Scientist to Teacher in Record Time!

This is the caption on a new local billboard, clearly trying to lure capable technical people into the struggling teaching field. It’s advertising an accelerated program that will cut down the obstacles usually put in place to keep people from getting a state teaching certificate. Also, presumably, this advertising is funded by the US local or state Department of Education with the idea it will solve the problem of not enough capable people willing to teach science and math in the public schools.

This sounds like a wonderful solution—we’ll just invite scientist to come in and they’ll take care of things. But will it work? There are some definite problems with the idea. As usual, it’s a program planned by bureaucrats without much idea of conditions in the classroom, or why scientists don’t seem to have much interest in working as public school teachers.

First, there’s quite a difference in pay between scientific or technical occupations and teaching. A grant for this program funds part time work that pays a pittance during the qualifying period. True, the current high rate of unemployment means there might be a body of unemployed engineers, mathematicians and scientists out there, so maybe some of them will take the offer. Then what?

Scientists and mathematicians are generally task-oriented, rather than people-oriented. This means they have plenty of skills at solving technical problems, but they don’t necessarily have people skills, especially the kind they’ll need in the classroom. There are schools where the students are attentive and well-behaved, with a good background and a real interest in getting a good education, but it’s unlikely there’s a teaching position open at that school. The teaching jobs that are hard to fill are those where students are poorly behaved, failing, often absent, suffering from psychological, emotional or learning disabilities and hostile to anyone suggesting they should work harder so they can graduate. All these problems are expected to be handled by the teacher. It’s not a school administrator’s job to deal with it.

Besides these problems, there’s increasing pressure on teachers to improve student test scores. In order to “improve” teacher qualifications for this, state Departments of Education have imposed onerous requirements, set up bonus programs and resorted to micromanaging what the teachers present. In some cases, teachers are expected to read from an approved script so that all students receive the same approved instruction.

So, what the program is offering is a low paid, difficult job that's supposed to be what? Rewarding because the teacher gets to work with children? A better solution for the lack of science and math teachers is to realize that the demands on teachers are unrealistic, and to improve teaching conditions. A local physics teacher recently quit in the second week of school. “I don’t have to put up with this,” she said. She packed her things and left the students sitting there.