and can do things the public in general cannot do. They have a specialized body of knowledge.
2. The specialized body of knowledge practitioners have takes an extended period of time to learn.
3. The educators who prepare the practitioners are experts who agree upon the specialized body of knowledge practitioners must have.
4. Admission to a professional training program is highly selective.( snip).
6. Only members of the profession set the standards for licensure and certification.
7. The primary responsibility and loyalty of a professional is to serve the client and not simply the institution or governmental agency in which the practitioner may be employed.
8. Neither the public at large nor an employing institution may control the way in which professionals relate to their clients, or the treatments, methods or procedures they use.
9. Neither the public at large nor an employing institution may set the purpose, goals or objectives for the practitioners practice with clients.
10. The public at large does not decide how to evaluate professionals.
11. Only members of the profession can determine malpractice and dismiss or disbar practitioners.
12. Professionals determine the cost of their services.
19. Professionals are trained to serve clients with problems. By definition professionals do not seek to perform services to clients without problems.
21. Professionals share a code of ethics to which they commit and adhere. They cannot be directed to perform or not perform services for clients which conflict with their professional code.
The case that teaching does not meet any of these twenty one criteria can be readily made.
(Excerpt) Read more at ednews.org ...
Teacher ping!
I can think of lots of professions which recognize broadly the importance of professional oversight ... even barbers and hair stylists have to be evaluated by a state examiner's board made up of professionals in the field, though I don't know how rigorous it is from state to state. Medicine and law probably just take longer to learn.
I don't see how this applies to "teachers" as far as elementary and high school education, where the student isn't learning unique skills for a specific profession but basic knowledge and rudimentary social skills.
It goes back to what I've said before, there is a difference between truancy and homeschooling. The two should not be lumped together. One is wrong, the other is right and reasonable people can tell which one is which at a glance.
Well, I have to agree with you on third graders. I teach 8th grade and I get the willies if I go any lower. I taught 6th grade for 2 years and I was pretty glad to go up to 8th when given the choice.
Although, that being said, when I work on my doctorate, I just might go to early, early ed because I have a fascination with the meta-cognition of reading. I'd like to see that association happen with a variety of children from different levels. I have a theory that there are markers of making the symbol-meaning connection that can be found in the scribblings of 18 - 24 month old children. I'd love to use that theory in a dissertation. Can you imagine what it could mean to identify at 2 years those kids that are going to struggle with reading and have an idea of which approach would work best? It's a thought. One day, one day.
Regardless of what you may think expectations are being lowered, and kids from broken homes en-masse are helping this process, along with bloated admin staffs, under-trained teachers, etc. Public education in the US is in a vicious circle from which there is no return. We can go all day with who did what wrong, but the sooner people stop getting divorced and essentially hanging the kids out to dry nothing will change. You don't like each other - tough sh#* if you've got kids, stay together for them at least.
Maybe there ought to be schools for kids from divorced families and other schools for kids from intact families? Feminists probably wouldn't like that, but there again I guess there would have to be two separate "Winter Holiday" programs.
Please put me on the Ping list. I never get tired of these threads. What would really be fascinating is a count of how many times our subject has managed to mention they possess a doctorate degree. It has to be approaching triple digits. It appears not all doctorate degrees require training in social skills or self-awareness.
Oh, I agree, I agree... I just wonder, from a conservative point of view, why are there truancy laws anyway? Why do we set certain areas the government can intrude on parents and tell them what to do, and other areas we tell it to stay out of? Almost everyone is against the government telling you what religious beliefs you can pass along. But nobody has a problem with the government telling parents that their kids have to learn math.
Don't get me wrong, it's just a thought exercise - why and how have we justified what we have, as far as laws go?
"If they were true professionals they would refuse to cooperate, or they would quit!"
Many would probably like to, but they've invested time and money in getting certified in the teacher's colleges so they could be teachers, and now need to make a living. Strongly-held convictions don't put food on the table. But teachers are only a small part of the problem with our schools. They are just part of a system that is doomed (or more likely designed) to turn out poorly-educated students. Poorly educated by classical standards, but well educated in what the system is designed to encourage - conformity, dullness, lack of originality, acceptance of the opinions of "experts" of all sorts. No, don't blame the teachers (although many ARE quite marginal, to be sure, as the system intended, no doubt), they're just trying to make a living in the system.
The implication is that the problem is that somehow we are going to recruit a corps of school teachers that is as intellectually capable as scientists and engineers.
That is not going to happen. What education schools seek to do is to train people to man(so to speak) the public schools as they exist, and generally they take who they can get. Generally speaking the people they can get are women of above average intelligence who who not at all bookish and not at all rebellious. No more than the average lawyer, doctor or soldier are they likely to want to change the institutions they serve.
I'm not answering for SoftballMominVA, but your comment on truancy law with the combination of government intrusion on religious beliefs reminded me of something that happened to me a loooooooooong time ago. Back when I was in the 1st grade, in Catholic school, in 1966.
I hated school, I absolutely HATED it and I was only in 1st grade. One morning after having lined up in the schoolyard and starting up the stairs in the building I had the "brilliant" idea that I wasn't going. Somehow or other I avoided detection and made it back down the stairsbetween all the other kids coming up and out the door I went.
I really wasn't hard to miss, I lived on the same street as the school, but I actually avoided detection for about an hour by hiding on the front "porch" of a neighbor's house.
40 years later and I still remember the "visit" to the principal's office with my parents after that stunt. Sister Mary Gemma sat behind her desk and explained to me that my father would be arrested if I didn't attend school. I actually said to her "My daddy is a policeman, he can't be arrested."
Long story short, I never tried that stunt again, but the point is that truancy laws existed that long ago and did apply to private schools, at least in NYC.
I have been told that you need at least a 120 IQ to learn calculus. I don't think most teachers would pass.
I agree with you about the technical courses. My son finished at Ga. Tech and if you had a 3.0 you were in the top 10% of the class.
If teachers really are so highly educated that makes it even worse! That means unpaid amateurs, often with 'inferior' levels of education, are beating the socks off these so educated professionals on a daily basis.
I'm two classes short of my master's in computer science currently, so there's no awe of graduate school in me.
And if teachers have undergraduate degrees in their subjects, why are there education majors? Your statements don't match what I've encountered in real life. Particularly in math and sciences, the education students I have know are woefully underprepared.
I wonder if the reason girls in general do not like math and science is partly because their generally female teachers, who do not have mathematical aptitude, manage to convince them that girls just aren't good at such things, in order to make themselves feel betteR? On a subconscious level, I mean.
Get out!
I know -- I've done the same. But I'm not going to anymore. I don't want to teach Michael Moore, or Chomsky. I don't want to base my theory on Edward Said... or Jung, for that matter. I want fallacy-free argumentation, and properly constructed essays. I don't want to pass on this $#** about women being good at journalling as opposed to logic. I won't accept shoddy work, and I won't give high marks to something that insults my intelligence by being all music and pictures and no content.
I went to an all girl HS, and most of my math and science teachers were male. This school expected us all to excel, and most of us did. In fact more than 85% of my graduating class received some sort of scholarship to college, including to IVY Leagues.
All that said, I sucked at math and science.
Something I fogot to mention in my comment to JenB.......my daughter excels in math and science.
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