We Need More Teachers

As I read Franklin’s piece “Idea of the English School,” I found myself generally in agreement with the sentiments Franklin puts forth. I began to think that if such a strict and pointed regimen had actually been enacted in Franklin’s time and carried through to today, the general intellectual level of American youth would be far higher. However, there were some issues that came to mind after reading the piece a second time that illuminate a few of the broader cancers plaguing our society at the moment. The first problem in establishing Franklin’s curriculum is the dearth of people that are qualified for such a role. For a moment, disregard the fact that the public school system in the US is overcrowded, underfunded, and outdated. If every school in the country adhered to the curriculum Franklin suggests in the piece, the biggest problem would be finding someone with the ability to teach such important material for a typical teacher’s salary. If you take college and university professors out of the equation, there are very few highly educated individuals that would forego a lucrative occupation in the private sector to teach young children. I would argue that the majority of the American population with college degrees viewed college as the means by which a high-paying job could eventually be obtained. Therefore, the people that would be most qualified to perform such a noble service as to become a teacher have no intention of doing so. Franklin’s curriculum is useless if the instructor is inadequate, which makes it impossible to imagine such a rich course structure ever taking hold in this country’s public school system. It takes a highly educated person to educate, and until the emphasis on wealth and the accumulation thereof becomes less important, I don’t see an end our downward educational spiral. Of course, the easiest remedy would be to institute higher wages for teachers to make the career competitive in the eyes of a typical college graduate, but I guess there are more important matters to discuss these days, like how many women were groped by one of the men running for president.