Unions welcome teacher training overhaul

This initiative is long overdue, but if new demands are going to be placed on Sweden's teachers of the future, then new rewards will also have to be offered. Otherwise, it will remain a second- or third-choice profession for the majority who find them in the field. If they make it more demanding, they will have to make it more rewarding (higher pay!!) or else...well...rats on a sinking ship and all...

How about getting Swedish parents involved in their kids lives? We can not teach and raise your kids as well.

@ uunbeliever

Teachers get the wrong end of a very smelly stick when it comes to children's behaviour. They get the blame even though they only see the little darlings for 6 hours a day in a 5 day week. So who is letting these little angels down?

Now, you are not allowed to blame the parents because they work so hard and care ever so much and would do everything in the world to see their groin strains do well in the struggle that is capitalism's modus vivendum.

So it must be the damned teachers. Yup, you're to blame and it's the liberal modern teaching system that you force on the pathetic critters that causes them to fail and become a burden on modern society.

So as you pour yourself another Scotch, you teachers should consider the harm you have done to Swedish society and Western Civilisation.

Shame on you ....;)

Most teachers I know, though don't see any given kid 6 hours a day. Rather one or two hours every other day for a total of 3-6 hours a week. Why the expectation of raising kids has fallen to the schools is beyond me. Trying to set an example is the best we can do. Beyond that is the parents responsibility.

@ Davey-jo, wow have I missed real sarcasm!!! Haha thanks. I am a teaching student in Linköping and some of the differences from my native land (Vancouver, Canada) are shocking. It is illegal for us as teachers to force deadlines for assignments because it puts pressure on the students. What??? "yeah I know I was supposed to check the temperature of the nuclear generator, but I felt that I was pressured into it" god give me a break.

The school system right now prepares students to be lazy in the workplace, which they are, and not be responsible for themselves, which they are not.

I am only first year so I do not know all the answers but can see the reflection of the school system in the workplace.

Not my job, not in my jobdescription, "det står inte i mitt avtal" , who's bringing bullar to ficka?. . . .

A Convenient Mistruth: Teacher Education is a Myth & we like it that Way; Is this Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome?

One must seriously question whether we really want teachers and students to get Better. Ironically, while teaching is an old practice it may have failed to become a mature profession, and for reasons that most everyone knows but at some level seems to be denying. There are some great teachers, and even some great Teacher Preparation programs, but these are random occurrences where consistency is essential even while it will never produce "perfect" teachers every time. The reason is simple: Professional Education is (perhaps intentionally) absent the fundamental and coherent standards found in all other professions. Believe it or not, there is no core curriculum, and no sincere, systematic effort to identify Best Practices, no consistency of content from one professor to another; 80% Concurrence from one same named course to another is the quinesstinal core of every profession, from being a barber to a neurosurgeon. It is through the somewhat contentious process of identifying such principles and practices that professional maturity is achieved. Accordingly, it seems sensible to formulate a process for identifying, activating and cultivating Best Instructional Practices. The problem is that there has been too much that has become crystallized around our current state of affairs. Too many of us have figured out how to live with and even benefit by Education's dysfunctionality, often having it serve as the object of scrutiny rather than each of us. This dynamic is quite common. For example, there are accounts of children whose parents incidentally discourage normal development for admittedly subconscious/self-serving reasons. One variation even has a name it is called Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome.

It would be especially helpful to have many minds addressing and illustrating how these core and collateral entities now benefit by and/or might rectify this unintentional misdeed. Does anyone have an argument, explanation, means to suggest that is better? How about even a way to, at the least, redirect the question and possible solutions to some of sources of teacher competency: Professors, Schools of Education, Learned Societies, Foundations, Teacher Guilds, Federal and State Departments of Education, School based Educational Leaders, major media and publishing houses, and what of, parents, and students.

Below are two websites devoted to a form of mass self-examination a la' Rational-Emotional Therapy that ideally would allow our profession to continue toward institutional & societal maturity. Please join the discussion at:

Anthony V. Manzo Blogs