So, I’m watching TV news and the newscaster tells me there is a nationwide teacher shortage.
Nonsense, I tell the newscaster; there is no shortage of teachers. An outmoded way of looking at education, sure, but not a teacher shortage.
Education used to be thought of in terms of personal enrichment. Students became better persons by being exposed to the great thoughts and achievements in art, literature, music, the sciences and mathematics.
But that concept of education no longer fits the way we live today. Education for the individual is now solely vocational, training for a job. And for the country, education is a weapon to keep America “ahead” of all the other countries that want to surpass us.
Keep “ahead” in what? Not in writing poetry or composing symphonies. No, the kind of education that will keep America “ahead” is in science, mathematics, technology and engineering.
Other educational disciplines won’t get students a job, nor will they keep America “ahead.”
So why teach them?
Besides, do we really enjoy or value the traditional arts and non-sciences? Music today can be as simple as performers shouting rhyming obscenities accompanied by ear-splitting percussion. And literature can be something called graphic novels – basically long comic books if you ask me. These don’t need teachers. And the traditional arts teachers are no longer of much value in today’s society.
Looked at in this way, the solution to the so-called teacher shortage is simple.
Schools should only teach science, math, engineering and technology.
But, we are told, there aren’t enough such teachers to go around.
Oh, but there are.
And they already are in our schools.
Take all those teachers of literature and music and art and poetry – all those no-longer-needed subjects – and retrain them to teach science, math, engineering and technology.
That will solve the so-called teacher shortage.
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And to re-enforce this changing, more appropriate concept of education, I suggest we no longer refer to the recipients of education as students. They should be called competitors.
Individually, they compete with other competitors for jobs. And as Americans, they compete with competitors in other countries so that we can stay “ahead.”
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.