Guest Post: Teacher Prep Programs Are the Root of the Problem

A first-hand account from a former teacher and mother of four

By Beanie Geoghegan

I graduated in 1997 as a thoroughly indoctrinated progressive teacher. At the suggestion of a few of my professors who acted as mentors, I read books by Herbert Kohl, Bill Ayers, and Jonathan Kozol and attended lectures by well-known education activists. I was an easy target, with a bleeding heart and a victim mentality, determined to change the world one student at a time. I had never heard of E.D. Hirsch or the science of learning and assumed only rich people benefitted from classical education. Little did I know that my education was just getting started.

As a new teacher with a classroom of my own, I arrogantly dismissed the patient veteran teachers who offered me sage advice as old-fashioned and out of touch. I assumed they were unaware or unconcerned that some of their students were poor or came from broken homes. They clearly didn’t know that no teaching or learning could occur until we had addressed every outside issue the students brought to school. Professors whom I looked up to taught me that my job was to meet the needs of my students and that their academic needs were not necessarily a top priority.

My progressive teacher training also taught me the importance of ensuring my lessons were fun and engaging but not necessarily effective. Bored students would check out and not learn from me. My job was to ensure they didn’t lose interest in my teaching. None of my professors mentioned that the students shared any responsibility for their learning. I’m sure that would have collided with the idea of being friends with rather than an authority figure to my students. The first few years, the result of this mindset was often chaos, frustration, and exhaustion (my students probably experienced all of those things, too). 

After working in various school settings, watching how my own children learned, and observing successful educators with an open mind in an attempt to emulate them, I tossed aside most of my progressive ideas for what worked. In the past few years, I’ve completely reversed my views as a bright-eyed, ill-informed activist teacher and have become more like the teachers I dismissed early in my career. 

The change didn’t happen because a smooth-talking academic with lofty ideas of an educational utopia convinced me of anything. It resulted from years of witnessing firsthand clear evidence demonstrating what works. Oddly enough, the education practices I now adhere to and promote are not too different from my own experiences in primary school. I guess I’ve come full circle. Thomas Sowell once said, “Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” I believe that this aptly applies to the government education system. 

I’m sharing my story because I think it’s important for people to know that most of the problems we’re facing in education aren’t rooted in young people with malicious intent toward children but come directly from the teacher prep programs. Unseasoned teachers often unwittingly implement methods that don’t work because their progressive professors told them they do. 

I hope that they are fortunate enough to be surrounded by more experienced teachers who offer advice and guidance so they come around. The slow march through the institutions took decades to complete. Undoing the damage will likely take as long. I’m proof that facts and truth can change the most stubborn of minds. Be patient, but don’t be silent.

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Beanie Geoghegan is Manager of Content & Solutions and Co-Founder of Freedom in Education. She has been involved in education for over two decades as a teacher, parent, volunteer and advocate. She spent the last 2 ½ years in a leadership position for a national parents' organization where she worked side by side with parents in Kentucky and around the country. Though her four children are no longer in school, she is using her experience in the classroom and as a parent to continue to advocate for the next generation. You can follow her on X at @beanie0597.

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On a related note, Parents Defending Education recently put out a report with examples of course descriptions and syllabi from over sixty teacher preparation programs across the country. You can view our report called CorruptED here.