A LETTER TO FUTURE TEACHERS

Dear Future Teachers,
According to a 1997 report issued by an organization called Public
Agenda, education professors are “out of sync” with public school teachers
and parents on fundamental issues such as what and how teachers should
teach. A survey found that classroom teachers and the general public want
discipline and basic reading, writing, and math skills to be the top priorities
in public schools. However, university-based teacher educators insist that
schools prepare children “to be active learners,” and that teachers help stu-
dents develop their “curiosity” and “a love of learning.”
Deborah Wadsworth, executive director of Public Agenda, concluded
that professors of education are not “arming graduates of their programs
for the real world they face.” She was supported by Sandra Feldman, presi-
dent of the American Federation of Teachers, who said the survey con-
firmed what her union’s membership already knew. “College education has-
n’t prepared them for the realities of the classroom.”
As you prepare to become a teacher, you need to consider whether
schools of education and out-of-sync professors are really responsible for
poor student performance on standardized tests, our country’s failure to
achieve international standards, violence inand around urban schools, pov-
erty, drug abuse, alienation, teenage pregnancy, inadequate school funding,
overcrowded classrooms, and deteriorating buildings.
We live in a society that pays considerably more to educate the children
of the affluent—children who already have numerous advantages—than the
children of the working class and poor. In the New York City metropolitan
area where I live and work, private schools charge as much as $20,000 a
year for tuition. Some wealthy suburban districts spend almost the same
amount of money per student. At the same time, during the late 1990s, New
York City spent slightly more than $6,000 a year to educate students in
mainstream regular education classes.

BOOK

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GOALS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

FOR TEACHERS

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