Great article on teacher's shortcomings in US Education.

[vulturesrow]

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Let's face it: Most of the teachers in our public schools do not have what it takes to develop high intellectual potential in students. They cannot give students what they don't have themselves.

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This is a sentence from this article by Thomas Sowell. Im sure many of the people in this forum that attended public school in America felt like they were probably smarter than many of their teachers. I for one can count on the fingers of one had the number of teachers I had growing up that I that was my intellectual equal, at least once I hit the high school level. I dont say this be an egomaniac, as I know many of the poeple on this board are much smarter than me. Its just a sad fact of life that a) teachers are consistently not that great intellectually from the get go and b) this will probably never change until we figure out a way to make a teaching a highly desired profession.

[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?

[adios]

Is the situation different in foreign countries? My understanding that most of the graduate students in engineering and scientific disciplines in the U.S. are foreign. Let's say that it's a much higher pecentage than one would expect. If what I said is true, why is there more success apparently in other countries in educating their students?

[lehighguy]

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

[lehighguy]

There are a lot of varying reasons. It's hard to lump the rest of the world into one group. You'd have to talk about specific countries and systems.

[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.

[FishHooks]

In my opinion there are two main problems

1. Unions, you would think increasing pay would create a supply of more teachers, but it would cost a ton with the NEA running everything and the pay being based on years teached rather than preformance. Even if you raisee pay your just going to get people who are more interested in making more money, and not necessarly more qualified.

2. An extension of my last sentence, you dont need much to become a teacher. Most subjects you dont even need a degree in what your teaching you just need a degree in Education. Substitute teacher standards are even worse. If you raise standards you will just get less teachers than we currently have

So what is the solution?
Ideal solution: Get rid of the NEA, pay teachers based on preformance (not by tests but people who will observe classrooms and also observe grades and peer reviews) Then this will allow you to increase pay for good teachers and a better incentive for smarter people to jump into the field. Then since you have more intrest from smarter people to jump into the feild you can then start raising qualifications as you will have an excess of teachers.

realistic soultion: No idea...I dont think you can raise pay and not raise standards and vice versa and with unions your going to be getting a lot of dead weight anyways and bad teachers.

I know I will get flamed or something I said, always happens, but if anyone can offer a better solution or even a better analysis of the problem go for it.

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?