Deskilling

Donal E. Mulcahy

Deskilling, as it pertains to the teaching profession, refers to the reduction of the teacher's role in the classroom to that of a conveyor of information. The teacher is expected to iterate assigned information to students, and the students are merely to reiterate this information back. Tests are employed to determine the degree to which a teacher has prioritized this process, and a teacher is rewarded depending on how well his or her students produce the information on the tests. In this process, the teacher is seen as a laborer, a nonvariable in the classroom, one who simply follows the prescribed curriculum without input. Pedagogy becomes irrelevant. Pedagogic skill not only is not required, but is not undesirable. The result is the deskilling and depro-fessionalizing of the teacher and teaching. Joe Kincheloe has explained how the phenomenon of deskilling the factory worker and the teacher are comparable. He has pointed ...

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