However, the view that teacher-training must have the practical shortterm
goal of making them better teachers in the classroom tomorrow may be
short-sighted and dangerous. It is short-sighted since there are other,
longer-term, and possibly more interesting and ambitious goals. And it is
dangerous since it implies that teachers have no need for, or are incapable of
continuing their own general education or engaging in their own scholarly
study about their subject or about their own professional behaviour.
Teachers are scholars. However, some recent educational thinking has
retreated into well meaning but ultimately sentimental concern with children,
sometimes disguised as a practical stance against abstract theorising.
This has sometimes led to teacher training courses which flirt with the
peripheral aspects of academic disciplines. It must be admitted, for example,
that some courses focus almost exclusively on psycholinguistic and
sociolinguistic aspects of language, but avoid any detailed analysis of
language itself. Carter {1980, p. 228) has likened this to the absurdity of a
mathematics course which avoids doing too much mathematics. However, it
has to be demonstrated that training can provide interesting intellectual
challenges, of inherent interest to teachers as educated people. Also it must
be admitted that a real problem with teaching linguistics is that it requires a very considerable initial investment by students before they begin to see the
general value of what they are doing, and can use their understanding to
prepare their own teaching materials. Studying linguistics is like going on a
blind date.