< PREVIOUS ] [ 1989 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Predictions are always risky, but it's safe to predict
that one of Gov. Roy Romer's proposals will not get past
the edge of his desk. He wants to establish several
education free zones
in Colorado.
These would work like enterprise zones,
where
many governmental impediments to commercial productivity
are waived. In an education free zone,
some state
regulations concerning primary and secondary education
would likewise be suspended.
Teachers would not have to be certified, so some would not be career pedagogues. A chemist might take six months from his regular work to teach a semester of high-school chemistry. Under Romer's proposal, class periods might vary, depending on the subject, and students could select the same teacher for several consecutive years.
This sounds sensible -- after all, are you more likely
to learn chemistry from a chemist? Or from someone with a
degree in chemistry education
? Or, in many school
districts, from someone with a degree in P.E. who also
coaches football, and the year he was hired, the district
also needed a chemistry teacher?
But Romer's proposal won't go anywhere, because it will be opposed by the Colorado Education Association, which is made up of certified teachers who like things just the way they are. The teachers will fight it. One can imagine a forthcoming CEA press release:
The Colorado Education Association, comprising 35,000 dedicated educators who negotiate every year to reduce their classroom hours so they have more time to develop professionally by working on the side, opposes Gov. Roy Romer's so-called educational reform proposal on these grounds:
1. True learning occurs only in 50-minute segments. Isaac Newton discovered the theory of gravitation during his third-period
Mysteries of the Universeclass at Cambridge, which he took because it was the prerequisite forInventing Calculus, offered the next semester. Similarly, Albert Einstein did all his learning during the daily 50-minuteVisualize Yourself at the Head of a Beam of Lightseminar at the Swiss Patent Office.2. Students must be exposed to a variety of teachers. Under Romer's ill-advised proposal, students might attach themselves to one teacher for several years, and thereby lose the insights and knowledge that come from exposure to a rich mixture of knowledgeable educational professionals.
CEA research shows that students at the University of Pisa were once allowed this option. Many of them wasted several years under the misguided tutorage of a charismatic heretic, Galileo Galilei. These unfortunates thereby missed the opportunity to appreciate the contemporary cultural view that the sun revolved around the earth.
3. Only certified teachers are capable of imparting knowledge responsibly.
Again, the CEA's historical research demonstrates the dangers of allowing uncertified teachers to interact with students. If Socrates had only taken the educational methods classes at Eastern Attica State, he could have used film strips instead of dialectic, and he never would have been found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens.
Jesus had an opportunity to attend Nazareth Normal School, where he would have learned the supreme importance of keeping attendance records and gradebooks. Instead he wandered off into the wilderness, and it is well known how both he and his disciples suffered thereafter.
Thus the CEA urges every Coloradan to oppose this so-called educational reforms. The CEA has researched this matter exhaustively, and the only known way to improve education in Colorado is to hire more certified teachers and to pay them more money.
People will believe the CEA, and that will be the end of the governor's proposal.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1989 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >