LA Seeks to Place "Certified" Teacher in Every Classroom

The Alexandria, LA, Daily Town Talk ^ | 12-29-02 | Hill, John

[Theodore R.]

Editor's note: This is the first story in a four-day series on results of a new poll of Louisiana's residents.

BATON ROUGE - Louisiana's state education leadership and the public seem to have the same goal in mind for the next year: put a qualified, certified teacher in every classroom and, to make sure they stay there, pay them well.

[Theodore R.]

Many people do not understand the difference between the term "certified" and "qualified." Beethoven would have been "qualified" in music but not "certified." Madame Curie would have been "qualified" in science but not "certified" by LA standards. "Certified" simply means that a person has sat through a plethora of worthless professional education courses. It has little relationship to knowledge in a subject area. One would think John Hill would understand that concept. I understand he was a great admirer of the former Governor Edwin Washington Edwards, D-LA.

[buffyt]

TRUE! Certified doesn't mean qualified. You do take a lot of worthless classes when you get an education degree. But on the other hand, I had a NETWORKING course at the local college with a teacher who wasn't certified or qualified to teach the course. She had been a network administrator, but she didn't know HOW to teach. She was teaching network design without any hands-on computers. She should have had a room full of computers and had the class set them up on a network then tie them in to the college network. We kept telling her that. She is now using some computers and cables to teach that class. She didn't have a clue how to teach the subject, although she knew the subject inside and out. But one wouldn't need a bunch of useless courses to learn HOW TO TEACH. That college could have designed a simple short course to teach their people how to teach. Many of their teachers would benefit from THAT! They only have one really good teacher at that college!

[BIGZ]

Why bother!

Make the test less demanding and all will be qualified. The lowering of standards is what the schools do for the students why not the teachers.

I only have a degree in business and have no formal education in teaching. I will assure you that I could go into a classroom and teach our kids basic skills better than most of our present teachers. English, Math, Science, History (the true representation of ) ,Geography, and the CONSTITUTION.

[Theodore R.]

Traditional educators (before the 1960s) stressed subject matter in teaching, but the dominant "educrats" today stress methods and technique over all else. The new educrats, the disciples of John Dewey, Abraham Maslow, Freud, Margaret Sanger, Margaret Mead, and other liberals, believe that one can teach anyone anything if he knows the technique. The content is less important to this "educrat" class. An "educrat" will say "why learn multiplication tables" when one can simply look up the products on a chart. Why learn state capitals, when one can consult an encyclopedia and glean the information he needs? The four-letter word that "educrats" -- dominant in all 50 states and especially in the District of Columbia -- hate is "fact."