In this episode, we discuss some essentials of teacher training and hence provide a guide to teacher education reform.

Education is the systematic training of the conceptual faculty of the young in order to instill in them the knowledge and methods they each need to be a good, independent, adult human animal. "A teacher (also called a schoolteacher or formally, an educator) is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher) And to teach is "to give someone knowledge or to train someone." (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/teach)

So teachers should be master craftsman of reason and conceptual knowledge in general and in their particular field, and be able to help other people achieve, in whole or in part, that same mastery.. Good teacher training must include:
1. logic
2. grammar
3. multidisciplinary thinking
4. an awareness of the history, biology, and ecology of human life

We discuss this in detail in this show.



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Show notes.
1. "Why Have American Education Standards Collapsed?" by Marc Tucker (23 April 2015): https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-why-have-american-education-standards-collapsed/2015/04

2. "Across the Board, Scores Drop in Math and Reading for U.S. Students" by Lauren Camera (30 Oct 2019) :https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-10-30/across-the-board-scores-drop-in-math-and-reading-for-us-students

3. "Myth Of The Week: The Declining Quality of Education" by Marianne Stenger (4 Jun 2013)
https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/other/the-myth-of-the-declining-quality-of-education/

4. Nation's Report Card: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov

5. Sample Teacher Training Programs
a. Broward College: https://www.broward.edu/academics/education/certification-courses/index.html
b. University of North Texas: http://catalog.unt.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=24&poid=9975&returnto=2587#
c. Missouri State: https://www.missouristate.edu/registrar/catalog/teacher-certification-teacher-education-secondary-ed.htm
d. Andrews University: https://www.andrews.edu/sed/tlc/certification/index.html

5a. Sample Montessori Programs
a. https://www.montessoritrainingusa.com/early-childhood
b. https://www.teach-montessori.org/montessori-training/
c. http://www.montessori.edu/info.html

6. "The vision of the teacher should be at once precise like that of the scientist, and spiritual like that of the saint. The preparation for science and the preparation for sanctity should form a new soul, for the attitude of the teacher should be at once positive, scientific and spiritual.

"Positive and scientific, because she has an exact task to perform, and it is necessary that she should put herself into immediate relation with the truth by means of rigorous observation...

"Spiritual, because it is to man that his powers of observation are to be applied, and because the characteristics of the creature who is to be his particular subject of observation are spiritual." (Dr. Maria Montessori, 'The Advanced Montessori Method - I', Clio Press Ltd, 107)

From: https://montessori-ami.org/resource-library/quotes/montessori-guide

7. The Scientist in the Classroom: The Montessori Teacher as Scientist
Sackett, Ginni, NAMTA Journal, v41 n2 p5-20 Spr 2016

"Ginni Sackett shares insights ignited by a presentation given by Professori Raniero Regni in Rome at an AMI International Trainers Meeting. Dr. Regni stated that, 'To go beyond Montessori is to rediscover Montessori. Montessori is waiting for us in the future.' By re-examining Montessori's writings, Sackett traces the subtle ways in which Montessori's scientific pedagogy has gradually become more associated with the teaching profession than with that of scientists, and she urges us to remember Maria's scientific foundations: 'experiment…observation…evidence or proof.' Because we study 'children, not brains' in a prepared environment and because we offer experiences and do not impose experiences, we are uniquely poised to 'help contemporary neuroscience' and contribute to future research. [This paper was presented at the NAMTA conference titled 'A Montessori Integrated Approach to Science, Mathematics, Technology, and the Environment' in Portland, OR, Mar 31-Apr 3, 2016.]"

From: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1112257

8. “Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” ― Aristotle
vs. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” — George Bernard Shaw

9. "The ‘Those Who Can’t Do, Teach’ Fallacy" by Strontium: https://medium.com/the-innovation/the-those-who-cant-do-teach-fallacy-8116b0e12de5

10. John Wooden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wooden

11. "Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.” --Martin Luther King, Jr. (From MLK’s 1947 article “The Purpose of Education,” published in the Morehouse College campus newspaper The Maroon Tiger. See:

From: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/purpose-education)

12. "For their part, Casadevall and Bosch write that science education reform should result in scientists who are: (1) broadly interested, creative and self-directed, as were some scientists in the era of Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and Linus Pauling; (2) versed in epistemology, sound research conduct and error analysis, according to the "3R" norms of good scientific practice—rigor, responsibility and reproducibility; (3) skilled in reasoning using mathematical, statistical and programming methods and able to tackle logical fallacies."

From: https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/01/03/biomedical-science-education-reform-casadevall-bosch/

13. "Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors—to a striking extent—still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science.” from "Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science” by David Freedman (The Atlantic, Nov 2010).

From: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/

14. “Few [scientists] are philosophers. Most are intellectual journeyman, exploring locally, hoping for a strike, living for the present." --E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

15. "Judging Books by Their Covers" by Richard Feynman

Short excerpt: “The same thing happened: something would look good at first and then turn out to be horrifying. For example, there was a book that started out with four pictures: first there was a wind-up toy; then there was an automobile; then there was a boy riding a bicycle; then there was something else. And underneath each picture it said, ‘What makes it go?’

“I thought, ‘I know what it is: They're going to talk about mechanics, how the springs work inside the toy; about chemistry, how the engine of the automobile works; and biology, about how the muscles work.’

“It was the kind of thing my father would have talked about: ‘What makes it go? Everything goes because the sun is shining.’ And then we would have fun discussing it:

" ‘No, the toy goes because the spring is wound up,’ I would say.
‘How did the spring get wound up?’ he would ask.
‘I wound it up.’
‘And how did you get moving?’
‘From eating.’
‘And food grows only because the sun is shining. So it's because the sun is shining that all these things are moving.’ That would get the concept across that motion is simply the transformation of the sun's power."