Sometime in the last two weeks i understood that i want to be a teacher. More precisely, i want to teach social studies at the high school level. This is because social studies basically encompasses all my active interests (those that i critically think about and feel i can influence in some way, rather than my layman’s interest in biology or astronomy for example). Having no teaching credentials but a BA in anthropology and an MA in political economy, i decided to pursue this goal by applying to teach in private and international schools since they do not generally require formal credentials.
From my short investigation, here are the differences:
International schools are private schools, but different from domestic private schools. For one, international schools cater to international students whose parents are employed temporarily in a country as diplomats, specialists, international school teachers or in some other function. These schools are expensive but not necessarily very competitive, they follow the UK, US or some other curriculum, and can either be freestanding or part of a cluster managed by a headquarters somewhere. They’re rarely religious. In countries with weak or poor public education systems, children of local government officials and rich persons will also attend these schools. The language of instruction can be multilingual, with the dominant language usually being English or French.
Private schools on the other hand are domestic enterprises that cater to local communities. There is the denominational private school serving the religious community, the charter school serving the economically disadvantaged community, and the elite private school serving the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy attracted by the promise of an intellectually rigorous curriculum. In elite schools (like Dalton or Spence in NYC) it is normal to hire Ph’Ds and other types of graduates as teachers, rather than those with a degree only in education. I think that this allows more flexibility to their teachers, who are respected as experts and innovators of a subject, rather than as dispensers of established “facts.” I like to think that this allows for a curriculum where teachers and students can delve more deeply into subjects without pressures from above dictating what to teach and when.
Charter schools, on the other hand, have fewer resources than elite private schools, but the main difference (whether through causality or consequence) is that they are far more likely to take the passing of national standards as their focus. Charter schools are motivated by the desire to reduce the gap between low-income students and everyone else, a (noble) goal in which college admission is upheld as the most substantial component. Consequently, the importance of satisfying national standards (through examinations) is elevated because these increase students’ chances of graduating high school and send a positive signal to actors who pay for the school, whether these are parents or private grant distributors). I don’t know who are the teachers likely to teach at such schools, but I doubt that they’re Ph’Ds. Private schools can hire any qualified “educator” (a politically correct and inclusive term), so that it is theoretically possible to teach in a charter school without a teaching certificate or degree in education. However, my feeling is that a standard education in teaching, whether at the undergraduate or graduate level, prepares educators better for implementing the type of curricula present in charter schools. By better I mean that future educators are taught how to implement the standards set by the “education experts.” It is my impression that a professional education in teaching, as in some other professional subjects, teaches individuals how to apply a certain protocol, rather than to question the theories that underlie the protocol.
Neglecting the theoretical underpinnings of teaching (methodology, course content, school structure) facilitates the fantasy of a linear relationship between poverty and college education. Workers with a college degree do make on average almost $20,000 more than workers with only a high school diploma, but even as more individuals than ever before in the US are enrolled in college, the majority of jobless workers today have college degrees! (For interesting discussion check out the user comments on this and this article). What is studied and where may be of more importance than the fact that one has studied in college. Moreover, the system of education is embedded in a larger socioeconomic system wherein all socioeconomic problems are interrelated, so that the very notion of a linear relationship between college admission and the good life is a fallacy. That college is treated like a panacea, or the first step towards panacea, obfuscates the systematic roots of poverty and the many other difficulties people face. In this way, poverty, failing primary schools, the high cost of college tuition and increasing student debt, and unemployment, as well as work culture, leisure activity, and healthcare are all outgrowths of the desocialized and dehistorisized neoliberal logic that strives to turn every collective process into a commodity to sell on the market. What are the the structural causes of the poverty? “A poverty that has been grotesquely exacerbated over the last four decades of neoliberalism. If we say we have to look at causes rather than symptoms, the underlying argument is that poverty isn’t a matter of distribution, so it can’t be solved by redistribution. What’s at issue is reorganising the structures that have produced the poverty in the first place….”
I think that neoliberal logic is especially manifest amongst the marginalized. And the charter school is a manifestation… By orienting their mission as to prepare students for college and acting as enforcers of an education curricula commanded from above, private schools serving low-income communities deny their students an education where they could have learned invaluable others skills that are harder to quantify through a state administered exam but that contribute to a dignified life!
But how does such a standards approach to education affect my own intentions and tensions in becoming a social studies teacher? How does it impact subjects like social studies, which by their very definition are porous and flexible? These are questions i wonder about as i apply to all types of schools….
Stories of Uncertainty 