Teacher Licensing -- A Protection Racket

Contrary to popular notions, teacher licensing in public schools does not insure teacher quality. A license also does not even insure that a public-school teacher knows much about the subject she teaches. In fact, in our upside-down public-school system, licensing often leads to ill-trained and mediocre teachers instructing our children. As we will see, it turns out that teacher licensing is a protection racket.

The notion that only state-approved, licensed teachers can guarantee children a good education is proven wrong by history and common sense. In ancient Athens, the birthplace of logic, science, philosophy, and Western civilization, city authorities did not require teachers to be licensed. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle did not have to get a teaching license from Athenian bureaucrats to open up their Academies. A teacher's success came only from his competence, reputation, and popularity. Students and their parents paid a teacher only if they thought he was worth the money. Competition and an education free market produced great teachers in ancient Greece.

Parents in America gave their children a superior education at home or in small grammar or religious schools for over two hundred years before we had public schools or licensed teachers in this country. School authorities' claim that teachers have to be licensed for our children to get a quality education, is therefore false.

Today, in millions of companies across America, bosses or their managers teach new employees job skills, from the simplest to the most complex. Private schools and trade schools teach millions of students valuable, practical skills. Thousands of college professors with masters or doctorate degrees in the subject they teach, instruct hundreds of thousands of college students in subjects ranging from philosophy to electrical engineering. Over a million home-schooling parents teach their children reading, writing, and math with learn-to-read or learn-math books, computer-learning software, and other teaching materials. All these teachers are not licensed yet they often give children a far better education than licensed public-school teachers.

Licensing laws imply that only public-school education "experts" can judge a teacher's competence. These alleged "experts" are usually graduates of teacher colleges and university education departments. Unfortunately, so-called teacher education is often an academic joke or waste of time, especially to student-teachers who have to endure years of this "teacher-training" torture.

Steve Wulf, writing in Time magazine, revealed the opinion that many student-teachers had about their so-called teacher training:

"Six hundred experienced teachers surveyed in 1995 were brutal about the education they had received, describing it as "mind-numbing," the "shabbiest psycho-babble," and "an abject waste of time." They complained that fragmented, superficial course work had little relevance to classroom realities. And judging by the weak skills of student teachers entering their schools, they observed, the preparation was still woefully inadequate."

Many teacher colleges don't teach crucial reading phonics or math instruction skills, nor do they teach science or history. Many "licensed" reading, math, history, or science teachers have not taken courses in or majored in these subjects in college. One survey by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education found that more than three-quarters of teacher-college graduates preparing to be elementary-school teachers had no academic major except education.

In many teacher colleges, student-teachers don't learn specific knowledge in their subject field or competent teaching techniques to teach our kids reading, math, and science. Instead they learn the history and philosophy of education and other mostly useless nonsense. Also, many university education departments waste student-teachers' time on socialist, politically-correct courses about gender and minority oppression, multiculturalism studies, and other courses that would fit right in to a Marxist curriculum in Cuba.

Licensing also implies that parents can't and shouldn't judge a teacher's competence. Yet millions of parents in all fifty states send their children to private kindergartens, grammar schools, and colleges. These allegedly ignorant parents have no problem judging the competence of teachers in private schools, and withdrawing their children if the schools don't live up to the parents' expectations.

We judge the competence of our car mechanic, accountant, and our child's private kindergarten teacher all the time, and we do so reasonably well. Is there some mysterious reason we can't judge whether our children are learning to read, write, or do math? Public-school officials who claim that parents are too ignorant to judge their children's education are self-serving. If we allegedly can't trust parents with this job, obviously we have to trust the so-called education "experts," thereby guaranteeing these so-called education experts' cushy jobs.

School authorities also claim that we need licensing to guarantee competence, so no charlatans become teachers. Yet some licensed public-schools teachers are barely literate themselves or are ill-trained or have little knowledge of the subject they teach. Fred Bayles, in a "USA Today" column titled, "Those Who Can't Spell or Write, Teach," gave an example:

"On April 1, 1998, the Massachusetts Board of Education gave applicants who wanted to teach, a basic reading and writing test. The results of the test were that 59 percent of the applicants failed. If you think these test results made the Board of Education do something constructive, think again. It promptly lowered the test's passing grade from 77 to 66 percent. Under the "new" standard, only 44 percent failed. Note that all the applicants were college graduates."

Also, these same education students often score lowest in academic achievement among other high-school graduates. Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote about this issue in his book, "Inside American Education."

"Despite some attempts to depict such attitudes as mere snobbery, hard data on education student qualifications have consistently shown their mental test scores to be at or near the bottom among all categories of students. This was as true of studies done in the 1920s and 1930s as of studies in the 1980s. Whether measured by Scholastic Aptitude Tests, ACT tests, vocabulary tests, reading comprehension tests or Graduate Record Examinations, students majoring in education have consistently scored below the national average."

"At the graduate level, it is very much the same story, with students in numerous other fields outscoring education students on the Graduate Record Examination--by from 91 points composite to 259 points, depending on the field. The pool of graduate students in education supplies not only teachers, counselors, and other administrators, but also professors of education and other leaders and spokesmen for the education establishment."

Because of poor teacher training, public schools often hire ill-trained or mediocre teachers, which can cause untold damage to millions of children. Parents have no recourse to oust these teachers because most teachers get tenure after a few years on the job.

In contrast, in a private school, a truly incompetent teacher will not last long. Parents will complain, and the school owner will have to fire this teacher to keep parents happy. Also, for the same reasons, a private-school owner will make every effort to find out if a teacher is competent before he hires that teacher. The school owner's livelihood and the success of his school depend on having competent teachers and happy customers. Compulsory public schools can ignore parents, so they have no such constraints.

Most parents naively assume that if a teacher is licensed, he or she is now a trained professional they should trust their children with. Parents therefore lower their guard with "licensed" teachers because they assume that a licensed teacher must be competent. As we have seen, this is often not the case.

One solution offered for this problem is "merit" pay for teachers. Merit-pay programs would judge all school employees on competence. Better teachers would get paid more, and bad teachers, principals, or administrators could be fired or demoted. How one judges merit, of course, is a whole separate issue, but just as private-school owners devise methods to judge the merit of their teachers, so too could public schools.

Yet, if teacher licensing produced competent teachers, why do school authorities and teachers unions fight so hard against merit pay? The answer seems obvious--the system produces many teachers, principals, and administrators who may not "merit" their pay, and might lose their jobs under merit-pay rules.

In effect, public-school employees say to parents: "You have to pay our salary and benefits, but how dare you demand proof that we know how to teach your children? How dare you judge our merit? How dare you demand that you get your money's worth?" Only employees who think the world owes them a living are afraid to be judged by the people who pay them. So licensing does not keep charlatans out of our public schools. Instead, it practically guarantees that we employ charlatans or ill-trained teachers.

If licensing doesn't work, what is the alternative? The answer is, no licensing. If anyone could teach without a license, like home-schooling parents or private-school teachers, then millions of new, competent, creative teachers would flood the market. These new, unlicensed teachers would compete with one another and drive the price of education down, much as competition drives down the price of computers. They would, hopefully, also put public schools out of business, since millions of parents and free-market schools would now hire these new competent, low-cost teachers.

Without licensing laws, anyone with a special skill or knowledge could simply put an ad in the Yellow Pages or their local newspaper and advertise themselves as a tutor in English, math, biology, history, or computer skills. Retired cooks, engineers, authors, plumbers, musicians, biologists, or businessmen who love teaching could easily open a small school in their homes. If there were no license laws, these talented new teachers would not have to worry about school authorities shutting down their schools because they didn't have a license.

How would parents be sure they were not hiring a charlatan if there were no licensing laws? The same way they judge their car mechanic, accountant, and child's kindergarten teacher -- by results, reputation, and by being careful consumers. Naturally, parents would make occasional mistakes in judgment because they are human. However, they would quickly become careful consumers because they would now be spending their hard-earned money for teachers. It is amazing how fast we learn to judge the work of others when we have to pay for their services out of our own pockets. Also, if a parent does make mistakes in judging an unlicensed teacher, by watching her child's progress she will soon catch her error. At that point, she can quickly fire the teacher and find a better one. Can a parent do that with her children's public-school teachers?

The worst nightmare for public-school authorities is a true free market of teachers who don't need a license to teach. Fierce competition by millions of new, unlicensed, competent, highly-skilled people might destroy public schools, the teacher unions, and teachers' lifetime security in tenured jobs. It might destroy the licensing racket that protects their jobs. That is one unspoken reason why school authorities fiercely defend licensing laws--real competition terrifies them. That is also one of the best reasons to eliminate licensing.

The only way to insure good teachers is to let parents decide who will teach their children, not bureaucrats. Millions of parents making individual decisions about who should teach their children will bring forth the best teachers. Fierce competition and an education free market would raise all boats in the teaching profession. Teachers who want to succeed in their profession would have to prove to parent-customers or private- school owners that they have what it takes. They would have to prove by results that they know how to teach and motivate children to read, write, and learn.

Once this licensing protection racket was broken, parents would have complete control over who teaches their children. Our kids could then learn from the best teachers out there and get the great education they deserve.

Joel Turtel is an education policy analyst, and author of ?Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children."

Contact Information:
Website: http://www.mykidsdeservebetter.com,
Email: lbooksusa@aol.com

Article Copyrighted © 2006 by Joel Turtel. NOTE: You may post this Article on another website only if you set up a hyperlink to Joel Turtel?s email address and website URL, http://www.mykidsdeservebetter.com

The IMF - A Global Protection Racket

In the seven years I have lived in New Zealand, I have often heard new immigrants from Europe, South Africa and North America refer to it as a second world country. As evidence of New Zealand's second world status, they cite the fact that Kiwis wear thermal underwear, down vests and mufflers to work in the winter (owing to ambient indoor temperatures of 60-63 degrees F - energy is already extremely expensive here); that most professional women feel guilty using a clothes dryer and still hang their washing on the line; and that Do It Yourself and jury-rigging with duct tape and Number 8 wire are a matter of national pride and summoning a repairman is seen as an unmanly extravagance.

The terminology first, second and third world was originally coined during the Cold War to designated capitalist countries aligned with the US (first world), communist countries aligned with the USSR (second world), and countries aligned with neither (third world). Recently, however, especially the terms first and third world are used to describe economic status, as opposed to political alignment.

The term "second world" has definitely taken on a new meaning in New Zealand - especially since the International Monetary Fund (IMF) came knocking at our door last week. I wonder if this might also be the case in Iceland, Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal - other countries facing unsustainable debt levels as they struggle to keep vital public programs going.

Three days ago Radio New Zealand National reported that the IMF was asking the New Zealand government to make further cuts in public spending. I had shivers up my spine, flashing back to the time my grandmother had a collision with a known Mafia figure and our family received one of those offers you can't refuse. My colleagues in the National Health Service (where I work as a child and adolescent psychiatrist) and I are very wary of the IMF's so-called "recommendations." In fact we can see little difference between the IMF knocking at your door and a mafia or gang member trying to sell you a protection racket.

New Zealand is the only industrialized country I know of that didn't implement economic bail-outs for banks, jobless workers or families losing their homes. Moreover, as a result of the recession, our government has already made major cuts to public spending, resulting in the layoff of 1500 public service workers. However the IMF expects us to go still further, with specific recommendations that we end free GP visits (for children, seniors and the disadvantaged) and student loan rebates (to address an extremely critical shortage of doctors and teachers). In other words they want us to "privatize" aspects of our health care system and tertiary education.

The Pressure to Privatize Our National Health Service

Given that New Zealand has a national health service, and that both National (the conservatives) and Labour (the liberals) support the belief that health care is a basic human right, I see a clear subtext here. It is well known the people who run the IMF (who for the most part represent financial institutions such as banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies) do not accept the notion of a right to health care. They view health care delivery as a commodity with immense profit potential - and see absolutely no reason why private health insurance companies should be denied the right to make a profit from illness and human misery in all industrialized countries, as they do in the US. I know this because the structural adjustment programs they impose on debtor nations always includes a demand that these countries abolish their publicly funded health systems and open their markets to private insurance companies.

What Happens if We Refuse an Offer We Can't Refuse?

If New Zealand were frittering away IMF money, I could accept that the IMF might be in a position to dictate how we spend it. However New Zealand hasn't borrowed any money from the IMF. At present New Zealand borrows approximately $250 millions per week from commercial lenders at 4 - 6.5% interest. We pay a low interest rate because we have an AA+ (countries receive credit ratings just like individuals).

The threat, of course, is that if New Zealand fails to cut public spending enough to satisfy its global lenders, our credit rating will be downgraded from AA+ to BBB- (like Iceland and Greece) and our government will be force to borrow from the IMF (like Iceland and Greece). We will then be forced to pay 18% interest and agree to draconian cuts in health and education. Fitch and other rating agencies are supposed to be independent from the financial institutions that control the IMF. However recent criminal prosecutions suggest that they aren't - and that banks and other financial institutions can "buy" favorable or unfavorable credit ratings to suit their commercial interests.

If New Zealand was inhospitable to foreign companies wanting to do business here or irresponsible in collecting taxes or managing government fraud and corruption, it would be a far different story. However New Zealand is consistently designated as the country with the least red tape and regulation for foreign businesses, as well as the most fraud free. We also have a well-earned reputation for frugality. Our government ran a surplus between 1999 and October 2008 - the month the world economy collapsed and we stopped selling exports and overseas travel to tourists - owing to circumstances which were totally beyond our control.

A Second World Perspective on the Sustainability Movement

All this got me thinking whether New Zealand, like Iceland, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, which all face massive debt problems through no fault of their own, might have something to offer the global sustainability movement. Although it rarely makes the nightly news, the sustainability movement is a growing influence in the lives of the educated middle class in most industrialized countries. Millions of people world wide accept that they face a less energy intensive future (whether due to a shrinking global economy, fossil fuel depletion or international treaties to reduce carbon emissions). Which means millions of people are already making conscious lifestyle choices to reduce their energy and carbon footprint.

It's a historical fact that New Zealand was a latecomer to globalization and the pressure this produced to become an export-driven economy. Prior to the disastrous "structural adjustment" New Zealand under went in 1984 (aka Rogernomics), Kiwis got along just fine without the billions of dollars of cheap Asian imports that dominate our retail shelves at present. In fact women of my own generation talk of growing their own fruit, veggies and chooks (chickens) in their backyard when their children were young, as well as canning surplus fruit and veggies for winter, sewing their children's clothes, knitting their jumpers (sweaters) and saving and recycling string, rags, scrap metal and any other household waste that could be used for some other purpose. It is intriguing to watch many of them fall back on these deeply engrained habits, as they make conscious choices to reduce their energy and carbon footprint.

New Zealand also has the advantage of having a mainly agricultural economy and a slower rate of urbanization than other industrialized countries. At present 55.6% percent of Kiwis live in New Zealand's 12 cities, as opposed to an average 75% urbanization rate for other industrialized countries. Thus making it relatively easy for at least half of New Zealanders to undertake concrete local energy conservation, alternative transport and waste reduction initiatives, as well as creating community gardens, farmers markets and community supported agriculture schemes.

New Zealand Transition Towns Movement

Most of New Zealand's sustainability related organizations are locally based and formal or informal members of Transition Towns New Zealand, a member of the global Transition Towns movement that started in Ireland and the UK. In perusing the TT New Zealand website, it is interesting to see how many local groups have taken up concepts that originated with the Y2K movement of the late nineties - which was advising people on preparing for the possible "End of Civilization as We Know It." The following are key examples:

Initiatives to improve local food (and water) security:

¨ De-paving - digging up private and public driveways and parking lots and replacing them with backyard veggie gardens and community orchards and gardens.

¨ Lawn liberation - replacing lawns and ornamental trees and shrubs with fruit and nut trees and productive gardens.

¨ Development of "bioregional" transportation security (that doesn't rely on imported oil) for food delivery (99.9 percent of human existence has relied on a bioregional economic model - which entails sourcing the majority of food and other essentials within a 100 mile radius)

¨ Development of strong community networks to provide neighbourhood patrols in the absence of police services.

¨ Neighborhood systems of rainwater collection and purification

¨ Strong local credit unions and locally owned businesses and cooperatives

¨ A local currency or trading system

¨ Building a solid tradition of neighbors sharing with one another and helping each other one other out.

¨ Increasing local expertise in permaculture and biointensive agriculture techniques, should industrial fertilizers and insecticides (which are manufactured from fossil fuels) become unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

Initiatives to improve energy security:

¨ Neighborhood and community solar and wind power energy systems

¨ A shift in urban planning to put essential services closer to residential areas, facilitating increased use of public transportation and an increase in active transport (walking, cycling, skateboarding, etc.).

¨ Ensuring that everyone in your neighborhood has dry firewood, candles and oil lamps and ensuring that schools, churches and other neighborhood gathering sites are similarly prepared.

Like the Y2K movement that proceeded it, the Transition Town movement emphasizes the over-riding importance of building strong social networks to cushion the impact of a sudden economic shock or infrastructure breakdown. This approach is supported by extensive medical and psychological studies showing that people with strong social networks recover more quickly from any illness, personal crisis or catastrophe.

Dr Bramhall is a 62 year old American who emigrated to New Zealand seven years ago for political reasons. She works as a child and adolescent psychiatrist for the New Zealand National Health Service. She is also a long time activist. At present she is active in her union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, and serves on the National Executive of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. She blogs at http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com