After watching and listening to a recent Education Nation interview NBC's Andrea Mitchell did with Pasi Sahlberg, Finland's Minister of Education, I am even more astounded by the low regard we show for the teaching profession and the lack of trust we have in educators in this country. Finland, we are told, leads the world in science and math education, while as a nation, the U.S. trails far behind. (A side note is due here, because I have always felt that if we compared our heavily-resourced schools in upscale suburban neighborhoods with those of other nations, we would hold our own). Nevertheless, Salhberg attributes much of Finland's success to the high esteem in which his country holds its teachers. They are highly paid, trained at government expense, unionized, and given lots of freedom and autonomy -- not driven by standardized testing.
Here in the United States, on the other hand, there is an unprecedented assault on the teaching