Training Teachers

“Reform in Board’s Hands” (editorial, Feb. 28) makes a lot of incorrect assumptions about a teaching credential. Possessing one does not automatically imbue the skills and knowledge necessary to becoming a good teacher; the supposed skills and knowledge gained through a teaching credential may have little practical use in an actual classroom. Learning to teach is “hands-on” and an experienced teacher without a credential may well be a far better teacher than a newly minted one with credential in hand.

Why don’t you send a reporter to sit in on some credential classes to discover firsthand what a genuine waste of time and money credential classes really are? Since there are so many emergency-credentialed teachers who scored higher on the CBEST than their fully credentialed counterparts, why not tie pay to another false indicator of teacher preparation, the CBEST?

Emergency-credentialed teachers should not be penalized because society cannot entice enough people to go into the teaching profession.

MAUREEN MacDONALD

Woodland Hills

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Re “Substitute Shortage Is Worsening,” Feb. 28: I have in front of me a handful of letters to the editor, written over the past 10 years by various people who have predicted a teacher shortage unless the politicians and the media stopped using teachers as the scapegoats for every problem in our society. I also have a much larger pile of editorials and articles that blame teachers for just about everything wrong with America.

No profession--especially one as underpaid as the teaching profession--can be the target of such persistent, relentless attacks and still recruit new members. Even parents who are not aware of these hostile attitudes are now telling their sons and daughters not to become teachers. Hence, we have a teacher shortage--one that will develop into a national crisis unless the politicians and the media stop promoting the anti-intellectualism that eats away at our nation’s soul.

DENNIS M. CLAUSEN

Escondido