At a recent family gathering, a friend who is a public school teacher was talking with a young nephew of mine. The nephew is a college freshman who is majoring in business. He's having second thoughts about his choice of major. He was an excellent athlete in high school. Now he's thinking that he might want to become a gym teacher and coach. The teacher told him that he'd be required to teach another subject in addition to physical education. He'd need to do this to be considered a serious candidate for the job. Gym teachers often choose social studies, she said. A good strategy would be to choose math instead, she added.
As the conversation continued I learned that gym teachers commonly supplement their physical education duties with social studies teaching. Apparently social studies is seen as an easy subject to teach. Few choose math, she said, because it's perceived as more difficult. A gym teacher who is willing to teach math is more likely to get hired, she offered helpfully.
The nephew replied that he isn't much of a math whiz himself and wondered if he'd make a suitable math teacher. "Not to worry." replied the teacher, "You don't need to be good at math to be a math teacher. Everything you need to know is in the teacher's manual."
So there you have it, in American high schools social studies is a lightweight subject often taught by gym teachers. And math classes are a kind of thin gruel; safe work for teachers without math skills.
I'm sure we can do better than this. The home schooling movement gives me hope. The popular revolutions sweeping the planet give me hope. And now I have hope that the time is right to make a revolution in higher education. The Free University Project is dedicated to that proposition. Stay tuned dear reader.
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