Blaming teachers, again

In a nutshell: I find it hard to believe that teacher education is the problem in public education today.

UPDATE: Feb. 2, 2013

Two months after I posted this entry, Kevin Kumashiro published Bad Teacher!, taking aim at the current debate on educational reform and paying particular attention to the ways that scapegoating public school teachers, teacher unions, and teacher educators masks systemic problems. According to the publisher’s book description on Amazon, Kumashiro

convincingly demonstrates how current trends, like market-based reforms and fast-track teacher certification programs are creating overwhelming obstacles to achieving an equitable education for all children. Bad Teacher! highlights the common ways that both the public and influential leaders think about the problems and solutions for public education, and suggests ways to help us see the bigger picture and reframe the debate. Compelling, accessible, and grounded in current initiatives and debates, this book is important reading for a diverse audience of policymakers, school leaders, parents, and everyone who cares about education.

The book made The Christian Science Monitor‘s 2012 list of must-read book about K–12 education in the US, saying “Bad Teacher! contextualizes recent controversies involving teachers and their unions and argues that teachers are not the root cause of the problems in America’s education system.” There’s a review on Education Update Online and a 1-hour conversation with Kumashiro on YouTube:

ORIGINAL 2012 POST:

An article on school reform in phillyBurbs.com today repeats some oft-heard criticism of teachers, their unions, and other professional educators for the failure of public schools.

“A major contributor to public education’s problems is the hiring of teacher college graduates. Those who enter America’s teacher colleges are exposed to a curriculum that is light in academic substance, one that is held in contempt by professors and students of serious study.”

I tend to doubt that this is really the problem. On the other hand, I would like to know more about the potential connection between teacher education and student performance in public schools. I have personally taught students in college classes who were among my lowest performers and, lo and behold, planned to become public school teachers. On the other hand, one of my best students approached me last summer for a letter of reference as he was beginning his student teaching experience as a New York City public school social studies teacher. So it clearly goes both ways.

A part of the article that I found more compelling connects, in a way, with my interest in learning objectives and critical thinking:

“The public school system’s obsession with the rejection of memorization makes the retention of knowledge impossible. No one has ever been able to replace memorization and retention of information as the basic method of learning. Despite the education establishment’s rejection of traditional education, no one has been able to replace the mental need to make connections based on acquired information.”

A basic tenet of cognitive psychology is that learning begins with knowledge of facts and then proceeds to higher-order types of cognition such as understanding concepts, implementing procedures, and engaging in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. What concerns me about the attitude expressed above, however, is that it seems to suggest a call for memorization of facts as the basis of public education, with little awareness of the rest of Bloom’s taxonomy or the need to include other types of cognition and learning in the educational mix–too much emphasis on the “acquired information” part and not enough on the “make connections” part.