‘Whad’ya know?’
New teachers should answer, ‘Law & ethics!’
by Candace Bowen
As Wisconsin Public Radio’s Michael Feldman asks each week, “Whad’ya know?” Sadly, even some secondary school journalism teachers with proper credentials can answer, like Feldman’s audience, “Not much!”
At least that appears to be true when it comes to law and ethics.
And some teachers don’t know much because no one required them to learn much to get their jobs.
Case #1: My own state — Ohio — has Integrated Language Arts licensure, a common sort of “mile wide, half inch deep” curriculum that means pre-service teachers study something about English, speech, theater and journalism, but not necessarily much about any one of those.
In addition, the state Department of Education approves each college’s curriculum, but anecdotal evidence indicates some higher education programs don’t stick to what they submitted for approval more than 10 years ago. Thus students graduate with little or no journalism, and what they do have is often only beginning newswriting.
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