AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT
New York’s Bard College is initiating a Masters of Arts in Teaching program in which students will take as many courses covering the actual subjects as they do in pedagogy.
“The education schools in the United States have had an unfortunate stranglehold on teacher training,” [Bard President Botstein] said, “and they have created a pseudoscience in pedagogy and wasted the time of future teachers by not deepening the knowledge that future teachers need.”
UPDATE 12-14 8:22 a.m. The following letter appears in today’s Wilmington News-Journal. It seemed appropriate to post it here:
Certification doesn’t guarantee quality
I disagree that a teacher who is state certified automatically possesses more teaching skills than one who is not. It is untrue.
I am state certified and teach in a Catholic school. I have worked with public and private school teachers, certified and uncertified, and have found that certification tells little about the skill of a particular teacher. Many uncertified teachers I have worked with have been excellent.
Having an undergraduate or postgraduate degree in a particular subject is extremely valuable, especially at the intermediate and secondary levels. Teachers, like students, deserve to be judged individually.
State certification may not necessarily make a teacher more qualified than one who has a strong background in a field such as science or history. Students can benefit greatly from this. Teachers’ skills should be judged by administrators, students and parents, not by the state.
Kevin McDonald, Wilmington
One Response to “AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT”
 Comment by Gary Petersen December 14th, 2003 at 9:15 am |
Heh! You may want to post a link to a definition to the word pedagogy for clueless people like me. Here’s the one I found: 1. The art or profession of teaching. Gary |