Is Teaching a Profession - Reading Reaction

Sometimes while reading this article, I wondered, is this an article, or is it a study in the navel anatomy of teachers? Aside from being badly written (being an English major, I find bad grammar and awkward sentence structure distracting), it dances circles around its point at least a dozen times before making it, and then continues the Mexican Hat Dance for a couple more repetitions afterward. I kept reading what I felt was an entire section's "meat and potatoes" in the first paragraph and then hoping that the rest of the section would be more than "fluff" and reiteration... and I kept being disappointed that I lost the precious seconds reading 5 more paragraphs than I really needed to read.

The main points of the article seem to be thus:

1. If teaching is to be considered a profession, it needs to be privatized, licensed, and peer-reviewed.

Privatized?
Here is what I mean: If the function of teachers is guided by legislation which is decided by means of democracy (everyone votes, even the unwashed masses), then the people in the best position to make decisions about education (the forerunners of educational research/practice) are shackled by the decisions of John Q. Public... which is nearly ALWAYS a disaster. By giving teachers more autonomy, Teaching becomes more professional.

Licensed.
Teachers need to obtain licensure already, but maybe the process needs to be stricter. Then again, if the unwashed masses are the ones determining curriculum, maybe we should just make a mandatory Playstation3 or Wii game that will teach the classes necessary for democratic participation in an interactive format and call it "Academic Hero 4" or whatever. If teachers can essentially be replaced by software, why do we bother with licensure? Until Sony or Nintendo gets academic professionals to start writing grade school games, we need human beings to communicate knowledge to students, and there needs to be a standard by which teachers are given authority to do so.

Peer-Reviewed.
Going back to the notion that The Public, not a board of teaching professionals, decides (in a roundabout way) what needs to be taught in public schools, teachers' performance/competence is also determined by someone other than other teachers. The performance of teachers is best judged by other expert teachers, not parents, not politicians.

2. The knowledge base of a professional teacher extends beyond simple content knowledge.

I couldn't agree more. I've known some very smart people in my life who couldn't explain an expert concept to a layman to save us from Apocalypse. Try explaining the meaning of "quintessential" to an eight-year-old. For example, those who are only great at science should be scientists and immerse themselves in the esoteric language of science. Those who are great at science AND great at explaining concepts to people should teach science. Teachers who teach science should keep up with the current educational research and the current studies in science.

The author compares teaching as a profession to medicine as a profession--and doctors as well as other medical personnel are constantly exposed to new information and new developments in their field. They must always acquire "continuing education credits" and that sort of thing. In this spirit, I think it is necessary for teachers to continue their education with regard to their specific field and teaching methods in general.

Granted, there is a lot more said in this article than I have boiled down here, but these are the two major points that I took away from it.