Teachers colleges are under attack, but here's why education schools matter | Opinion

Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Lee invited ultra-conservative Hillsdale College to help open affiliated K12 charter schools throughout the state this past summer.

When Hillsdale President, Larry P. Arnn, spoke to a large crowd in Tennessee about the plan− with the governor seated next to him− he said that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country” and that when you major in education “you don’t have to know anything.”

Unsurprisingly, this claim drew ire throughout the state because everyone knows a public school teacher and they are not dumb. While these claims might be infuriating to some, historically, they are repeating similar claims that have been made about colleges of education in the last century.  

The origins of teacher training

Early teacher training programs known as normal schools expanded dramatically in the early twentieth century to support population growth and the new phenomena of public high schools. Normal schools were brief vocational programs that focused on imparting specific skill-based knowledge to future teachers, rather than academic content expertise.

As school populations continued to grow, normal schools became teachers’ colleges. There are numerous state universities scattered around the U.S. that started out as teachers’ colleges.

Famously, Lyndon B. Johnson attended Southwest Texas State Teachers College, now Texas State University. The University of Memphis started as a normal school and then West Tennessee State Teachers College.

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In the early 1900s, secondary education began growing exponentially. Prior to World War One, around 10% of students in the U.S. attended middle and high school− which was mostly private and reserved for privileged youth who used it to prepare for college admission.

By 1970, nearly 90% of young people in the U.S. attended high school. Colleges of education or teachers’ colleges would help train the teachers needed for such growth.

Explaining the progressive education movement

Colleges of education have long been critiqued as lacking focus, politically biased or failing to teach practical skills. But what is it that makes Larry Arnn say such disparaging things about colleges of education, or Chester Finn, a school choice advocate, and former assistant secretary of education, who called colleges of education the “most-despised institutions in the education universe.

The answer is found in the progressive education movement. John Dewey−a bookish, mustached, small-glasses-wearing philosopher of education− helped lead this movement and his ideas became the drivers of many colleges of education throughout the world.

His pragmatic philosophy emphasizes the experiences of students, and the school as a place where students find their purpose as a member of a democratic space. Dewey believed that “education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”

Dewey is known as a progressive pragmatist, believing that schooling should help students learn to solve real problems in society. He saw schooling as a place where young people learn to live in a democracy with others who don’t look like them, think like them or believe as they do.

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In progressive education, teachers are there to help students find their educational pathway based on their experiences and interactions with others. To Dewey, teachers help facilitate learning; they don’t simply impart knowledge into empty vessels.

Dewey’s ideas, as well as other progressive thinkers like Jane Addams, are threatening to some because they emphasize critical thinking, social responsibility, community building and democratic engagement. Progressive education is not focused only on the individual.

Progressive education encourages teachers to approach schooling as a way of life, where disciplines and subjects are integrated and focus on the interest of the student rather than classical curricula to which students sometimes have a hard time relating to.

Teaching is more than a vocation

Colleges of education have a tough job. They serve as professional schools, where they teach methods of teaching. They also offer knowledge about philosophy, history and sociology, while encouraging future teachers to unlearn negative stereotypes about student groups.

Daniel Lortie’s 1975 seminal study , School Teacher, revealed that many teachers often mimic the teaching style of their teachers, rather than focus on research-tested practices. Changing school culture is complicated because schools often reflect the community in which they are situated.

To think that this can be done by siphoning students out of public schools is simplistic and undemocratic. Recently, some states have relaxed teacher preparation standards in an effort to deal with a teacher shortage crisis.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis revealed a plan that would allow veterans to teach with no pedagogical training or training in the teaching profession. DeSantis views teaching as a vocation, where you can hand teachers a script and tell them to read it.

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Teaching is so much more than that. The hard-working individuals who work in colleges of education know that schooling has the potential to be more than memorizing facts, taking tests and sitting at a desk. It can be life itself.

Dustin Hornbeck is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Memphis. His research focuses on dual enrollment, college access, democracy in education, and federalism. Hornbeck was a James Madison Memorial Fellow of Constitutional Studies where he studied at Georgetown University and received a PhD from Miami University.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Teachers colleges are under attack, but here's why they matter