Are teachers really the problem?

More than a third of a century ago, I began teaching. At the time, there was a great deal of concern about evaluating teachers; who would do it, how would they do it, and what criteria would they use?

Like most aspects of education, little has changed in the intervening three decades. We're still focused on teachers as the problem and teacher evaluation as the solution.

For awhile back then, the fad was to call teachers facilitators.
It made a great deal of sense, the work of learning has to be done by the student, the teachers function was to help them learn.

The focus on fixing education by improving teaching, assuming "teaching" can be substantially improved, is addressing the smallest aspect of the problem. The biggest part of the problem is students who don't want to learn, and even the best teachers cannot make students want to do anything.

Public education includes teaching and learning. Learning is an individual activity. For the same reasons you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink; you can't make students learn. The best teacher in the world cannot teach a student who does not want to learn. There is no such thing as a disengaged learner; they have to be there, present and engaged for learning to take place.

The reason kids don't want to learn has a great deal to do with the obsolete model for public education they must endure; 30 kids sitting in five rows of six desks, working out of the same book, on the same page, at the same speed for twelve grueling years.

What are we training them for? When again in their lives will they be compelled to join a group of thirty strangers and form a thought choir in order to accomplish some goal? Even if we could take groups of 30 kids with nothing in common but the year of their birth, and form them into thought choirs, why would we want to?

Lots of things can be mass produced quite economically and effectively; well educated human beings are not among them.

The teacher centered model of education supports an arguement the better teachers means better results. The simple truth is the difference between an average and above average teacher is not that great, and even if it were, it wouldn't make much difference in the overall results because teachers aren't the weakest link in the chain, students are.

In the Journal this morning, link, an extensive article on the "benefits" of National Board Certifications for teachers. The underlying supposition, the exercise makes them better teachers. If you're beating a dead horse to begin with, is a more qualified jockey really your best investment?

Clearly the efforts board-certified teachers put into getting their certification makes them better teachers; but how much better? Deep in the Journal report, the caveat;

Research on National Boards is still inconclusive, but several studies have shown that students taught by National Board-certified teachers show more academic growth than peers taught by non-board certified teachers — although other studies have shown no significant difference. It is unclear whether the process makes teachers better, or whether better teachers choose to go through it. However, there is some evidence teachers improve their classroom practices as a result of the experience. (emphasis added)

Yet here we go, plunging headlong into a very expensive endeavor ignoring the lack of a foundation based on empirical data.

If there really are super teachers, teachers that stand head and shoulders above good average teachers, where are they, and why is their skill set so impossible to quantify?