“Craft” is Skill in doing something or making a thing of quality.
“Vocation” is from the Latin, ‘to call’.
One focuses on the quality results, the other focuses on the person teaching.
“Vocation”, called for a particular task or service, is not far in meaning from the word used for someone who takes on a task, who commits themselves to it, who undertakes to do job.
“Undertakers” can be an accurate description of SOME teachers.
Bwana Ndege - unazungumza kwa Kiswahili? Nilisoma Kiswahili huko Marekani, no sasa tunaishi Nairobi, Kenya... Na wewe?
And I like the line about undertakers. So true. Over 50% of public school teachers were in the bottom 25% of their college classes.
I have to agree with discoshaman. It is a craft in the sense of a skill, discipline, technique. That is one definition of craft.
There are two problems with ineffective teachers. One, many aren’t themselves educated enough (not in ed courses, but subjects such as math, science, and english) to do a good job. Second, beyond teaching one or two children individually, you do need to have an affinity towards group teaching and public speaking. I’ve learned a lot from wonderful people, and I know some of them would be horrible in front of a classroom.
I have also found that people with affinity towards certain subjects, skills or talents tend to work harder at improving them. I have seen this in retail, home cooking, chemical research, and athletics.
Interestingly, there was a Townhall article a few weeks back that described a reading approach similar to the one with the foster child in the article. Students read Shakespeare out loud, stopped and looked up words they didn’t understand. That is how I learned Shakespeare.
We know phonics is effective for teaching the sound for each letter. Then students can read, look up the words, write, repeat. Very simple. Unfortunately this has been turned into some byzantine rube goldberg contraption.
I would apply “undertaker” to all of the government school teachers. Really, I mean it.
Personally...I recently have eliminated all government teachers as friends. The institutions they work for are evil. They are either too evil, too stupid, or too much of an Useful Idiot to be a friend. ( Yes, I mean it!)
Government owned and run, socialist-entitlement, and compulsory schools are such a serious threat to our nation's continuing freedom I fear that one more generation of this godless and socialist entitlement and we will have tyranny. Our nation's socialist K-12 schools are **that** bad.
All government run and owned socialist schools are godless in their worldview in curriculum, classroom instruction,textbooks, and policies. Just to cooperate in the classroom the child must think and reason godlessly. Are there any exceptions to this? Can anyone send me a link to a government owned and run school that is not?
All government schools are tuition-free socialist entitlement. Are there any exceptions to this? Simply by attending children risk learning that a powerful government that can give them tution-free entitlement schools can give them **lot** of socialist goodies. Franklin D. Roosevelt wasn't an accident. He was the result of one to three generations of American voters attending government socialist-entitlement schools.
And...All compulsory government owned and run socialist-entitlement K-12 schools trash every First Amendment Right. ( Free speech, press, assembly, and expression and practice of religion.) All government run and owned socialist schools establish the religious worldview of godlessness. How can that be religiously neutral? Simply by attending children risk learning to be comfortable with government functionaries trashing their God-given rights. Again, if anyone knows of an exception please send a link.