Could you get a teaching credential

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[FONT=&quot]An acquaintance sent me a copy of his grandfather's teaching certificate, dated 1895. It sets forth the teaching requirements for secondary education, first to eighth grade, in a small rural school in Wisconsin. Teachers were tested in: Orthoepy, orthography (the studies of pronunciation and spelling), reading, penmanship, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, u.S. history, the state constitution, the federal Constitution, physiology and hygiene, theory and art of teaching, grammatical analysis, physiology, physical geography and elementary algebra. For high school teaching, higher algebra, geometry and natural philosophy were also required. It was noted on the certificate that the gentleman had attended "Teachers' Institute" for five days. Note that this is only the "core" curriculum, as we would put it now, for all teachers. There were many other subjects offered at the high school level.[FONT=&quot][1][/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]This rigorous curriculum would be front-page news if it were offered in any public school in the country today; yet it was the norm a century ago all across America, even in dusty little farmtown schools attended by barefoot children. Remarkably, teachers were all required to know the entire curriculum. After all, they might be called on to teach all eight grades in a little one-room schoolhouse (as I was taught). They got very little training in how to teach: five days in the Teachers' Institute sufficed in this case. Rather, they concentrated on basic subject matter, and did so by attending to their own education. They could and often did take their teaching posts straight out of high school, after being rigorously tested.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I wonder just how much we have lost by turning this whole procedure upside-down. Nowadays, would-be teachers usually must spend years in education schools at the universities, which are primarily devoted to theories of education, not subject matter. They often go back for higher degrees in more of the same, which earns them quicker promotions in the bureaucratic pay scales. (The textbooks they use are full of the same mush.) And they end up specializing in one or two subjects, which some never master as well as a teacher a century ago who could handle the whole curriculum.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The results of this we all know too well. Students graduate without learning a core curriculum and go on to become the next generation of teachers with little to impart to their own students. The level of education keeps going down and down. But more is lost than this. We have traded in the high morale and moral values of good, basic and successful schooling for a bureaucratized anthill whose focus is on money, gimmicks, theory, power and more money. No amount of tinkering with a system like that is ever going to help. No amount of extra dollars will help it either, and there are scores of studies to back up the point.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]It may be objected that I am contradicting myself: the little red schoolhouses were public, not private, yet they did very well. True, but they were market schools in almost every sense. Attendance was not required, so schools had to perform. Moreover, they were accountable to their customers, the community of parents, in a direct, no-nonsense way. They were held to high moral standards by the community, both in enforcing discipline and in what they taught. There is no comparing schools like this with the ones we have today, which are operated by bureaucratic rules, have no moral standards at all, and are barely accountable to anyone.[/FONT]


Reference

Roche, G. (1990). One By One: Preserving Values and Freedom in Heartland America . Hillsdale, Michigan: Hillsdale College Press.

[FONT=&quot][1][/FONT] [FONT=&quot]Here is the curriculum at a four-year high school in the midwest in 1910: Algebra, Ancient History, Botany, Literary Readings, Physical Geography, Composition, Bookkeeping, Mediaeval History, Physiology, Zoology, English History, Geometry, American Literature, German, Greek, American History, Civics, Economics, Physics, English Literature, Theory and [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Art [/FONT][FONT=&quot]of Teaching, Psychology, Manual Training, Mechanical Drawing.[/FONT]

 

[Scarlett O.]

Teachers were tested in: Orthoepy, orthography (the studies of pronunciation and spelling), reading, penmanship, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, u.S. history, the state constitution, the federal Constitution, physiology and hygiene, theory and art of teaching, grammatical analysis, physiology, physical geography and elementary algebra. For high school teaching, higher algebra, geometry and natural philosophy were also required. It was noted on the certificate that the gentleman had attended "Teachers' Institute" for five days. Note that this is only the "core" curriculum, as we would put it now, for all teachers. There were many other subjects offered at the high school level.

This list the author has compiled here is only a partial list of the content that teachers today are required to study and is only a partial list of what is taught in schools today by those said teachers. He has some big words up there but not a very big list.

I studied all of that content and much, much more academic content during my years of higher learning.

And so the teachers of yesteryear "wisely" only spent 5 days in learning how to teach all of that content to their students?

Pity. There is both an art and a science to teaching. Learning about how students learn should be studied just as intently and as in-depth as the content taught. Learning how to teach is an ongoing process that requires more than 5 days. I think anyone with any reason understands that.

This article is just another biased and ungrounded opinion of someone who hates public schools and believes that we public school teachers are of the devil.

And as for this quote?

Nowadays, would-be teachers usually must spend years in education schools at the universities, which are primarily devoted to theories of education, not subject matter. They often go back for higher degrees in more of the same, which earns them quicker promotions in the bureaucratic pay scales. (The textbooks they use are full of the same mush.) And they end up specializing in one or two subjects, which some never master as well as a teacher a century ago who could handle the whole curriculum.

I did not pursue and obtain a Master's Degree to get a "quick promotion up the bureaucratic pay scale".

I worked for 3 years - at nights and in the summers - on a Master's Degree learning more and more in-depth content and studying more and more about the learing process. A few years later I worked for another 3 years in obtaining another advanced degree.

Monetarily speaking - I received a $2.00 per week raise.

Professionally speaking - I became an even better teacher and my students over the years benefited most of all. I can't put a price on the invaluable academic content that I learned and the knowledge of how learning works.

 

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This list the author has compiled here is only a partial list of the content that teachers today are required to study and is only a partial list of what is taught in schools today by those said teachers. He has some big words up there but not a very big list.

Are you saying that you had more than Algebra, Ancient History, Botany, Literary Readings, Physical Geography, Composition, Bookkeeping, Medieval History, Physiology, Zoology, English History, Geometry, American Literature, German, Greek, American History, Civics, Economics, Physics, English Literature, Theory and Art [FONT=&quot]of Teaching, Psychology, Manual Training, Mechanical Drawing?

I cannot think of anyone who studied German, Greek, Manual Training, and Mechanical Drawing at the Bachelors level in college especially because they would teach it later at the high school level.

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