The author of a scathing new book on how the nation trains teachers argues that education schools are contributing to the “dumbing down” of the country.
Rather than preparing prospective teachers to help their students master knowledge, education schools have transformed themselves into agents of social change, writes Rita Kramer, the author of the forthcoming Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America’s Teachers. Their goal is to make students “feel good about themselves,” Ms. Kramer says.
The 228-page book, which will be published next month by the Free Press, maintains that the quality of education schools is often poor. Many, it says, are “teacher-producing factories” that graduate prospective teachers who perform “but not well enough.” On the basis of excerpts shown to them by The Chronicle, some educators say the author has an unrealistic view of the problems that schools face.
Ms. Kramer, a New York writer, draws on observations she made at 14 schools of education, where she says she found hundreds of examples of how education schools have become -- ill-advisedly, in her view -- geared to helping teachers convince youngsters of their self-worth. Some instances Ms. Kramer cites:
At the University of California at Los Angeles, a course on teaching poetry instructed future teachers to abandon the study of the works of the great poets and encourage children to write their own poetry, without concern for errors in spelling or grammar.
At the University of Houston, students were required to talk with store owners near open-air drug markets and ride with police officers. The aim was to learn about the problems of inner-city youth.
At Eastern Michigan University, a health-education course includes a section instructing future teachers in how to deal with issues concerning reproduction, safe sex, and AIDS in the classroom. Ms. Kramer questions the goals of such programs and says the issues should be the concern of families and social agencies, not the schools.
In an interview, Ms. Kramer said she hoped her new book would add more fuel to the debate over how future teachers should be trained. “I’d like to open people’s eyes to what the assumptions and commitments are of the teacher-training schools today,” she said.
For students to excel academically, families and community programs, not teachers, should handle many of the problems faced by students, such as drug abuse, family disputes, and emotional difficulties, Ms. Kramer added.
“This redefinition of the school as a social agency with a therapeutic function is in the long run not in the best interest of the students they’re there to serve,” she said.
To improve the quality of teacher training -- and thus the quality of the nation’s schools -- Ms. Kramer advocates in her book the creation of a national core curriculum, increasing teachers’ salaries, and removing responsibilities as counselors and social workers from the teacher’s domain.
“It is a matter -- and nothing less will do it -- of raising standards all along the spectrum of schooling from first grade to graduate study,” Ms. Kramer says. “It means redefining the purpose of schooling again, from primarily agencies of political change and social work to primarily transmitters of the culture and of the kinds of knowledge and skills required to extend it.”
Ms. Kramer based her conclusions on observations of classes and conversations with students and professors during the 1989-90 academic year. Besides the three schools mentioned above, the institutions she visited are Austin Peay State, California State at Long Beach and Northridge, Michigan State, Seattle Pacific, and Texas Southern Universities; the Universities of Texas at Austin and Washington; and the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Ms. Kramer also visited Peabody College at Vanderbilt University and Teachers College at Columbia University.
Ms. Kramer’s research was supported by the Committee for the Free World, a New York-based group created in 1980 to fight what it called the anti-American sentiment in the United States and abroad. The group, which was organized by Midge Decter, a conservative writer, dissolved last year.
Ms. Kramer’s book is one of several recent critical examinations of the nation’s schools of teacher education. While most of those books were written by educators, Ms. Kramer, the author of several books on issues affecting children, has no classroom-teaching experience. Her background -- in particular the fact that she is not part of the education establishment -- is exactly what makes her work useful, some observers say.
“She is a straight-shooting, hard-hitting writer who tells the truth,” says Chester E. Finn, Jr., professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University. “She’s the quintessential smart, tough-minded amateur. And that’s exactly what teacher education needs to have look at it, rather than teacher experts.”
Teacher educators say that many of Ms. Kramer’s criticisms are not new, but they argue that her point of view is unrealistic and ignores the fact that teachers must understand their students’ problems before they can teach.
“It’s misguided,” says David G. Imig, executive director of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. “Teachers have the responsibility to teach their students about the wider world and to interact with that world to protect those kids.”
Some educators on the campuses discussed in the book say that their schools have changed over the past decade -- but not to the extent that Ms. Kramer charges.
Says Jerry H. Robbins, dean of the College of Education at Eastern Michigan University: “If the students don’t have adequate concepts of self-esteem, they won’t be learners.”
Teacher-education programs must prepare teachers to work in a variety of settings, Mr. Robbins says. Eastern Michigan requires courses that cover social and personal issues such as sex education and AIDS because many school districts in which its graduates will work want training in those areas.
Like those at Eastern Michigan, the programs at UCLA received both criticism and accolades from Ms. Kramer. Although UCLA officials said many of Ms. Kramer’s observations and conclusions about the university’s program were accurate, they said they were surprised by her assertions about the class on teaching poetry. The course was not offered by the school of education, and the remarks probably reflected the approach of a guest speaker or an adjunct professor, they say.
“It was very puzzling to me,” says Stuart Biegel, assistant director of the UCLA Teacher Education Laboratory. “It does not at all reflect UCLA’s teaching philosophy.”
Among other criticisms, Ms. Kramer charges that the academic achievement of prospective teachers is low. In the book, she frequently points out inarticulate student statements that she heard. For example, one student at the Plattsburgh campus of the State University of New York, in responding to an article about an innovative school in Germany, said, “I’m just like, you know, it wouldn’t work here.” Another student followed, saying, “I don’t think it would work that good.”
Many teacher educators, however, say that the quality of students entering their programs has increased in the past few years, noting that their students’ SAT scores and grade-point-averages are up.
Although Ms. Kramer praises the idea behind some alternative teacher-education programs, she says they are not a panacea for the ills of teacher training. While such programs allow students to avoid the “unnecessary baggage imposed by the ed-school curriculum,” the students completing the programs are only as good as the education they themselves have had, she says.
“Which brings us back full circle to the cumulative inadequacies of an educational system whose erosion of standards has left the average college degree meaning very little and the average college graduate not particularly rich in substantive learning,” she says.