Adding Content to Techniques – Education Needs a Facelift

(Todd Kruse, guest blogger for TPA, is a citizen and taxpayer from Minnesota) During my undergraduate years, my friend Brenda was working on her “double E” degree – no not Electrical Engineering as the campus slang is translated but instead she was pursuing an Elementary Education degree.    I remember discussing some news event with her when she replied,  “oh I have no idea, I am too busy studying………….”

This is America’s problem for both our K-12 education system and our media industry – our teachers’ colleges and journalism schools appear to be completely dominated by teaching the techniques and theories of teaching and of journalism.  It is now time to add some content.

Let me steal the thunder of any detractors who might read this posting – yes I am biased.  This is due to my college teaching experience in Political Science.  I am biased because not only did I complete college coursework in political theories but I worked full time on campaigns and was a lobbyist for several years before I was hired to teach at a college.   I have content and context due to my career experience that I have seen lacking in many instructors who have simply studied theories.

Taxpayers need to expect more from our teachers and journalists since they have a societal role as a public good (via public schools and community newspapers subsidized by tax dollars/legal notices).   If someone knows of an education or journalism school that offers a course of study that is not simply four years of techniques and theories please do let me know so we can steer our children in that direction should these fields of study interest them!!

My proposal – our colleges’ teaching and journalism programs should adopt a “2 and 2” course design which would involve two years of undergraduate study devoted to a field of study (history, economics, math, science, even Latin would be my opinion and God forbid we let the watered-down concept of “social studies” survive another year in our schools) coupled with two years of learning how to teach thus completing an Elementary Education degree.  Journalists who study economics, history, biology, or perhaps criminal justice for two years then spend their last two years studying journalism techniques would offer the media industry a very different type of reporter.   The kind of reporter who might not simply type “federal grants were secured to pay for this city water fountain……….” but would instead ask a probing question such as – “given our national debt of more than $15 trillion and the concepts of federalism found in the US Constitution why are taxpayers in Alabama sending money to Washington DC so the ruling elite can send that same money (after taking its slice to fund the bureaucracy) to build water fountains in Montana?”

Reforms such as this proposal provide the foundation for the civil society renewal our nation so desperately needs.