Educating Teachers

It would hardly be fair to call James Bryant Conant's new book a disappointment. The Education of American Teachers tackles its subject directly but without emotion. It gives no quarter in recommending changes that would irritate vested interests or lessen their power. And when it advocates compromise or seeks a middle way it does so not to avoid controversy but to promote cooperation; for Conant strongly believes that teacher training belongs neither to professional educators nor to academicans but to both, and to the public whom they serve.

But when all this is said The Education of American Teachers remains an enigma. Conant seeks, he says, to replace the present method of training teachers with a program of free enterprise; what he actually proposes is a new orthodoxy. One reason the book has failed to arouse the controversy Conant expected is that both supporters and critics of the status quo are still trying to figure out what it means.

If one notion emerges clearly from the book, it is that the present system has reached a dead end. In a technological age which demands that public education be run wisely and efficiently, Conant finds that our schools are staffed with too many poorly trained teachers; that local school boards regularly flaunt minimum state standards in hiring teachers; that teachers are assigned to subjects which they have studied insufficiently or not at all; and that teachers are required to take courses in "methods" or "foundations of education" which are often worthless.

The indictment falls most heavily on the "educational establishment," a loose alliance of education professors, state officials, and teachers' and administrators' associations. To break the hold this establishment has over teacher has over teacher training Conant advocates 1) giving a greater voice to academic and lay people in councils which advise on the training and certifying of teachers, and 2) making the education of teachers the responsibility of an entire institution, including both a faculty of education and a faculty of arts and sciences.

Most radically, Conant proposes that states sweep away the maze of requirements for teachers certification and grant admission to the classroom to graduates of any institution willing to take on the responsibility of training teachers. All the state would require for certification is a B.A., endorsement by the particular college or university, and evidence of supervised practice teaching--one requirement on which all educators agree.

"What I have been arguing for in essence is a competition to see which institution will quickly earn a high reputation for preparing well-trained teachers," Conant concludes. But lost the professional educators claim he is really arguing for chaos, Conant, while upholding the freedom of colleges to experiment, outlines a draft program of academic and professional preparation for teachers. Academic professors who thought Conant was taking their side will find his criticism of academic programs every bit as strong as his criticism of education courses.

It is his criticism of academic programs that causes the confusion in The Education of American Teachers. Is Conant speaking here as an educator with strong individual prejudices about what programs colleges should offer? Or is he really claiming that present curricula do not serve the academic needs of teachers, and by implication, of any other professional people?

Certainly what Conant advocates would radically change the kind of education offered by many colleges and universities. He calls for a general education program that would occupy fully half a student's time and give him a more thorough exposure to mathematics, the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities than many graduates of Harvard College obtain. He proposes a specific program of concentration that would take up 30 to 40 per cent of a student's time, and professional training in education that would consume the rest. And he strongly attacks the present system of electives which characterizes higher education at most liberal arts colleges today.

"The real issue, in considering the collegiate education of students who are preparing for a vocation or a profession," writes Conant, "is whether as much as one or two years of collegiate work can be permitted to be spread over a wide range of subjects, in no necessarily coherent pattern, entirely at the students choice."

These are strong words. Were Conant's suggestions to be taken seriously, they could touch off a faculty controversy about what constitutes a proper academic program that would make the fight between academicians and educators look like a high-school debate. Though Conant alludes to the well known sensitivity of the academic establishment to curriculum changes, he hardly reckons with the reaction his proposals could arouse.

But there is a more serious reservation to Conant's proposals. Both at the beginning and the end of the book he makes pious reference to public opinion and the importance of gathering informed laymen's views on teacher education. The program he designs, however, would take little note of these views; by removing extensive state super-vision of teacher training it seeks not to increase public participation, but to widen professional control to include academic faculties. This aim is unrealistic. The ultimate effect of making institutions as a whole responsible for teacher training is to increase the accountability to the public, whether by statute or custom. Before they accept the responsibility that Conant offers, therefore, colleges must ask if they are willing to submit their programs to public scrutiny. Rightly or wrongly, many faculties might reject the responsibility for training teachers if it meant accepting outside advice on how to go about it.

One can have little quarrel with Conant's suggestions for professional training of teachers. His analysis is remarkably balanced; though he condemns courses which create a mythology of a teaching science, and eclectic courses which relate education to the nature of the universe, he approves the necessity of expertly taught, specific "methods" courses, and stresses the paramount importance of practice teaching.

Conant also has harsh words for the practice of paying teachers more for credits earned after school or on weekends; he says extra pay should come only for a master's degree earned in a legitimate summer session. Equally sensible is his recommendation that states and local school boards offer loan funds for teacher training and grants for special study after the B.A.

In these precise and obvious recommendations Conant addresses himself well to the problem of training teachers. But The Education of American Teachers falls down in its attempt to offer a broad new curriculum, for here Conant abandons his role of critic and speaks as an educational philosopher with strong prejudices. To the uninitiated, his draft program looks not so much like a method for training teachers as a means of redirecting higher education.