James Fox

Recently I've been reading that our educational system is desperately short of credentialed teachers, and the number of students would double by the year 2006.
Naturally, being me, I wondered why we were having such problems finding qualified teachers to fill, what seemed to me, such rewarding jobs...at least that's the way I remember my teachers describing it. Out of curiosity I sent for a copy of a teachers college's program for multiple subject credentialing (Elementary Education). I was thunderstruck!

The curriculum read:
Edu 302 -- Human Growth & Development
Psy 320 -- Lifespan Development
Edu 300 -- American Public Schools
Edu 505 -- Elementary Math & Science
Edu 518 -- Classroom Management
Edu 512 -- Language Arts & Social Studies
Edu 516 -- Elementary Reading & Phonics
Edu 580 -- Student Teaching/Seminar
Bio 103 -- Health & Hygiene
Edu 540 -- Computers for Teachers
Edu 541 -- Exceptional Child
CPR

One look and the problem became obvious to almost anyone. Most of the studies were unnecessary, others weren't applicable to elementary school, and some should be replaced with academics. I had great teachers and they were so dedicated and so busy teaching the students, they had no time for gobble-de-gook like Hunan Growth & Development or Lifespan Development. Edu 541 is a desirable qualification to have attached to your credential but it isn't a requisite. If a teacher is so certified they are in a higher pay scale and they work almost exclusively with exceptional children.

To summarize, it appears that all those prerequisites and courses add up to qualifying a person to teach reading, simple math, and the English language. Discipline can be taught by peers on the job.

I dug out some of my really, really old report cards from grade school. In those days our grade school was today's elementary school and today's junior high combined. we had K through 8. The teachers had taught our parents and in some cases our grandparents.

Kindergarten was much the same; however 1st grade we started to work on the alphabet and counting, and by the end of the year we were responding to flash cards with letter and numbers and 3letter words.

By 4th grade we were into multiplication and division of whole numbers -- didn't get into fractions and decimals until the 5th grade. Miss Hollingsworth, my 4th grade teacher, gave me the following grades:

The curriculum read:
Reading -- B
Spelling -- A
Language -- B
Penmanship -- C
Geography -- A
History -- B
Arithmetic -- B
Physical Ed -- B

In the 7th grade general science we experienced just enough lab work in chemistry, physics, and astronomy to help our class selection in high school. We had our first encounter with basic algebra and Euclid's plain geometry.

8th grade gave us one full year of Civics and government, our 2nd year of general science and one full year of plain and solid geometry and an introduction into trigonometry.

I was personally tutored when I had trouble learning, I was whipped with a willow switch in the first grade, paddled with a paddle in the sixth when I was bad.

My teachers were dedicated, slave driving taskmasters, who loved me so much they took personal responsibility for my education. They knew their subjects and had no agenda except teaching, and that should be credential enough for any school.