Teacher Education's Bermuda Triangle

Abstract

Legend has it that there is a triangular area in Atlantic Ocean, defined at its points by Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Miami, into which countless people and more than 70 sea and air crafts have disappeared without a trace during last half century. Dozens of theories have been offered to explain so-called mysterious disappearances, some pure science fiction, others more scientific, and some focused on human error and bad luck. Interestingly, neither Coast Guard nor reputable scientists are persuaded by supernatural explanations for events in area, nor do they even acknowledge that number of disasters is unusual given area's heavy traffic and its size and location (Rosenberg, 1974). Thus, at least officially, there are no inexplicable disappearances, no Bermuda Triangle, and no to solve. As it turns out, mystery of Bermuda Triangle, which got its start as lead story in a fiction magazine, has been popularized in articles, best-sellers, and television documentaries through what Robert Todd Carroll, author of the skeptics' dictionary, calls communal reinforcement among uncritical authors and a willing mass media to uncritically pass on (Carroll, 2002). Teacher education may not have TV shows promoting speculation about it, but it does have its share of unfounded assumptions, assertions, and explanations that are circulated more or less uncritically by media, by critics of education, and sometimes by profession itself. The defining points of teacher education's Bermuda Triangle are not geography of Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Miami but intellectual landscape of dichotomy, mythology, and amnesia. COLLEGE GRADS VERSUS ED SCHOOL GRADS: THE DANGER OF DICHOTOMIES Many dichotomies are based on mistaken assumption that only alternative to a particular idea, concept, or position is its opposite or its absence. Although dichotomies are often rhetorically effective, they are rarely useful for sorting out complex issues. Instead they tend to reduce important differences to mere caricatures while obscuring equally important similarities and nuances. The dichotomy most plaguing education right now is one between grads, on one hand, and school grads, on other. When this dichotomy is invoked, college grads--who are assumed to possess subject matter knowledge and verbal ability--are regarded as most desirable teaching recruits. At same time, ed school grads--who are assumed to be deficient in both of these areas--are regarded as least desirable. Although this dichotomy is reductionist, false in certain ways, and dangerous, it is being widely promoted by influential individuals and groups, including conservative foundations that advocate deregulation of education and other market-based reforms; U.S. Department of Education (DOE) (2002), which has proclaimed that subject matter knowledge and verbal ability are only empirically-certified attributes of highly-effective teachers; and American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (2003), whose mission is to develop a new, low cost, and transportable teaching credential based on paper-and-pencil tests of subject matter and professional knowledge. The main thing wrong with dichotomy between college grads and ed school grads is that it's wrong. It suggests that people entering teaching have either learned subject matter knowledge or they have been prepared to teach in programs sponsored by schools, colleges, and departments of education and thus not learned subject matter. The implication, of course, is that collegiate-based preparation has nothing to do with subject matter and, to contrary, it wastes precious time on inanities such as pedagogy, educational foundations, or supervised fieldwork and community experiences. This false dichotomy ignores completely fact that currently most of those who are prepared in collegiate programs have earned both full subject matter majors (e. …