"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

University of Memphis Plans to Establish Teacher Preparation Caste System

In the first decades of the 20th Century, the differentiated curriculum came into existence as a way to sort, segregate, and direct education programs that would ready the children of the most northern European and the richest for societal leadership roles, while preparing a docile workforce for the rest who could be contained, segregated, trained, and taught to value labor.  An efficient sorting machine was constructed by using primitive intelligence and achievement tests to undergird a long-established social darwinist ideology and a eugenics agenda aimed at maximizing social hygiene and efficiency.

As Faulkner said, "the past is never dead; it's not even past."  Today in Memphis, the University of Memphis is putting the finishing secretive touches on a teacher education program that will extend the hundred year old plan for separate schools for the poor by providing separate teacher preparation for the poor schools.  Having recently found themselves losing enrollment to the Gates, Broad, and Walton funded alternative certification plans based on the theory of total compliance paternalism, rote memorization, and cultural sterilization, the University of Memphis has decided that it would rather take the money and join the party than to fight.  The result, no doubt, will be more young white missionaries in schools that cry out for the most caring and professionally prepared teachers who know more than than teaching like a robot would teach a robot.

Continuing at the University of Memphis will be the regular teacher education for those going out to teach in the leafy suburbs where child development, curriculum development, storytelling, linguistic appreciation, writing instruction, etc. remain valid needs. 

To say this represents a miseducative crime against poor children specifically and humanity in general would be the purest and gentlest of understatements.

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