May 15, 2009

  • I attended a brown bag chat with Harold Levine, Dean of the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. He had some insightful things to say about teacher preparation and its effect on education. He talked about the growing demand for high quality teachers, the short supply of high quality teachers, and we discussed the reality of why this was happening.

    One of the profound statements he made was, "Of all the critical professions in the world, teaching is the least professionalized." What he meant by this is that despite everyone's agreement that teachers are important, they are not provided the systemic professional development, resources, and technology that other professions get. He compared it to how there are constant technological advances in the medical sector, or in the defense sector, but the same sort of discoveries are not being made in the education sector. These advances are directly proportional to the funding allocated to them.

    Just how high is education among society's priorities?