A Qualified Teacher

Britain is considering to copy the Swedish model of free schools. Nothing is wrong with that, but those schools also employ so called “unqualified teachers. What ever that means.

I myself never thought of teaching as a qualified job. You are either a good teacher or a bad teacher. A good story teller or a bad story teller. Teaching is nothing else but conveying ones knowledge to another. The curriculum is set forth by the government and school board  and given to the teachers to set it forth to their students. They have to organize the process just like mailman organize their route in order for not to jump from one end of town to the other while delivering the mail, but following street after street, house after house. Logical. Right?

Teaching is the same. You put your material in an order of time frame. Starting with the basics and teaching it step by step. A good teacher have to be friendly and open minded and down to earth. A good story teller and a good character judge and also a good psychologist. A mediator. Qualified. Right?

You can’t create a “qualified” teacher. They are either good at the above trends or not. If not, they are not a good teacher. The students will not like them and their conveyance of material will not get trough to the students and they will not co-operate with a bad teacher.

So, in effect anyone can be a qualified teacher that have the above characteristics. There are countries where a teaching position is a Status Que. Countries that are poor or in the former communist countries. I’ve not seen more egotistical, know it all, aggressive bunch of teachers than in those countries. Most of them are absolutely not qualified to be a teacher regardless of their college or university degrees.

Teaching is an important position and I have nothing against teachers per say as we need them to teach us and the children. I am against the word “qualified”. What do  Qualified means?  Someone who is good at it and know their profession inside out, or does it mean someone who has a degree? Two different things.

So the British is a bit conservative and egotistical (snotty)  in their object of “qualified teachers” . This of course puts a halt to a system that is successful. proven and ongoing in Sweden.

Most of us learns the basics in school (because that’s what schools are for) anyway and the real knowledge comes from a bunch of “unqualified” teachers. The plumber you are employed by who has no teaching degree, but friendly, the electrician, the law firm staff, the bookkeeping office staff. I am sure you get the picture.

So, the best “qualified” teachers are the ones that truly unselfishly wants others to excel. Those qualifications have to come from within, or else you are not qualified. The British really has to fear because if you spend more than six months in Britain you’ll discover the cause of it. Half the country can’t speak the language right. The other half  carry a notebook with themselves asking people to write down what they say. Yeah, Bad bad accent and leftover bad attitude from the Oliver Twist and David Copperfield era.