Teacher Certification?
Teacher Certification?
Excesses of Nebraska Government
Update: https://www.klkntv.com/gov-pillen-removes-testing-requirements-for-nebraska-teachers/
Nebraskans For Founders Values (https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Minuteman-Alert---LB724-Eliminate-basic-skill-and-test-requirements-for-teaching-certs-.html) and Nebraskan Against Government Overreach have taken a stance against LB 724 which would reduce government regulation of education. Their view of the bill is that it is selectively editing out standards yet promoting an agenda.
I found their stances a bit odd but the bill indeed is a bit flawed. I am also a bit stunned at how the controversial history of Nebraska education has been scrubbed from the public view on this very topic. Back in the 1980s, baptist minister Rev. Everett Sileven lead a battle for freedom in education against certification (https://nchea.org/join-nchea/nebraska-history/ and https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/10/22/The-Rev-Everett-Sileven-fundamentalist-pastor-of-the-reopened/8808404107200/). There is a book about him on the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/daytheypadlocked00rowe/mode/2up). He actually was arrested (https://www.everettramseydd.com/lessons_from_louisville.html). But Wikipedia can’t find him.
Let me be blunt about how bad education is in the USA. Schools are basically concentration camps for children. Calling them “students” when they have made no oath to learn is just mindless, marketing deformation. I like the ideas of Alliance for Separation of School and State ( https://schoolandstate.com/) but this is because I know the history of public education grew on anti-Catholic biases (https://www.catholicleague.org/anti-catholicism-and-the-history-of-catholic-school-funding/ and https://fee.org/articles/the-origins-of-the-public-school/)
Many still thinks me a radical on this topic, which is true if you talk about 50 years ago. The idea of homeschooling by parents, without qualifications or certification, sounded so radical to so many, yet times have changed (https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/research/summaries/a-brief-history-of-homeschooling/ and https://daily.jstor.org/how-homeschooling-evolved-from-subversive-to-mainstream/). So if parents can teach without certification, why must teachers be certified?
The Institute for Justice takes issue with mandated restrictions on jobs and lists them from good to bad and state certification is among the worse (https://ij.org/report/license-to-work-3/report/alternatives-to-licensing/) I am not saying to abandon certification altogether, but why make it mandatory? How about paying teachers incentives to become certified? Teachers who volunteered to be certified would be seen as admirable and noble.
As to the students, I can understand compulsory education for K-8, but by the time the child is 12, they really need to take an oath to learning or be shown the door. Public resources should not be wasted with such malcontent children. Let them figure things out and invite them back later. There should be no rush to learn.
I was saying some of the same things back in the 80’s when I was a classroom science teacher!
As a former homeschooling mom from another state who later enrolled my daughter in a private Christian school in Nebraska (she became valedictorian of her high school class) while my son attended a small public high school (his choice), I too have some observations on all of this.
Certification of what? This is my first concern when it comes certifying teachers. I am concerned about what is being taught to the people we entrust with the instruction of our children. If they're being certified in teaching the "Three R's," and history, geography, and life skills, that's good and praiseworthy. If that curriculum is based on ESG and the radical left agenda, if they're pushing porn, we're in serious trouble.
I've recently been given serious reason to believe that ESG and the radical left agenda has infected the teaching staff even at the Christian schools.
Standards of excellence is my next concern. What kind of teacher are we letting into the classrooms? What kind of discipline are we backing them on the use of? I've heard horror stories locally from one school district about an officially enforced lack of discipline and teachers having to turn themselves into performing monkeys to hold their classes' attention.
Affordability of certification. If teachers must be certified and vetted for their jobs, the process needs to be transparent and above-board, and not cost-prohibitive. Right now, teaching doesn't really pay enough to justify the investment of time and resources if you can't land a scholarship. From my observation, teaching doesn't pay, period.
Some of the best teachers I ever had growing up were those who knew what it was to struggle for a good grade and understood that their pupils were differently gifted. I made pretty good grades throughout high school and college, but--there was this one class that I really struggled in. When I sought at one point to get a job as a teacher or para here in Lincoln, that grade became this insurmountable hurdle. I discovered that great teachers, highly motivated to be there for their students, are being kept out by an administration obsessed with grades.
And then there's the imbalance of classroom instruction time vs paperwork. It cuts into family time and vacation time. It interferes with proper normal activities like sleep. Teaching may appear, on the surface, to be an 8 hour five day/week job. It's certainly reimbursed like an 8 hour five day/week job with a long summer break thrown in with no pay--but teachers are more likely to work 16 hours a day even on the weekends with very little respite.
This is unhealthy for them and unhealthy for our kids. Tired stressed adults are not critically thinking emotionally engaged adults.
The expansion of teacher-generated paperwork has had an observable inverse effect on the assignment of homework for older students. I've been informed that the students don't want homework, that the parents won't make them do it, that kids can't do the work and play sports too (and sports are more important), and other excuses that just boggle my mind.
We're trying to prepare these kids for life in the real world. When the current teachers retire, who will take their place? No one will be willing to put in the time or effort to prepare the way they do because today's kids haven't learned the discipline that it takes.