Keith, I'm all for this. There is a wealth of experience and knowledge among senior citizens and the professional community that could greatly enhance the classroom environment and reduce the strain on career professional teachers and administrators. It seems that the idea will only be taken seriously when there is a desperate shortage or certification crises, not an academic one. Oregon has discussed bringing in '2nd career' teachers but the subject has been dropped amid the chaos of the school funding crises, where we are less worried about the upcoming teacher retirement flood than we are paying for the rest of this school year. However, there should be some sort of classroom certification, and serious screening, so that we don't get people inbetween jobs dropping into the classroom with no real commitment or continuity. Something similar to the Teach America program could be utilized. My youngest daughter will graduate in May with her double BA in poly/sci - sociology and has just been notified by Teach America that they liked her interview and transcript. IF she goes into the program, they will place her somewhere in the US, give her a crash course in classroom techniques and when she has taught for two years, reimburse her for her graduate degree. A private GI Bill for Teachers. (She was smart enough to not stipulate just K-6 or 7-12, while restricting her geographical preference to the N. Virginia, Washington DC, Baltimore region where she has been in college.) Programs like Teach America are not entirely accepted by venerable teachers who have honed their craft over many years of classroom experience, battling not just reluctant students but clueless and/or hostile parents. If the 'new kids' are paid the same as those who went through teacher certification it does raise resentment, especially if Teach America teachers are seen as 'temps' in the classroom who may or may not do the job well with all the heart and soul it demands to be good. PBS (Public Broadcast System) had a very insightful multipart program on this very practice, showcasing 4 or 5 college graduates who took the crash course, were placed in NYC schools with the cameras recording both their good and bad moments, interviews and comments from their principals, etc. Very good television work. Of the showcased teachers, I believe only one did not become a full time teacher. So it does work as a recruitment tool. Why can't seniors with experience valuable to the classroom be more than guest lecturers? Why should senior citizens be relegated to a supposedly recreational-only status? I don't want that for myself, and see that not being socially active and/or intellectually challenged is accelerating aging issues in my own parents, both in their early 70s. I think baby boomers are going to change things in this as they have so much else. - Karen Watters Cole
Keith wrote: I've previously mentioned that the English state education system is breaking down. The state simply can't recruit enough young people of sufficient calibre to train as teachers and of those who do, in fact, finish teacher-training college, up to 30% refuse to actually start teaching when they've experienced what goes on in schools during their final student practice. (Of those who start teaching, more than one third can't do elementary maths problems and almost the same proportion can't write grammatically.) The chief reasons for this lamentable situation are (a) highly centralised bureaucratic control; (b) protective practices by teaching unions and teacher-training colleges; (c) a never-ending stream of detailed instructions emanating from London which harrass teachers and cuts into their teaching time. Among many other symptoms, the state education system cannot recruit (never mind retain!) anywhere near the number of teachers required for language, science, engineering and maths. Yet there are scores of thousands of linguists, engineers and scientists in the country who (like me) might well like to spend a year or two of their retirement in teaching in (particularly) secondary schools. Many of us would be prepared to do so with little or even no reward. Hitherto, the unions and the government have treated possible volunteers like us as lepers and have been implacably set against any of these civic minded people getting anywhere near their state schools But another crack in the edifice is appearing. It was announced this morning that primary schools are going to be able to recruit people to teach languages who haven't actually received their teaching certificate! Apparently, it doesn't matter any longer! And this decision from a socialist government which has dared to challenge the unions! Wow! I still can't quite believe it. I still can't quite believe that it will actually happen. In the case of language teaching, it's mainly a matter of pride. Here we have prime minister Tony Blair desperately anxious to have more influence in the European Union but whose state schools are turning out hundreds of thousands of young people every year who have no language whatsoever besides English. However, we are still terribly short of maths teachers and this is not yet denting Blair's amour propre. Many state secondary schools have no teachers with a maths degree at all. Outgoing Mail Scanned by NAV 2002
