Academic Freedom, Institutional Integrity, and Teacher Education

In the past few years, we have seen a Colorado teacher fired for showing a Bertold Bertolucci film, 1900, in class, because it touched on the controversial topic of anarchy, social studies textbooks banned in Alabama because they contained secular humanism ideas, and the teaching of creationism imposed by a state board on science classes in Kansas. Standardization and standardized testing present clear and present dangers to academic freedom because of the limits they impose on schooling, but teacher education programs and the teachers they produce could be a means for mitigating the danger. During a three-year effort, the Rutgers Graduate School of Education shifted from an early and broad-based agreement to develop a program with a strong concern for preparing reflective and critical thinking teachers who recognized the necessity of protecting academic freedom--to a later result: a much more highly structured, lock-step, and campus-- standardized program that ignored critical thinking and intellectual freedom for faculty or students. [...]I do not contend that every teacher should have academic freedom simply because they have a teachers' license, just as I do not contend that every doctor or lawyer should be practicing their professions no matter their competence.