How many undergraduate teacher training programs exist in California? California requires a bachelor’s degree before the teacher credentialing program, then even more credentialing classes to “clear” the credential. Who has the money, energy, and time for that? Can’t undergrads just take linguistics, literature, math, history, etc. courses along with courses such as “how to teach a child to read”, “how to teach science” etc., while fulfilling teaching credential requirements and doing approved practicums like tutoring programs to get real experience? Then they’d graduate with less debt, ready to change the world, and have some practical skills and knowledge.

Even if teachers are credentialed, what credentialing program is, in fact, preparing teachers to teach the material? Most California credentialing programs are focused on research dealing with racial inequity, special education inequity, english learner inequity than on teaching a child to read. Here is why we have inequity: people in education are still wasting time bickering over how to teach a child to read. I’ll give you a clue: a, apple, /a/.

Play-based learning? Really? When are we going to agree that learning to read is not a game? Balanced Literacy? How is that working out for us?

Let’s implement some strategy in education. Why are elementary teachers supposed to teach every subject? What if someone is an excellent writing teacher, but not an excellent math teacher? This is a reality. The foundations of math are taught in elementary school. What happens if the teacher a student sat with for an entire year wasn’t strong in math? Shouldn’t elementary school be structured more closely to middle school or high school where a student goes to math class, reading class, etc?

Everyone knows that American education is failing, but no one who is capable wants to do the simple thing and change it because there is a lot of money to be made in failure, and a lot of control to be had over an uneducated populace.

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