While I think the conservative impulse is to beat up on the teachers (or at least the unions that represent them) and that impulse needs to be reined back in...I also think there's a tendency in other circles to make a lot of excuses.

Yes, judging teacher's performance is hard to measure, but so is a lot of other jobs. For example, in my job if we lose profits there are dozens of variables that can play a factor, many of which I have no control over. My boss doesn't want to hear excuses when our profits fall. He wants it taken care of. Teachers should be accountable for the product they deliver.

I worry that their somewhat unique role means teachers think they should get a pass on basic job success.

Here's the detail I always wonder about: If everyone is riding bikes around constantly, will we all have to adjust to increased levels of BO?

Even if it was practical for me to bike to work, I think about sitting at my desk after a 20 minute bike ride and my assumption is that my coworkers would appreciate a shower first.

I really get the sense that we are about to see a big leap in technology over the next 5 years or so. There are so many things that are right on the cusp of mass-marketablility. The thing I am most excited about is wireless internet on domestic flights. Within a year it should be the norm.

I think we Romans solved that one. Perhaps we should locate all military bases in Nevada?

'Tis the slippery slope of singling out certain members of our society for special protections.

There seems to be a real tendency among military personnel to get hitched about 5 minutes after boot camp. Then the govt has to lay out significantly more in money for family housing. Requiring that enlisted personnel be single until they hit 10 years of service (or whatever the benchmark) or attain a certain rank seems like a smart idea.

I'm hurt that no one enjoyed my GI Joe comment... : (

As for the budget, here's a radical idea: Require that all military personnel under a certain rank or years be single. Think of the money saved simply by not having to fund family housing. Plus, it's always been my opinion that men (and women) without a spouse and kids at home are better warriors.

All I'm going to say is that if Will Wilkinson is right about a war in the Artic...we're going to need these guys:

http://gijoe.wikia.com/wiki/Frostbite

http://gijoe.wikia.com/wiki/Iceberg

I would also recommend activating Blizzard, Snowjob, Whiteout, Windchill and Arctic Snake Eyes.

E.D. - When you say 'progressive' are you using the popular definition which is that progressive = liberal?

I think a lot of the fiscal conservatives are heading the Libertarian route. Honestly if Libertarians wanted to start a serious recruiting effort, I can't think of a better time to do so.

We know where the Religious Right stands. We know where the few remaining fiscal conservatives stand. At the moment I am extremely interested in finding out where all these so-called 'moderates' stand. I think we need to define the left border of the party. Where does conservatism stop and the squishy territory of the Centrist begin?

As for Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, etc... they are completely reactionary. The President sets their agenda.

E.D.

I'm not suggesting we scrap the whole system. I'm suggesting that alternative certification would be a nice way to augment the current system. I think the passion that comes with someone leaving their field to teach for a couple of years would be infectious. The problem is (and I don't mean this to sound like a conspiracy theory) that the universities and the school systems are in cahoots together. Both fiercely resist the notion that someone can be a good teacher without graduate certification.

I would be a lot more willing to accept the MA requirement if teachers were required to get their undergrads in the subject they are going to teach. At the University of Louisville, for example, if you are going through the MA program to teach social studies, they make you take a couple of economics classes, a couple of geography classes and a couple of history classes. I don't think that is enough preparation.

I think a 4-year program where you are preparing to teach a specific subject is ideal. I'm sure they exist, but most BA programs are generic 'elementary education' or 'secondary education' degrees which over-emphasize teaching techniques and under-emphasize subject matter. I know a girl who took 2 college-level psychology classes, got ehr MA and now teaches college credit Psych 101 in a local highschool. That's pretty messed up.

Will,

So what if the military makes torture a tool of warfare? What if we raise the black flag and commit to violently torturing every captured soldier as a way of breaking the enemy? Does it then become more justifable?

This may speak to a point I made on a Mark Thompson post. While I am not arguing that torture is okay, I do find it hard to draw a line in the sand that says torture is wrong, but blowing up a terrorist with a precision-guided bomb is okay. In a sense the Geneva Convention is one big wink and a nod that is based on a sort of moral relativism as well.

The President, for example, has already made the declaration that in his administration we will, "...kill Osama Bin Laden." So we've already passed judgement and the army has shoot-on-sight orders. If they were to capture him and shove toothpicks under his fingernails for a couple of days then shoot him in the back of the head, then we've crossed some kind of line.

I would argue that using the word morality when describing war is always going to be a lesson in contradictions.

I guess my point is that even if we only require teachers to have a BA, what is preferable? Someone with 4 years of learning various 'teaching techniques' or someone with 4 years studying the field they are actually going to teach? I've read a lot of horr stories from parents whose kid's teachers don't seem to really have a grasp of the subject matter they are teaching. I think we need to get back to emphasizing a mastery of the subject over teaching methods. As I said, we don't require college professors to have a teaching certificate. Why force it at the lower levels?

E.D.

I'm with you on not being in favor of vouchers. Quite bluntly, the reason that private schools do so well is that they are exclusive i.e. they can kick bad kids out and the tuition is a sort of litmus test for how much the parents care about the kids' education. Flinging the doors open to poor kids from questionable homes and failing schools is not going to lift those kids up, it's going to tear the schools down.

(I realize that the above statement is ripe with generalizations but I hope everyone gets my point.)

The answer has to be competition within the school system. I don't have all the answers on how to create that but one thing I have seen work with my oldest daughter is that she attended 'traditional' schools within the system. These schools are sort of like magnet schools except they emphasize an overall curriculum and tough discipline over one specific subject. At these schools there was a real sense of elitism. The kids were told that they should be proud they made it in and should be thankful for the quality education. I've always said that filling a kid's head with a little bit of ego at that age can be helpful. It's the same thing that made the Catholic high school i attended a success. My problem is that i don't know how to create that elitism in EVERY school. In order to be elite, someone else has to be at the bottom.

It's not a state requirement, it's a district requirement. Here in KY you can teach in some districts with a BA. The larger cities like Louisville and Lexington require an MA.

I will second what Jaybird says. In KY it's typically a 2-year master's program to teach in the larger school systems. What I see as even more concerning is that you don't even get into a classroom until the 1 year mark. At that point you are pretty invested in the program and the thought of bailing is pretty scary. So then these graduate reluctantly start teaching and find they hate it.

If they offered 12 week certifications with mentoring a lot of professionals might be persuaded to take a year off to teach. Employers could even allow them a paid sabbatical as a sort of charitable donation to the local school system. The school system wouldn't have to pay them and the corporation would get kudos for helping the community.

I'm talking about a scenario where a constitutional lawyer could take a paid leave of absence from his firm in May, get 3 months of training in techniques and be teaching kids civics by August. If he has problems, there is an experienced teacher in the room next door that will mentor him with basic 'how-to' stuff. Personally I would love to have my kid in that class, even if the lawyer is a little rough around the edges in his presentation, rather than a 20-year school system burnout who lost their passion to teach ages ago.

Look at it this way, organizations like the Peace Corps send young people abroad with a short amount of training and they do extraordinary things. Why do we not trust professionals to do the same in our schools? Is teaching this mysterious thing that only 2 years of grad school can prepare us for?

Even with a Masters in a specific subject you cannot teach in many districts without a teaching certificate. If we allow a History graduate student to teach undergrads why would we not allow him to also teach high schoolers?

As this looks to be comment 62 I hope I am not plowing ground that has already been covered above.

From E.D.

This is one reason accreditation and actual teaching degrees for teachers make sense to me, in the same way that law degrees and bar membership make sense for lawyers.

I so often agree with your take on things but you and I diverge on this issue I am afraid. In a former life I was an archaeologist for 3 years and my company primarily focused on 'public archaeology' and educational programs aimed at kids. It was an extremely rewarding experience and we greatly enjoyed the collaboration with other education professionals. One thing that was frustrating though was the contention by more than one teacher that we were merely providing information and they were interpreting it for the kids and making it a 'learning experience'. They scoffed at the notion that kids could be educated by individuals without a teaching degree.

Matthew Yglesias wrote about alternative certification for teachers awhile back. I am a big proponent of this idea because it would bring individuals into the teachign field who are passionate about the subject matter and well-versed in a particular subject. In addition to my Anthropology degree I have a BA in History as well. I would LOVE to spend a couple of years (or longer) teaching history at the high school level. I have experience working with kids, I like public speaking and I think I would be pretty good at it. The school system says that i am not qualified to do so. Instead they will allow someone who majored in Business and then took a couple of history classes as part of an ambiguous teaching certification to teach history instead of me.

Where is the logic in that?

Imagine placing well-educated individuals from a variety of fields into the classroom after a 12-week crash course on teaching methods, giving them a teacher-mentor, and letting them teach the subject they are well-versed in? Biologists teaching biology. Mathematicians teachign math. Historians teaching history. Is that so novel a concept?

There's a lot we can do to improve our schools. You say that teaching degrees will make teachers be taken more seriously as professionals...I say how about letting professionals teach?

The esteemed Joel Kotkin and the good folks are doing a lot of good work on these issues over at Newgeography.com and they come at it from a right-of-center perspective. I believe Ross Douthat is a fan as well.

I believe that David Brooks said that the worse thing for the GOP would be for them to get back into power without having earned it. My only question is: Did the Democrats earn their current success or was it just a combination of voter fatigue, shrewd politics and an extremely unpopular President on the other side of the aisle? A prety good case could be made for the latter.

I'm also a Southerner (though admittedly the Civil War history of Kentucky was a bit more complicated). I tend to view our dark moments as important because they are usually the precursor to some of our best moments.

From William:

The problem with the latter account is the degree to which it depends on Europe destroying itself twice over in thirty years in wars that left our territory basically untouched. Which is to say: the U.S.A. got its hegemony by carefully taking advantage of others’ mistakes, not by some special historical dispensation.

I really liked this point. It's factually accurate and it describes our rise to power well. It also describes the rise of power of the USSR, which also capitalized on the destruction of Europe in WWII. What sets us apart is why were were in that position. We chose to step up and help Europe. Not once, but twice. And then again when we protected them during the Cold War. And so on, and so on.

I don't criticize Mark for his belief in American exceptionalism. He seems to base his belief on the uniqueness of our founding documents and the potential of our government. I base mine on our people. I don't think we are beter than anyone else in the world, but at various times we have been…well…exceptional. Maybe it is because we have a culture built on Hollywood but I think every American believes that the world needs a hero. Maybe instead of Superman the world got Batman, with all his flaws and dark moments. Superman drops the bad guys off at the local jail…Batman hangs them by their legs from tall buildings until they talk. At the end of the day though, don't we celebrate both because they chose to step up?

I've been advocating we look farther back than Bush for some time now. My baseline is 1947. I'm not doing so though as a way of deflecting criticism of Bush (two wrongs never make a right). What I am suggesting though is that the torture investigation voices demonstrate this is about more than revenge by digging deeper.

I would also mention that judging from the way the administration has been careful to not criticize the previous administration on torture leads one to believe that Obama knows more than we do.

E.D.,

I'm not sure I completely understand your position but if it is that yes, on some level America remains an empire, I would disagree. I think the compulsion to use that label or imperialism is mostly based on the threat of power. It's easy to see an American military that has no equal on the planet and see the way that power is projected around the globe and draw the conclusion that we are trying to use that power as a tool in international relations. To a point that is true, but power implied is not the same as power applied.

I think the notion of 'economic imperialism' is a much easier case to make, but even there it is not so much a colony-master arrangement so much as it is a big fish/little fish scenario.