Scholastic Snake Oil: When They Fall Back On Teaching: The ...

When They Fall Back On Teaching: The Achievement Gap

I am reading Louis E. Lomax's The Negro Revolt. ?The book was published half a century ago, so some of the data--and, as a result, some of his conclusions--are out-of-date. ?However, he provides an excellent capsule history of the events that preceded the Civil Rights movement, which was unfolding as he wrote the book.

He notes, among other things, that there was a black middle class--albeit a very small one--even in the time of slavery. ?He also explained how Booker T. Washington helped, perhaps inadvertently, to create the "achievement gap" between African- and Caucasian-Americans that persists to this day--and, in many areas has grown worse.

When he was sixteen, he arrived at the Hampton Institute, an African-American college founded by the American Missionary Society. ?Its philosophy came from its founding President, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who wanted black students to be given "moral as well as mental strength". ?He wanted his students to become "first rate mechanical laborers" but, at the same time, believed that the purpose of education was to make them "first class men and women". ?

It seemed that the school was made to order for Booker T. Washington. ?He was not only an excellent student; he also became a fervent adherent to Armstrong's ideas. ?They would become the basis of the "normal" school he would start: ?the Tuskegee Institute. ?

One of the reasons, I believe, Washington has been presented in such a favorable light (and why white philanthropists supported the Tuskegee Institute) is that he essentially taught African-Americans to know their "place". ?He was ostensibly training his students for the sort of work that the Caucasian-dominated economy demanded. ?However, as Lomax wryly notes, Washington "had no concept whatsoever of labor in the proper sense". ?The result, Lomax notes, is that Tuskegee students were not trained for work in the nation's industries.

But there was a problem that would prove even bigger. ?The students who finished Tuskegee and other "industrial" and "normal" schools had no intention of working in factories. ?Instead, they returned to the rural South, from whence they came, to teach school. ?They were even less equipped for that work than they were to work in a plant.

If you haven't seen the results, you probably could guess what Washington wrought: ?One generation of poorly-educated people teaching another, and another. ?

I mention this story because I recently saw some discussion about a recurrent topic: ?the low standards of schools of education. ?

Now, I have know teachers who are very smart and hard-working people who could succeed in other careers. ?However, as we all know, there are others who "fell back" on teaching, or went into it because they wanted to be home for their kids every afternoon and to have summers off. ?And I know of others who, perhaps were bullied or abused as kids and want the opportunity to control other people.

Personality issues aside, there are those who become teachers because they didn't want to get their hands dirty but didn't do particularly well in school--except, perhaps, in their education courses. ?

The situation I've described is often contrasted with what pertains in countries like Finland and Korea, which have standards for teachers that are as high as those for other professions--or, in some cases, even higher. ?In most European countries, prospective secondary-school teachers are expected to be proficient in the academic subject they plan to teach. ?Secondary ?school teachers-in-training train under the aegis of an academic discipline, and the pedagogical instructors work in that department, not a school of education. ?Elementary school teachers usually train in a state-funded institute designed to train them rather than in a cobbled-together curriculum in a university.

Even more to the point, though, teachers need to understand (at least to some degree) the world for which they are educating their students. ?I have said that no one under the age of forty should teach; ?I think prospective teachers should also demonstrate some sort of progression in another career or vocation before becoming teachers. ?That, I think, would eliminate one problem Washington, perhaps unintentionally created: ?Poorly-educated students who, like him, have little or no idea about the work that's done in the world and are not equipped to do it.

What I've suggested will, over time, improve the education all students get. ?That, I think, is the only way to close the "achievement gap" between the races.

Source: http://scholasticsnakeoil.blogspot.com/2013/03/when-they-fall-back-on-teaching.html

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