Education Funding Could Mean Real Progress

* In “Let’s Teach Future Teachers the Right Way,” (Valley Commentary, June 12), professors Carolyn Ellner and Jan Mendelsohn complain that the Legislature keeps coming up with tasks for the teachers in dealing with their students, leaving no time for the education professors to deal with those tasks in the 30 units that prospective teachers must take to receive their credentials.

At no place in this self-serving plea did the authors indicate just what it is they do to fill up those 30 units. In more than a quarter century of teaching in the public schools of California, with the exception of the professor in charge of supervising student teachers, I have never seen an education professor brighten the halls of a school, much less enter the classroom. None of my colleagues can recall seeing one either.

What we do recall--old veterans as well as newer teachers--is how useless and out-of-touch are the educational theory classes taught at the graduate level.

I’ll at least give the politicians the credit for knowing that the schools have some very serious problems and mandating legislation to try to deal with those problems. Now, if the Legislature would just carry this knowledge a little further and provide the funding to make that mandated legislation meaningful, then maybe we’ll see some real progress in solving the problems.

ABRAHAM HOFFMAN

Reseda