Our Own Worst Enemy

By Sam Minner

Several months ago, I attended a meeting to consider the application of a young man for admission into a teacher education program. The student was a junior and had completed nearly all of his general education courses. As he put it, those classes were now "out of the way," and he was ready to get down to the business of "learning to be a teacher." The young man wanted to teach science at the middle or high school level and, given that career goal, I was struck by how few science classes he had taken. I was even more struck by how poorly he had performed in them.

The admission process began with a faculty team reviewing the student's academic record, including his grades, ACT scores, and other data. When I commented on how few classes he had completed in his discipline and noted that his grades in those classes were barely passing, I was quickly informed that he met the admissions standards (a C-plus overall GPA and a perfunctory speech-and-hearing screening) and was a "good student with good potential." The interview began.

The candidate told us of his sincere interest in helping students and serving as a role model for them. He spoke at some length of a particularly influential 6th grade teacher, who had helped him with an unspecified, but apparently very difficult personal problem. Since that time, he related, he had "always wanted to be a teacher." I admit that his comments were moving. But I just had to ask him something about the subject he intended to teach. So I asked how many planets were in our solar system. He did not know. I asked what a phylum was. He responded, "It has something to do with biology." Of course, he was...