Bad Ideas

Over at Ideas Blog, which I enjoy, Rachel Brown suggests we quit wasting our time with teacher "certification" or even "education degrees" and start letting anyone with a college diploma to teach.

Part of her justification lies in the well known fact that teacher dropout rates are high, and many who get educated in Education don't last in that field very long.

But her solution frightens me. She suggests we institute a "learn as you go" apprenticeship program for teachers, where they hit the ground running. First, is she suggesting teachers forego college, and that we just stick 18-year-olds in the classroom with a smile and a "good luck"??
Second, why do these policy ideas seem perfectly practical when suggested in regard to education and THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY but would seem highly implausible when applied to other trades.
For example, brain surgeons have high mortality rates of their patients. They spend many years, and a lot of money, training to do a job that they might better learn if they just started cutting people's heads open as soon as they graduated high school. Because, you know, we should hit the ground running. I'd certainly feel comfortable letting a teenager open my head.

But then the real problem I see with her argument is that she suggests anyone with a college education can teach. So my concerns over 18-year-old teachers is unfounded, those youths will still have to attend college. What, pray tell, does TAE suggest those individuals major in while they are in their mandatory college term? Perhaps a degree in education.

But then we're right back where we started.

Hilariously, in the comments to that post, a person suggested that the bright women who used to become teachers are now, in today's society, becoming engineers. Forgive my sarcasm, but man or woman, I'm not sure an engineer is someone you'd want in front of 15 hyperactive children, trying to corral and teach them.


_