Teacher, Do You Make the Grade?

There was some good news in the newspaper a couple of days ago, for those of you lucky enough to have come out of school able to read.

A union representing teachers is issuing a formal proposal that qualifications be elevated to a much higher standard for the men and women who educate our young’uns in school.

According to the story, the American Federation of Teachers is recommending that, among other things, our teachers of tomorrow be required to get through college with at least a B average, rather than that chintzy little C demanded by most states today.

I grade this idea E, for excellent.

All of those “stay in school” appeals we make to young people would be so much more meaningful if we could absolutely guarantee that they will be taught in school by people smarter than they are.

The story in the paper about the union’s proposal went on and on in greater detail, but that’s all I read of it, because it was very long and there were no Cliff’s Notes.

But I comprehended this much:

We are in need of more lofty teaching ideals in this country, so that today’s children will not grow up believing that “reading, writing and arithmetic” really are words that begin with the letter R.

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One of the reasons we have so many underqualified teachers in America is that even our overqualified ones are underpaid.

I wouldn’t want to exaggerate how unfortunate things are, but even here in Southern California there are some teachers who would probably like to hit up a striking janitor for a loan.

As a kid, I thought teachers had the greatest job in the whole wide world, because they always got the entire summer off to go on vacation. Nice gig.

Only quite a bit later did I realize that most of the teachers who did have the summer free didn’t have enough money to actually go anywhere.

(I now believe this is why they were always asking us to write essays about where we went on our summer vacations. That way our poor teachers could vacation vicariously through their students.)

At a certain age, each teacher I had seemed to be among the brightest people in the universe. Even a substitute would seem wise beyond his or her years, although the only actual evidence I had of this was that he or she certainly did write his or her name very neatly on the blackboard.

Otherwise, the only teaching some of these people did was to tell our class to turn to Chapter 16 in our books and keep reading until the bell.

I grew up with fairly good grades, except for a single “D” that I was given in high school by one miserable old bat. As a rule I wouldn’t dwell on this one poor grade, except that the class happened to be in creative writing. I sent this teacher several very creative notes with several very creative words, right after graduation.

As is true for most of us, I did have a couple favorite teachers. One of them was Miss Ucello, who taught my high school Italian class. We were offered an Italian course in our curriculum because there were a lot of Italian kids in our neighborhood and because somebody finally figured out that nobody in any neighborhood spoke Latin.

And then there was Miss Tipple, who taught us English literature and took the entire class to a movie theater one day to see “Camelot.” I still remember Miss Tipple asking all of us what we learned about King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, and my replying that only one of them could sing.

But I digress.

Qualified teachers? I hope to heck mine were. But I have no actual knowledge that a single instructor of mine did anything in college except get C-minuses and go to kegger parties dressed in a toga. My own college journalism “professor” was an ex-model who went back to school to get a teaching certificate. She taught us that a good writer never begins a new paragraph until ending . . . what was it now?

Oh, yeah. A complete thought.

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Aspiring teachers will be obligated to undergo more rigorous testing, the newspaper story about the American Federation of Teachers goes on to tell us.

Good. Let’s make them name the 50 state capitals--the most useless information we ever learned in school. Give me one good reason why I need to know that Pierre is the capital of South Dakota, I dare you.

And let’s see teachers do that algebra stuff, because I still personally believe that X times Y equals nothing. I don’t care if you divide it by Z, you are never going to convince me that you can multiply the alphabet.

I want it proven--proved?--to us beyond a doubt that none of our teachers are stupid--is stupid.

Therefore I applaud the teachers union and its/their bid to improve the quality of the individuals standing at the heads of the classes. I believe that every single teacher in America should be required to complete college with a B average, and I want to see report cards signed by their mothers.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com.