Teacher qualification (2)

While thanking Dr Carmel Borg, Dean of the Faculty of Education, for the kind words he said in my regard, I cannot refrain from saying that I would have appreciated a reaction to other, more basic, issues I raised in my article.

Instead Dr Borg dwelt mostly on one aspect, and this not too faithfully either. In fact, my reference to Cinderella had no bearing on the Faculty's impressive academic credentials and research output at all. This was never in dispute, not with "Ibn Campusino", much less with me.

I also think that it was clear from my article that I hold that the standing of teachers with the public does not so much depend on the research output of the Faculty, as on the real interface between Faculty and public, namely the teachers themselves.

If the Faculty is to attract the best students to develop into the excellent teachers that the country needs, the teachers that graduate should be models of professionalism themselves, comparable to those graduating from the best faculties. Does the Faculty believe that this is already the case? Or does it attribute the persistent difference in status only to the low academic preparation of past teachers and to the Faculty's young age?

It is clear that I do not mind at all being drawn into this discussion about teacher formation; but only as long as it remains a discussion. Dr Borg is right: I am not aware of cliques undermining his Faculty; but I am fully aware of the fact that some faculties that have rendered good service to the country for long years now feel that their younger sister threatens their existence. I never had, and do not have, any intention of fomenting this turf war.

It is unfortunate that those faculties are losing students to the Faculty of Education but I do not think that the latter has any fault in this. Attributing this fact to the utilitarian world we live in would be nearer the truth.

I do also contend that it is not correct that a Faculty should even conceive it could tell another Faculty what the requisites are for its courses and how to organise them. Just imagine the Faculty of Medicine doing this to the Faculty of Law. The mere thought is laughable. Yet, when it comes to the Faculty of Education, somehow, it is not.

It would appear that some individuals think that, by virtue of being University lecturers, that is themselves teachers (but of a very selected audience and at a considerably higher level), they are knowledgeable about the formation of secondary school teachers and feel it is their right, perhaps even their duty, to guide their fellow academics in the Faculty of Education.

In truth, though experts in their own field, more often than not they are not the best placed to suggest either what should be taught at secondary school level or, much less, how teachers should teach it, and hence how much time is needed to prepare teachers adequately for this task.

Finally I must say that I was very glad to read Dr Borg's strongly worded statement regarding the MA (or Ph.D. for that matter) route to teaching. To me it was novel. He says that it is public knowledge, and has been for years. I suspect he had in mind a number of occasions when the problem was raised at high levels, behind closed doors. If it was indeed public knowledge I am glad to have been woken up like Rip Van Winkle (pardon this second reference to another fairy tale) to the real world and to have discovered that it is after all better than I left it.