Dateline: Newburgh, NY

This op-ed piece in the New York Times deals with some of the very serious problems with the way teachers are selected and trained in the US. In Canada, there isn't a problem with the way teachers are selected - in fact we get mostly very bright and motivated recruits to the teaching profession. However, the criticisms regarding teacher training are spot on. And there's nothing wrong with the piece's recommendations for improving teacher training, except that their implementation will inevitably cause new and different problems to pop up. For example, if students are required to continue studying the subject they hope to teach, there might be issues concerning scheduling all of the pedagogical topics deemed necessary by the faculties of education. Furthermore, school administrations often find it very difficult, given things like seniority agreements and timetabling concerns, to assign teachers to teach their subject areas - making further study in their own field moot. The concept of solutions causing new problems is well illustrated by the Whack-a-Mole game in the picture, whereby pounding down one mole causes two or three others to pop up elsewhere.

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