Are the Right People Becoming Teachers? ( Teachers are NOT Professionals)

EdNews.org ^ | January 9,2007 | Martin Haberman

[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 practitioner’s 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.

[jude24]

Grades? We never used them. The children never took a standardized test until applying to graduate school.

Without grades, you have only the student's and his (biased) parent's say-so. An education without grades is bullcrap.

[SoftballMominVA]

You do what you like, but you already know it is bad form to go after the children of others. That is true in every day life and it is true here. It is wrong. We do not attack children or make insinuations about children, especially children of fellow conservatives. Don't go there, you know it is underhanded and ugly.

[perseid 67]

Children are better off when bias is used for them instead of against them.

As much as you hate Abeka curriculum, it is well organized and easy to grade. Fans of todays indoctrination camps do not like Abeka curriculum because children will not be brainwashed to believe all behavior is okay.

All religious curriculum has this flaw/advantage.

You do not approve of parents teaching children their own values. You are trying to put up road blocks.

[RavenATB]

"I don't see teachers marching or organizing to see that incompetents never make it into the teaching trade, or to throw the lazy, incompetent, or evil teachers out."

And that's really the point. I think we've seen all the pictorial evidence we need to conclude that when something is really upsetting to a group of teachers...large or small...they'll get their faces in public and raise hell about it.

They do it for stupid things like Wal-Mart boycotts, and supporting the "rights" of illegal invaders. But I've seen no similar demonstration about teacher quality or to insist that the NEA stop protecting the abusive and incompetent teachers in their ranks.

So, one can logically conclude that if there is, in fact, an actual group of teachers who believe that the NEA is corrupting the educational system, they're so intimidated by the far larger group of truly corrupt teachers that they don't feel they can safely make their beliefs known in public and the media.

Which goes back to the larger complaint about people who complain about public education lumping all P/S teachers together in their rhetoric.

From what we've seen in this discussion one may fairly conclude, I believe, that the percentage of teachers who disapprove of the NEA's tactics, their politics, and their protections of bad teachers is so incredibly small that they feel they're unsafe in making their views public, then perhaps those who say we should scrap the entire system are correct.

Maybe there's not enough "good" left in Public Ed to make it worth saving. Maybe the collateral damage incurred by scrapping the system would be less...and I suspect it would be...than the collateral damage we're currently suffering at the hands of the system.

[JenB]

That depends on the homeschool.... when I was homeschooled, I rarely knew what grade I was in. I did work on multiple different levels. And the only "grades" I got were pass/fail, except math. An assignment was either right - well written, cohesive, correct, whatever - or it was redone. Math was the same way - I recieved an objective score on my test or lesson and then had to go back and make it 100% correct. So when we needed a transcript to get me into college, it was kind of hard! Fortunately I had great SAT scores and I started at community college where they don't care much about transcripts, and then transferred my 3.8 gpa over to a four year school.

[wintertime]

So what you claim to be abuse, is now merely bad form?

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Do you do this to your students? Do you exaggerate a consequence in an effort to emotionally manipulate? I surely hope not.

Children are emotionally and socially too immature to manage a manipulative adult. This is especially true, when the adult has power over their lives and futures, as do teachers. If, as you say, you teach special education, then they are even more vulnerable.

[Ace of Spades]

"You are implying that I am a liar. This is more personal attack."

Really? Well I'll just stop implying then. You come on here making grand pronouncements about your own intelligence and that of your family of savants, offer little in the way of specifics and constantly repeat the same things verbatim, word for word, and you don't think that looks a little suspicious? You're the one with the genious-level IQ, you figure it out.

[SoftballMominVA]

In this post alone, you imply that I may be lying about what I teach, that I manipulate children, and that I exaggerate consequences.

Do you do this in real life? Do you imply that other conservatives are liars and demand proof, but offer none of your own? Do you attack the conservative children of others? Do you walk up to people on the street and tell them that they are feeding their children poison if they send them to a public school? Do you tell conservative children that their parents wasted their lives if they sent them to a public school? Do you take statements and twist them to something obviously unintended and then attack them with it? Do you degrade people's chosen profession and belittle it? Do you do all of this to people on the same side of the political spectrum therefore alienating even those that would normally support you? These are all statements that you have made here - to conservatives. We supporters of FreeRepublic have many commonalities in our beliefs. Obviously we differ in some areas, but one thing we shouldn't do is to eat our own over smaller issues. You attack, then counter-attack, then call people names, imply they are lying, accuse them of using liberal debating techniques - all this to fellow conservatives.

All of this is unneccesary. Debating issues can happen without mudslinging.

[wintertime]

Maybe there's not enough "good" left in Public Ed to make it worth saving. Maybe the collateral damage incurred by scrapping the system would be less...and I suspect it would be...than the collateral damage we're currently suffering at the hands of the system.

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We have seen so-called "good" teachers accuse the conservative or libertarian of being cruel. Gee! Who would take care of the children while both parents work? ALL government schools would be shuttered tomorrow. The so-called "good" teachers claim that children would be wandering the streets. Their parents would abuse them without government teacher oversight,.,,etc.

But...then then the "good" teachers fight viciously against vouchers, charter schools, or tax credits. We see them here on this very board, every day!!! These are the very means by which universal K-12 schools can be gradually and compassionately privatized and power wrested from the evil people who they claim too be helpless to oppose, or too dangerous to oppose.

Sorry,,,but there is a disconnect here.

The "good" teachers claim to be against the NEA and state that the evil people controlling them have so much power that they are helpless in the face of it.

BUT ...( here's the disconnect),,,,

Then these so-called "good" teachers support and organize themselves perfectly well to march on state capitols to oppose the very vouchers, tax credits, and charter schools that would take power from the evil-doers. They have even been known to cooperate with the herding of children on to buses, so that captive CHILDREN can march on the capitol!

Well,,,,if good TEACHERS are too few, and too scared, to fix the government school, how on earth can a citizen fix their so-called "profession"? This sounds like a hopeless condition, that is utterly unreformable!

It is laughable when teachers suggest to the common citizen that they should attempt to reform the unreformable ( what they cannot, themselves, within their own trade) at a measly little old school board meeting.

[wintertime]

So when we needed a transcript to get me into college, it was kind of hard! Fortunately I had great SAT scores and I started at community college where they don't care much about transcripts, and then transferred my 3.8 gpa over to a four year school.

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This was hard? My kids did the same. They never took the SAT or any standardized test until the GRE for graduate school.

I will admit that it was troubling for me as a parent to get the community college to accept the children, but these were the earliest days of homeschooling. Today it would be so much easier.

Today, there are numerous on-line courses, for homeschoolers to take to establish a record, and universities and colleges are falling all over each other attempting to recruit homeschoolers.

If you had a hard time establishing a record, today it shouldn't be any problem at all.

[wintertime]

...it is bad form ...
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Please ignore post #466. It is improperly formatted. It should read:

So what you formerly claimed to be abuse, is now merely bad form?

Do you do this to your students? Do you exaggerate a consequence in an effort to emotionally manipulate? I surely hope not.

Children are emotionally and socially too immature to manage a manipulative adult. This is especially true, when the adult has power over their lives and futures, as do teachers. If, as you say, you teach special education, then they are even more vulnerable.

[RavenATB]

"Do you degrade people's chosen profession and belittle it?"

I may have missed the context of the comment, but I haven't seen many people actually belittle and degrade teaching, as a profession. I think even the most ardent opponent of government schools would say that making the choice to teach children is an honorable and admirable thing.

It's the teachers, as individuals, and largely as a group, who invite negative assessment and comment. They allow their union to speak for them, and the PR has been horrible. The NEA has made the larger group of teachers look to be little more than mindless thugs, bent on maintaining the bureaucracy and their perks with little to no concern for the actual welfare of the kids they're supposed to be dedicated to teaching.

As I've said before, and most people would agree, there are certainly good quality teachers in the P/S system. The problem is that they are so vastly outnumbered and apparently silenced by the greater mass of lousy, incompetent and corrupt teachers that they have virtually no positive effect on the process outside their own classrooms.

[JenB]

One place where having no official, school certified transcript hurt me was when I qualified as a National Merit Semifinalist - my paperwork was apaprently too weird for me to actually get a scholarship.

You are also fortunate that you lived in a state that did not require testing. PA requires it in 3, 5, and 8th grades. Waste of a good Saturday for that.

There was also a law that nobody could recieve a four year diploma without a GED or high school diploma on file. I spent hours my last semester of college figuring out how to appease that one. Finally had to have the school district write a letter that I had "complied with all regulations". Note, that wasn't for taking classes. I had taken all my college classes, earned grades - but wouldn't recieve the diploma until I proved I'd completed high school. How moronic is that?

[SoftballMominVA]

You are correct that not many people belittle teaching, but this one poster certainly does. Unless you need specific links, I'll not waste the bandwidth to post them.

I agree 100% with you that the NEA does nothing to help the reputation of teachers and in fact hurts it. I am not a member of the NEA, and hopefully never will be. My membership in the NEA may be forced upon me if VA turned into an 'at will' state, or if my husband and I move to another state before I retire from teaching. Virginia is a 'right to work' state and I cannot be forced into a union.

All that being said....IMO the public schools are largely a reflection of the community - and of the most liberal part of the community. That would explain why those posters in red counties and districts have fewer complaints about their schools and those in blue counties refuse to allow their kids to attend. My SIL's husband is a Lutheran minister in inner city LA and they live on the outskirts of the city. She never considered sending her kids to the public school system and I was relieved when she said she was going to home-school them. Her oldest now is a rising 9th grader and he will be attending a boarding school in Minnesota.

There is no 'one size fits all' answer. I completely support anyone's decision to home school or to use private or Christian schools or to use public schools. There are very few parents out there that are incapable of making a good choice. So when someone tells me that their public school is good/bad choice, I take them at their word and don't try to change their minds and force them to do what I say when I am not living their lives.

[MissEdie]

Congrats to you for taking a stand for people like your sister. I hope she realizes how lucky she is to have a brother like you!

[MissEdie]

Put your money where your mouth is and go teach a class in a public school. Are you too good to become part of the change you feel is necessary?

[MissEdie]

Wonder how Wintertime feels about the teachers who taught her how to read, write, do math and the other skills she needed to become what she is today?

[JenB]

I don't like wintertime's posting style but you're wrong if you think she's not doing something to stand up for her beliefs. Homeschooling parents are as much a part of the school reform revolution as volunteer teacher parents. Taking your kids out of the rotten system is better than trying to put a bandaid on it.

[perseid 67]

I have both Abeka and Catholic curriculum.

Abeka has never published a negative word about Catholicism. Unless by negative, you mean, they emphasize the Protestantism of the Puritans.

You are trying to start a religious fight.

I suspect that if you read the Catholic school books you would find their moral tone offensive also. I think the emphasis both curriculums place on self control and giving praise to God is the biggest advantage the religious curriculums have over the secular curriculums.

[perseid 67]

Winter was educated by Nuns.

She is not attacking all school teachers.