I'll bet that 99% of you have no idea what this title means, so explaining the concept is the idea behind this blog.
Rationalization started back in the 1890's by Frederick Taylor. Taylor was the father of the assembly line, not Henry Ford. What "rationalization" means is dividing the complex jobs associated with building a product into simple individual activities, thus the assembly line. Rather than requiring a very skilled person who can do anyone of 100 individual jobs to build a product, rationalization allows the activities to be divided between 100 workers who only have to master "one" activity. This is what Henry Ford did when he applied this concept to his assembly line. As you can see this is a very powerful concept in lowering the cost of a product.
Now, let's look at how it might apply to school teaching. Most of use had to go thru 13 grades to graduate from high school. This includes kindergarten. When you think back on your experience, it is clear that kindergarten was a lot easier than your 12th grade in high school. Further, it is clear that the teacher for your advanced math or physics class needed to be much more skilled than your kindergarten teacher. Our problem is that our college system and our government regulations require all teachers to complete similar 4 year college degrees that prepare them to teach classes from kindergarten to 12th grade. Henry Ford would turn over in his grave thinking about how we run our schools today.
As I have pointed out in prior blogs, the cost of professional services is dictated by the cost of college and its impact of the number of years left after college that the person can amortize their educational cost. It is further impacted by the fact that education gets more expensive as one moves up the ladder, with K thru 12 being the least costly and post graduate being the most expensive. What we should be doing is thinking about how we could get our basic k thu 12 teaching as economically as possible, This is not a one sided affair. We can't demand a "perfect" system, because we could not afford that. We need to think about the "best value" given our limited funds. Nationally it costs taxpayers about $13,000 per child per year for K thru 12. Two year community colleges cost about $20,000 per year per student and four year state colleges about $40,000 and there is no limit on post graduate cost. If these figures seem high, realized that tuition does not pay 100% of the college cost. Tax payers are kicking in a lot more than you think.
Given the above, it is my opinion that we should be able to fill all teaching positions from K thru 8 from our community colleges. Think about this? Educating the teacher would only cost $40,000 and the teacher would add at least 2 years to their productive teaching career. Compare that with our current situation where a teacher costs $160,000 and has 2 years less than the community college teacher to get their bait back. If you are still stuck with wanting the "perfect" system, realize that home schooled kids taught by their parents who are not even college graduates do better on average than those going to our public schools.
I have blogged before that currently many of our school teachers "game" the system with Masters degrees or work beyond their BA that have little affect on the quality of their teaching. It has been my experience that there is no class worth teaching in high school or k thru 8 that merits or requires any degree or college work beyond the standard BA. I know that the teaching BA degree is watered down and that is part of the problem. 90% of the rest of the world does not have special teaching BA degrees. Their teachers get regular college degrees not watered down teaching degrees and the results is that they all have superior teaching results. If a teacher wants to go back to college, it should be to get a higher paying job that requires more skill, not to game the taxpayers by being paid more to teach the same number of students.
I would even go so far as to propose that we make teaching K thru 8 a "transition" job. If these teachers are so smart, they could help the economy more by using that skill in higher paid technical jobs where we are now short of workers. If they are not smart enough, they should be exposed and not allowed to hide in our schools where they expect to get paid more than they are worth on the free market.
Think about it? I think that rationalization is the solution for our schools, taxpayers and the economy.
PS--Did you ever hear a college graduate tell you about their degree and how they had both a "Major" and a "Minor"? I never heard a real college graduate say that. It has always been a school teacher who had a watered down teaching degree. If they have both a major and a minor, anyone of them should be prepared to teach any class from preschool to 12th grade. I know a lot of teaching graduates who don't know how to balance their check books. How is that? The average parent who home schools does a better job than our current teachers with special teaching college degrees.
Rationalization started back in the 1890's by Frederick Taylor. Taylor was the father of the assembly line, not Henry Ford. What "rationalization" means is dividing the complex jobs associated with building a product into simple individual activities, thus the assembly line. Rather than requiring a very skilled person who can do anyone of 100 individual jobs to build a product, rationalization allows the activities to be divided between 100 workers who only have to master "one" activity. This is what Henry Ford did when he applied this concept to his assembly line. As you can see this is a very powerful concept in lowering the cost of a product.
Now, let's look at how it might apply to school teaching. Most of use had to go thru 13 grades to graduate from high school. This includes kindergarten. When you think back on your experience, it is clear that kindergarten was a lot easier than your 12th grade in high school. Further, it is clear that the teacher for your advanced math or physics class needed to be much more skilled than your kindergarten teacher. Our problem is that our college system and our government regulations require all teachers to complete similar 4 year college degrees that prepare them to teach classes from kindergarten to 12th grade. Henry Ford would turn over in his grave thinking about how we run our schools today.
As I have pointed out in prior blogs, the cost of professional services is dictated by the cost of college and its impact of the number of years left after college that the person can amortize their educational cost. It is further impacted by the fact that education gets more expensive as one moves up the ladder, with K thru 12 being the least costly and post graduate being the most expensive. What we should be doing is thinking about how we could get our basic k thu 12 teaching as economically as possible, This is not a one sided affair. We can't demand a "perfect" system, because we could not afford that. We need to think about the "best value" given our limited funds. Nationally it costs taxpayers about $13,000 per child per year for K thru 12. Two year community colleges cost about $20,000 per year per student and four year state colleges about $40,000 and there is no limit on post graduate cost. If these figures seem high, realized that tuition does not pay 100% of the college cost. Tax payers are kicking in a lot more than you think.
Given the above, it is my opinion that we should be able to fill all teaching positions from K thru 8 from our community colleges. Think about this? Educating the teacher would only cost $40,000 and the teacher would add at least 2 years to their productive teaching career. Compare that with our current situation where a teacher costs $160,000 and has 2 years less than the community college teacher to get their bait back. If you are still stuck with wanting the "perfect" system, realize that home schooled kids taught by their parents who are not even college graduates do better on average than those going to our public schools.
I have blogged before that currently many of our school teachers "game" the system with Masters degrees or work beyond their BA that have little affect on the quality of their teaching. It has been my experience that there is no class worth teaching in high school or k thru 8 that merits or requires any degree or college work beyond the standard BA. I know that the teaching BA degree is watered down and that is part of the problem. 90% of the rest of the world does not have special teaching BA degrees. Their teachers get regular college degrees not watered down teaching degrees and the results is that they all have superior teaching results. If a teacher wants to go back to college, it should be to get a higher paying job that requires more skill, not to game the taxpayers by being paid more to teach the same number of students.
I would even go so far as to propose that we make teaching K thru 8 a "transition" job. If these teachers are so smart, they could help the economy more by using that skill in higher paid technical jobs where we are now short of workers. If they are not smart enough, they should be exposed and not allowed to hide in our schools where they expect to get paid more than they are worth on the free market.
Think about it? I think that rationalization is the solution for our schools, taxpayers and the economy.
PS--Did you ever hear a college graduate tell you about their degree and how they had both a "Major" and a "Minor"? I never heard a real college graduate say that. It has always been a school teacher who had a watered down teaching degree. If they have both a major and a minor, anyone of them should be prepared to teach any class from preschool to 12th grade. I know a lot of teaching graduates who don't know how to balance their check books. How is that? The average parent who home schools does a better job than our current teachers with special teaching college degrees.
