A call for solutions for fixing education resulted in a long list of possibilities, available at Jenny D’s site.

Then she goes on to say that she agreed with many of those items in the list when she first started to get her EdD. But now she doesn’t.

We don’t know much about teaching. Some teachers do because they’ve figured it out after years of practice. But most teachers don’t know for certain how to teach. And it’s not their fault.

It is true. We don’t know much about teaching.

But part of the reason for that is that the teachers, and their union, have more political agendas than they do a desire to do their best.

We have had plenty of teachers who have done an exceptional job with motivating and teaching students who others thought were unteachable. Why are these not the case studies in education? Why are these not the basis for research?

Instead we use, even in rhetoric and composition, the average teacher, the average classroom.

Forget average. It’s the problem with American education.

Let’s go for the best. Examine the best. Study the best. Then try to teach that to all the teachers, not just the new ones coming up.

On another point she brought up:

I’ve been a part of a mentoring system for new teachers, both as a learner and as a mentor. Both of these were in higher education. They were very helpful. At least, with this help, I didn’t start at the bottom with no knowledge, but the teachers doing the mentoring weren’t necessarily the best the universities had. (I was not one of the best teachers at the university at that time.)

Mentoring is a much better choice than nothing. And it is a much better choice than modern education classes. See an earlier post on teacher credentials.