Great article on teacher's shortcomings in US Education.

[phlup]

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and b) this will probably never change until we figure out a way to make a teaching a highly desired profession.

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Um, how about paying them good money to teach? That increases the supply of people who want to be teachers and therefore increases the quality.

And has it ever crossed your mind that perhaps your teachers weren't as stupid as you think? Could it be that as a teenager you thought you were the greatest thing ever and no one knew as much as you did?

[lehighguy]

1) They were that stupid.
2) Most older teachers I knew got payed alot (senoirity), but didn't teach well.

[vulturesrow]

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Um, how about paying them good money to teach? That increases the supply of people who want to be teachers and therefore increases the quality

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I totally agree. But its not quite as simple as just "raise their pay".

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And has it ever crossed your mind that perhaps your teachers weren't as stupid as you think? Could it be that as a teenager you thought you were the greatest thing ever and no one knew as much as you did?


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Nope it really didnt. Like I said, I had a few that were definitely very good that I didnt feel this way about. The rest were frankly just not that great. Did you happen to the part of the column where he talked about how college students in the education dept. consistently test lower than than those in other fields?

[phlup]

I'll admit I didn't read the article. But I probably agree with it 100%.

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Did you happen to the part of the column where he talked about how college students in the education dept. consistently test lower than those in other fields?

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I just broke up with a woman who is getting her masters in education. I had to inform her that D.C. was in fact south of Boston. She would also call me and complain about a hard problem that stumped her in class which would take me all of about .3 seconds to figure out (and I'm not that bright). So yeah, I've seen the lack of intelligence in our up and coming teachers.

Yes there are a lot of idiots in the teaching profession, but I think if we treated them better and paid them the money they are worth (the are after all educating all of us), then we'll start to see an increase in the competency and skills of these people.

[vulturesrow]

A big step would be getting rid of the DoE and letting people choose where they send their children to school. It wouldnt hurt if the teacher's union went bye bye as well.

As far as paying teachers what they're worth, I would say that their time off counts as compensation.

Here in Massachusetts teachers get two weeks off at Christmas, a week off in February, a week off in April, and all of July and August off. What other full-time job gives people three months of vacation?

[wmspringer]

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As far as paying teachers what they're worth, I would say that their time off counts as compensation.

Here in Massachusetts teachers get two weeks off at Christmas, a week off in February, a week off in April, and all of July and August off. What other full-time job gives people three months of vacation?

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Keep in mind that it's not exactly a 9-to-5 job, though :-)

I teach middle school, and so far this week (Mon/Tues) I've put in approximately 23 hours. That's a bit higher than average, but don't think teachers are just sitting around taking it easy.

[BCPVP]

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Um, how about paying them good money to teach? That increases the supply of people who want to be teachers and therefore increases the quality.

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If we paid the Cincinnati Browns players more money, would they win more? I doubt it. Throwing money at a broken system is probably not the best way to fix it.

[elwoodblues]

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If we paid the Cincinnati Browns players more money, would they win more? I doubt it. Throwing money at a broken system is probably not the best way to fix it.

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If you paid more money, you could afford better players and, yes, that would make a difference to the Browns.

[BCPVP]

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If we paid the Cincinnati Browns players more money, would they win more? I doubt it. Throwing money at a broken system is probably not the best way to fix it.

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If you paid more money, you could afford better players and, yes, that would make a difference to the Browns.

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My point was that the mere act of paying someone more doesn't automatically make that person do a better job.