So I am perusing through my Google Reader, and I come across this blog post from Tal Pinchevsky titled, “How The Ivy League Might Reshape Education”. He makes some interesting points about the newest numbers available on how Ivy League schools are seeing rising enrollments in programs like Teach For America (TFA) and the advent of groups like Knowledge is Power. The post is a decent read though nothing that should be labeled as a “Big Think” simply because it doesn’t address any of the issues that may be arising from this new trend. So I figured I would discuss a couple of them by posing some questions.
Why are we patting these people on the back for performing a civic duty that the “best and brightest” should have been performing throughout the course of history? Are they not giving back to the system that has made them so successful?
If the goal of education is, in part, to prepare students to be active citizens and be empathic towards others then shouldn’t they have be clamoring at the opportunity to work as educators and improve the lives of America’s youth?
Here’s the one that interests me the most: if one of the biggest roadblocks to true educational reform is that those who were successful attempt to perpetuate a broken, elitist system then should we be worried that those individuals are now becoming more prevalent in the classroom?
See the main point I am trying to make isn’t that we should keep Ivy League students out of the classroom or that we should be watching them like a hawk. I’m glad that they are making a conscious decision to improve the lives of others. Even still, I fear that this type of development will also be viewed as “silver bullet” education reform and we won’t be addressing the true rationale for how to improve student learning: improving the capacity and quality of the instruction and the teacher at the front of the room.
If that means Ivy League personnel then that’s fantastic, but the problem is that it doesn’t. It means innovative, charismatic, empathic, knowledgeable, flexible citizens.
Who gives a damn where they come from?
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Diane Ravitch reviews many of the studies about TfA and Knowledge is Power schools in her book “Death and life of the great american school.” The book is depressing the heck out of me but she does a great job summarizing the research results.
Great point Aaron. I keep going back to a quote I remember seeing somewhere: “Education is not about school, it is about learning”. What this means is not to get hung up with the tools of education like laptops, teachers, classrooms and schools. We should focus on if the students are learning. Everything should be on the table at this point to make sure that happens.
I don’t think we will find any revolutionary ideas from those who are invested in the way things are.
Haven’t I been reading that TfA isn’t working well, and that the new crop of best-and-brightest is fleeing from the field of education when they realize how messed up, hard, and low paid it is?
It’s definitely a shame. As a teacher, I would want my smartest kids to seek to become teachers. Usually, though, it’s the student I am most worried about who shrugs and says, “Well, I think I’ll teach.”
Some of the most successful students I’ve known are the ones most likely to want to change, not perpetuate, the existing system. They are bright enough to realize that while they were able to perform well, others were not, and (more importantly) that the existing system was not designed to give them what was most important – skills to understand and adapt to an ever changing political and economic environment.
I agree. Effective teachers have a skill set that transcends their training. Any background? Sure. Anybody? No.
Ivy League or Bush League, a teacher needs the passion to be able to do the job and a willingness to put up with all of the crazy crap that happens outside of the bells. I would argue that the most effective teachers that I have had, or that I have worked with, were the ones who struggled themselves in school. The very teachers our current system of certification tends to weed out.
Universities are full of very smart people who cannot teach. Their students simply need to be amazing students. Schools need to be and do something different in order to help those diverse students become the creative, empathetic and knowledgeable citizens we all desire.
We need to have a rich mix of individuals in the profession. The broader the backgrounds and more varied the life experience, the healthier our institutions will be. we know our students are differentiated, their teachers need to be differentiated too.
The best and brightest are needed in education if they bring themselves to the game. We know when learning comes easily to people they can be uncertain about how to approach the learning problems of others. That is no rule and we need to remember that. Bill’s point is well taken.
The best and the brightest aren’t staying any longer than “the rest of us.” Neither TFA & KIPP, nor traditional ed schools have solved the teacher retention problem. How can they when the public education system asks teachers to compromise students’ best interests in well-being and learning for “results?”
It doesn’t matter where people come from – whether they enter a classroom through KIPPnynotizing, TFA boot camp, or Freirian MaED program – so long as the system makes them feel like failures unless they condition kids to successful test-taking.
We’ll have no idea of how effective we can be as teachers until we’re not asked to manage kids and underwrite their test scores anymore, or until we take it upon ourselves to stop managing kids and teaching to hobbling tests.
Best,
C