How to Improve the Schools

A few weeks ago, someone sent me an interesting report. This year, the Massachusetts Dept of Ed required Ed School grads to take a test in grade school math for certification. Only 27% passed.

This seems to mean that the average teacher in grade school actually knows less math than the pupils. How can someone teach what they do not know?

But this also implies that the worst students in grade school are the ones who go on to be teachers. This, surely, is the opposite of what we should seek. How has this come about?

I Googled for a site that analyses SAT figures. These scores are supposed to measure innate academic ability, and are used by universities as an objective check on actual marks to determine who will do well in further education. As such, they are also a fairly good proxy for IQ. Checking the rankings finds Ed School entrants indeed near the bottom of the barrel. They are third to last on math skills.

But here's an even bigger shocker: they are even worse in their verbal skills: second to last. Yet this is the one essential skill for a good teacher: the ability to communicate clearly. A teacher is a public speaker, and rhetorical skill was for two thousand years roughly equated with teaching ability. It seems we would do better by choosing any other major instead of education as our qualification for teaching in the schools.

Mind you, the problem might not be that only the dull want to study education. The more likely hypothesis is that only the dull want to teach in the schools.

That's as may be, but the thesis is easily tested. Abolish education schools, open the doors of official teacher certification to all majors, and see what happens. At worst, we would be no worse off.

For what it's worth, I also checked GRE scores. At graduate level, the SAT is replaced by the GRE. Here, too, those seeking second degrees in education do not distinguish themselves. Various education specialities get various scores, but almost all are in the bottom half of all majors. And the lowest education specialties are again close to scraping the bottom in all skills—second to last in verbal and math, and fifth to last in writing. These are the people running the schools and designing the curriculum.

And this turns out to look like a fluke. At the Ph.D. level—those teaching the teachers to teach teachers to teach—Education majors are again second to dead last. Only professional bureaucrats score worse.

Since most universities in Canada also use the SAT and GRE, there is every reason to believe that these figures reflect the Canadian situation as well as that in the US.

Some—certainly most teachers' unions—argue that the problem is that teachers are underpaid. Pay them more, and you would attract better-qualified candidates. But these same figures do not seem to bear this out. Who is most driven by money in choosing their major? Wouldn't that be the business grads and the MBA's? But it turns out that Business grads and MBAs are not scoring that much better than teachers; below the fold in all skills. And—believe it or not—neither are medical students, the best-paying career of all.

Who is actually pulling the big IQs and academic talents?

Philosophy. English language and literature. Arts and Humanities. Religion. Physics. Mathematics.

This makes sense, in fact. Money is less likely to be a motivator the smarter you are. The really bright are going to be driven by ideas. These are the fields in which you get to encounter the biggest and best ideas of mankind, with a minimum of BS.

But the greater irony is that these are also the fields most likely to develop good teachers: they teach clarity of thought and of expression, enthusiasm for learning, a sense of mission, and a broad knowledge of the best ideas of human civilization.

The way, then, to improve the schools is clear, and it costs less than nothing. Abolish the Teachers' Colleges, and make these degrees the basic requirement for a job as a teacher.

In two generations, the country that does will rule the world.