TOW #1 - Teachers Aren't Dumb

In America, "teachers" are adults who are present in our lives from kindergarten to until we're ready to leave the nest for college. Because America is known to give lower salaries to public teachers compared to other first world countries, the top students tend not to go that route. This results in a situation where most teachers are seen as people who were "not that smart" in high school. In Daniel T. Willingham's op-ed "Teachers Aren't Dumb" in the New York Times, Willingham claims that teachers seem to be "dumb" not because of they are actually dumb but because the teaching education they received is, in fact, "dumb."
Willingham explains that teachers weren't the low-level students by establishing logos and ethos. He says, "It's true that the average SAT score of high school students who plan to become teachers is below the natoinal average. But planning to teach doesn't guarantee that you'll...be hired. The median SAT score for those who actually do end up teaching is about the national mean for other college graduates" (Willingham 5). By using these numbers, he shows that teachers actually scored on par with the national average for standardized tests when they were in high school. He also acknowledges the opposite side's possible argument that students who want to become teachers tend to score lower on standardized tests. Then he proceeds to refute that claim, which makes his argument stronger.
He also includes facts to explain the low quality for teacher preparation to establish logos. He said, "In one study, 42 percent [of reading teachers] could not correctly define 'phonological awareness.' Of greater concern, those who educate future teachers don't know them either. Emily Blinks-Cantrell of Texas A&M University and her colleagues tested 66 professors of reading instruction for their knowledge of literary concepts. When asked to identify the number of phonemes in a word, they were correct 62 percent of the time. They struggled more with morpheme, correctly identifying them 27 percent of the time" (Willingham 8). These are facts that logically show how the education teachers receive is lower than what is expected for teachers to learn.
Willingham ends with a short metaphor: "Teachers who don't know these methods are not stupid; they've been left in the dark" (Willingham 14). This sums up the entire process pretty well, and is a simple way to wrap the text. If teachers were taught the necessary material, they would probably would be able to teach with good rhetoric like this text.