Teaching for Tomorrow

LEGISLATORS AND EDUCATORS finally took steps in the right direction last week towards addressing one of the most dangerous problems confronting American society today--the alarming shortage of mathematics and science teachers in secondary schools. A spate of new proposals would reverse the decline in math and science teaching--both in numbers of teachers and quality of those entering the profession--by retraining teachers from other fields and by making teaching jobs more attractive. Although the new measures are to be lauded, they still fail to deal with the reason for the shortage, namely, the ridiculously low salary level for teachers.

The House of Representatives approved a bill last Wednesday that would allocate $1 billion over the next five years to improving math and science teaching in the public schools through grants to states and local school districts. Though the measure is stopgap in itself, its strength lies in a provision that designates $50 million in scholarships over the next two years for students who plan to go on to teach in either math or science. Such an approach at least attempts to make teaching more lucrative--in the long run the only way to replenish the profession's depleted ranks. Officials predict, though, that even if the bill were to pass the Senate's scrutiny it would inevitably receive a presidential veto because of its tremendous cost.

Two weeks ago the Reagan Administration proposed its own plan, which would set aside in its 1984 budget $200 million to retrain teachers certified in other subjects for instruction in science and math. Working through state agencies, the plan would provide up to $5000 for unemployed and newly certified teachers. While officials in educational organizations were encouraged by the Administration's concern, they are quick to point out the meagerness of the plan in the face of an enormous crisis. One official in the National Education Association estimated in The New York Times that the plan would provide one teacher each for one half of the nation's school districts. Currently, 43 states acknowledge a shortage of math teachers and 42 a shortage of physics teachers. Twenty-eight report under staffing in chemistry as well.

A presidential veto of the larger plan--which passed the House 348-54--would prove disastrous, substituting a mere gesture for at least the start of a remedy.

The more imaginative approach needed to crack the problem is a new strategy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, aimed at dealing with the dearth of science and math teachers in Massachusetts. The Ed School intends to set up a 15-month program for middle aged workers from the technological industries, retraining them to teach science and math. These people would retire early from their current jobs and bring infusion of skill and knowledge to the hurting high school curriculums. The plan is not meant as a panacea but as a model, since it will enroll only 25 "students" in this first stage.

THE BROAD IMPLICATIONS of the growing teacher shortage are frightening indeed. The most obvious result is the inaccessibility of economic advancement to many students. One of the few areas of astonishing growth over the past ten years in an otherwise stagnant economy has been in the technological fields. Innovations in the computer industry, for instance, continue to open up a tremendous number of job opportunities. Locally, Boston-based genetic engineering is predicted to have a considerable effect on the area's economy. Yet in years to come, young people will find it increasingly difficult to secure a place in these burgeoning industries without the fundamental math and science skills upon which they are based, skills the high schools must provide.

A representative of Hewlett-Packard, an American firm heavily involved with micro-chip technology, recently told a Harvard Business School group that America's share in the global electronics market has dropped from a post-war 100 percent to a current 25 percent, with Japan and other Asian nations picking up the slack. He did not, though, attribute this decrease to the inability of American goods to compete in world markets but to the decline in quality and numbers of science teachers in high schools.

The high-tech firms now riding the crest of their industry's boom simultaneously drain gifted teachers away from their jobs, but these firms will find themselves in a most difficult position in the years ahead when less and less brain-power is available because nobody was there to develop it. Such actions as Congress' proposed bill and the Ed School's retraining program are welcome efforts in an otherwise bleak situation, but they represent only a beginning. Major strides in filling high school staffs with competent math and science teachers will only occur when these teaches receive higher salaries. As long as they are paid paltry amounts for this important task young and would-be teachers alike will continue to abandon the teaching profession for high-paying jobs in business, industry or medicine. The problem can be solved by having money poured into it--if only the government chooses the right direction to pour.