Having attended both public and private primary and secondary schools in Evansville, I feel qualified to say that there is a distinct difference between the two education options.
These differences manifest themselves primarily in the student body… to the detriment of the majority of this community’s young people, most who are educated in the public schooling system.
The education system as I see it is full of students who care more about their next technology fix than their homework and teachers who are paid too little to care about these youths’ well-being.
This being the situation, Indiana’s call for reform to teacher education does not come as a surprise to me.
Revisions for Educator Preparation and Accountability (REPA) aim to balance teaching ability with subject knowledge in educators-in-training.
The revisions in effect eliminate teacher education as an academic major in favor of increased knowledge in a particular subject area.
USI responded this month by announcing the repositioning of all departments in the Bower-Surheinrich College of Education and Human Services, disbanding the college as a whole.
It seems that legislators and university officials are shifting the scales from one unfavorable situation to another.
I can’t decide if I prefer a teacher who can’t teach or one who has little knowledge of what he or she is trying to teach.
In my lifetime, I’ve had both.
What can this country, the state of Indiana or USI do to change this?
Sealing the cracks in the rapidly crumbling foundation of the public education system won’t happen overnight. The question is whether or not the repairs can outpace the rate of deterioration.
I also wouldn’t advise puttying the cracks with mashed potatoes in the place of industrial cement.
USI students reacted in opposition of REPA’s proposed revisions in February of 2010 before the university made any serious decisions on the matter.
Kendra Veale, an elementary education major, told a Shield reporter “nobody had anything good to say about it… Any average Joe can teach now.”
Not everyone has the intrinsic ability to effectively communicate ideas to others, and USI is eliminating the program that teaches students how to do so.
While subject-focused study may be effective for the education of prospective teachers of secondary and higher education, I fail to see how an English major with a teaching certificate would be successful in teaching fourth graders about the Civil War.
Imagine a business major trying to teach a child about photosynthesis or a math major trying to define a participial phrase.
Dedicating an entire college to education and human services, I would argue, has set USI apart from other schools and plays a role in attracting prospective students.
Apart from that, I can almost guarantee education majors at USI would agree that the education program is part of USI’s campus culture.
What happens when all this changes?
The impact on students, faculty and the university as a whole will hardly be “invisible,” and the changes have not been properly explained or justified by university officials.
My conclusion, based solely on intuition, common sense and 17 years of experience in various education systems, is that there will be change, but the effects can hardly be interpreted without a proper understanding of the initial problem.
Teaching the next generation is a beast that our society has yet to effectively tame.
My advice?
To parents: Tell your kid to turn off the X-Box and play Scrabble with you.
To educators: Know that what you are doing is important, even if your bank account doesn’t reflect it.
To legislators: Stop cutting education funding, would you? The teachers are starving!
