ABSTRACT
Teachers have a difficult job. Faced with pressures from a variety of angles, teachers must struggle to maintain their motivation and their self-esteem. The fact that so many do is a miracle of sorts, testimony to their dedication and to their drive. We consider such dedicated and adept teachers heroic figures and do everything possible to show our appreciation and our respect for them when they teach our children or when they appear in our graduate classes. Having said this, however we, like generations of analysts before us, believe that teachers suffer because of problems in their professional training not only at colleges of education but at colleges of liberal arts and sciences as well. When teachers emerge from higher education—through no fault of their own—they are frequently unprepared to teach at a level commensurate with their potential. Colleges of liberal arts and sciences too often teach broad survey courses that encourage memorization of isolated facts, not systematic analysis of the field.
