CHASING ACCOUNTABILITY

Teacher evaluation summary adds fuel to the debate over what it takes to improve classroom conditions

Let’s innovate in teacher training

THE JOURNAL’S front-page article on Sept. 17 (“Number of effective teachers keeps dropping“) on the diminution of effective teachers in New Mexico reflects the defensive narrative of the cartel comprised of teachers’ unions, the state Public Education Department, university education departments and the federal Department of Education. Through no fault of the Journal, the article depicts a myopic and self-exculpatory profession. We have heard it all before. Where are the innovative thinkers in education?

In their classrooms, teachers face social, emotional, psychiatric and personal issues with which they are ill-equipped to cope. Other than the simple expedient of returning to tracking of like intellectual capabilities, these issues are not within the purview of educators to handle. Yet the education cartel saddles teachers with these responsibilities rather than expect academic excellence based on their own academic preparation.

It is a fact that teachers who love, live and exude their subject are the best instructors. Their infatuation with their field transmits intuitively from teacher to student. This infatuation with and knowledge of one’s discipline is the sine qua non of a good teacher. The education cartel has lost sight of the compact between teacher and student founded on a mutual love of the subject they study.

The field of education is not an academic discipline in which one grows intellectually. It is a skill, a craft. No one in the APS system teaches education as subject matter. Why then does the pedagogical system direct teachers to major in the process of education rather than in an academic subject?

Rather than continue the same failing practices, the state of New Mexico should consider a 10-year experiment in which prospective teachers complete an academic major in a discipline — not equivalent classes in the education school but courses taught in academic departments — culminating in a bachelor of arts or bachelor of science. They could complement their major with appropriate electives on the craft of teaching.

This experiment would require no new funds, administrators, evaluations or tests and could run parallel to the current curriculum. The results after the first decade would speak for themselves. LOUIS L. OLLIVIER Albuquerque