Why Letting Stupid People In As Teachers Is A Bad Idea!

I recently read an ABC news article about a secret report which disclosed the fact that universities were accepting people into teaching degrees with ATAR (a university entry ranking out of 100) so low that some were even close to zero! This is a phenomenal effort in laziness.

To get a good idea about what I’m talking, here a link to the article:

Students with lowest ATAR scores being offered places in teaching degrees: secret report

Students who leave high school with the lowest scores — some close to zero — are being offered places in teaching degrees at universities, a secret report finds. Read the full story
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This is mind numbingly stupid and irresponsible. The report highlights that 50% of teaching degree entrants were in the bottom 50% of academic achievement. No wonder the Unis didn’t want this info released. If someone were so lazy and hopeless at school, what possible reason would you let them back into school? I’m already strongly against teachers going from school to uni to school, but this really takes the cake. Whilst many teachers who go from school to uni to school are ineffective and will struggle to handle the increasingly rapid transformation of education, at least they had to achieve some reasonable level of success in school to gain entry into uni. However, those who can’t meet even the most basic academic standards, should not be rewarded by entry into uni courses which should be demanding far greater ability and performance and command higher salaries.

There’s a great movie called ‘Idiocracy,’ which shows a future that is filled with terrible social and economic problems because people have become progressively dumber. Unfortunately, this is the potentially sad reality of our future, if we let idiots in as teachers. I’ve worked with enough hopeless wasters of space who had to meet some mediocre level of achievement to get into education, I would be loath to work with anyone who couldn’t even meet this basic standard.

‘That’s a bit rude!’ I hear your cry. Well, it’s not actually, because this is about providing quality education and opportunities for students, not sheltered workshops for the lazy and unemployable. I should however, point out here as well that it’s not the lack of academic achievement that’s the issue, because I’m strongly in favour of experiential learning which is not always academically based. It’s more the fact that to obtain such a low result would mean an extraordinary level of laziness and lazy teachers tend to be uninspiring and like a rampant virus infect those whom they should be teaching, with the same level of inactivity.

Teachers need to be talented, motivated and dynamic and as such, we can’t afford to be choosing the lowest common denominator. I would imagine universities are purely looking at this from a numbers point of view to fill courses. What a sad and pathetic way of going about it!

Teacher degrees should push potential teachers outside their comfort zones, challenge them and build them to be dynamic and prepared for the uncertainty of a digital future. The ability to Snapchat or post something on social media, which is most likely in line with the skill-set some of those lazy performers, just doesn’t cut it. Rather than lowering the bar to the point that the next generation will be dumber as a result, why not up the standards, up the pay and show the rest of the world how much we value quality education and quality teachers in Australia.