Child Liberation: Trying to Bypass the "Teacher Monopoly"

University schools of education -- teacher training colleges -- have a virtual monopoly over the training of government school teachers in the US. This privileged monopoly has led to curricula for government schools that produces more indoctrination than education. The resulting incompetence and psychological neoteny of government school graduates has not gone unnoticed by US universities nor US employers. Can the US find a way to break the government education indoctrination school monopoly?

Not long ago education schools had a virtual monopoly on the teaching profession. They dictated how and when people became teachers by offering coursework, arranging apprenticeships and granting master’s degrees.

But now those schools are feeling under siege. Officials in Washington, D.C., and New York State, where some of the best-known education schools are located, have stepped up criticisms that the schools are still too focused on [indoctrination (AF)] and not enough on the craft of effective teaching. _NewYorkTimes

Government schools in many cities have become dangerous places for -- mostly female -- teachers, who are sometimes beaten, raped, and even murdered by students. For such tough districts, a tougher type of teacher would be more than appropriate. What about retired military special forces operatives or drill instructors? Or retired inner city cops or firefighters?

As US inner cities collapse around their uneducated, welfare-dependent tenants, their schools continue to degrade into corrupt cash cows for unscrupulous officials and insiders. Teachers' unions play along with the scam, receiving their own cut of the tax booty. The children are burned on the pyre of politically correct bureaucratic paper-shuffling and insider mutual back scratching.

The Obama - Pelosi administration has made a few token moves toward school reform, but has delivered nothing of substance. Instead, it has taken some huge backward steps in favouring teachers' unions against school choice for parents and students. Actions count, words wank.

Parents who care are an uncommon commodity inside many US cities -- or so it seems. Or perhaps the dependency mentality is too strong for parents to break away and attempt a strong effort on behalf of their own children.

If alternative teaching certification programs are to succeed in bringing strong and effective teaching to government schools, they will need the support of concerned parents and other citizens and civic leaders. Otherwise, business as usual will just dig everyone deeper into the foul quagmire of corrupt "education."