In the previous issue, I wrote a negative article on teachers (it's not the first time, and it will probably not be the last). That article was supposed to be written and completed within a span of a week, but somehow it was drug out. It was near the publication when part of my article had to be omitted. This section was on student teachers, and I agree completely and totally, without question, that that section should have been omitted. My reviser decided to jettison it because it "downed" student teachers, and I do not want to do that (no, that is not a sarcastic statement). There is something here that needs to be addressed, however, so I will make one final attempt at it.
I really don't want to down student teachers, so I will try to go around the people and attack the program. This is relatively easy to do.
All teachers have to start out somewhere. Very few people ever have the mental "twinkle" to just start out right away. I would even venture to say that the teachers we know had, at one time, to go through an internship. That means that I cannot exactly ridicule the program, but must carefully and strategically attack it.
I appreciate the fact that men and women have the will to go into teaching. I also know that these people will probably be terrific at what they do, basically because they already are. I am not saying that these student teachers are bad at what they do, but I will argue that they are inexperienced.
Science is a good example for a class. There is no student teacher in Biology or Chemistry, so no one can start attaching faces to my comments.
The sciences are also rather difficult to understand. Let's say that I have a teacher and a student teacher in front of me. My parents pay education taxes so that I can go to a good school and receive quality education. Knowing that, which one is more qualified to teach me? Do I get a choice? Should I?
Yes, I should. I have already stated in previous articles that these teachers have the power to dictate my future, as well as the power to make me suffer in the utmost. I won't restate the obvious (but in effect, I already have). I know that a power struggle is a battle I cannot win, but shouldn't I get the best education I possibly can? Don't I have a right to demand that a teacher teach me instead of a student teacher?
I don't like writing this next part. It comes dangerously close to insulting the student teachers, but I'll try to keep it within boundaries. In addition to basic inexperience, discipline is also a problem. When you have someone inexperienced (as all first year teachers are) you can get discipline problems. I respect student teachers, but my classmates usually don't. When the student teachers get ticked off at the class, they blame the entire class. Instead of simply singling out several people and giving them a month's worth of detentions, they give the entire class a pop quiz that is impossible to pass. I don't think I've ever had a student teacher that didn't do this at least once. Experienced teachers do this as well, but it is always a sign of insecurity in the classroom.
As a counterweight to this, I would like to restate that this article is not meant to insult the student teachers that we currently have, or that we will have in the future. The purpose is to strike against the program, not the person. Unfortunately, student teaching is a required program. Without experience, teachers would never be good at what they do. However, I believe further that students who want to learn the subject well should have the option of being taught by an experienced teacher. Again, this will probably never happen. Long after the parasites have abandoned my long-ago-rotted corpse, however, schools may get around to it.
