Dr.
You make a valid point. Indeed, wintertime (often heard on this site) wants to throw teachers in jail, etc.
But I would ask you to be lenient for these reasons:
First of all, the teachers are not nearly as smart as doctors to begin with.
Second, the people running medical schools are actually trying to do a good job, whereas the ideologues in charge of training teachers are not trying to do a good job; they are trying to turn out an indoctrinated person. This is a huge divergence.
Third, being in education is a lot like being in the Catholic Church. You are expected to follow the creed. You are expected to do what your superiors tell you to do. You are not going to find young priests telling bishops when and where they are wrong.
Fourth, K-12 education is full of dense, complex sophistries. Even the smartest people get lost in these things for weeks and months. Do you think the average teacher has any idea what constructivism is or why sight-words don’t work? I write about this stuff all the time, and I can tell you it has taken me months sometimes to see to the other side of these things.
Being a doctor is a profession. In this country, being a teacher is joining a cult, an evil cult. It should not be that way. But to an overwhelming degree it is that way. So let’s feel sympathy for teachers even as we try to coax them out of this cult.
Excellent points!
A few decades ago, I became a certified teacher through studies at a Canadian university. For teaching reading skills; we learned to: diagnose, than prescribe. Some children learn better by sight words — others learn better through phonics — others require different interventions. The teacher is expected to use whatever approach works best for the individual student.
The way Americans have managed to politicize teaching readings skills has continually bemused, befuddled, and bewildered me. Apparently, the enlightened ones (i.e. Democrat-voting members of American Teachers’ unions, along with the elite of the public education establishment) will only sanction some form of sight-word method. Only knuckle-dragging, Republican-leaning illiterates, and their home-schooling fellow-travellers would even consider using phonics. That’s nonsense, of course. It’s also ironic; because the sight-word despots and their ilk usually claim that they (and only they) understand and believe in “science” — yet, the “science” says they’re wrong to insist on avoiding phonics in all cases.
Want better teachers? Then pay them more.