Steve Jobs runs his big mouth again...

[Asher]

Originally posted by MRT144


thats what the priesthood is for.

Catholic schools.

[Wezil]

Catholic girls

/Zappa

[Drake Tungsten]

Bet you're one of them Blood Elves, huh?

I don't know what this means...

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Jumping in late.

My daughter attended an urban public school from kindergarten through 4th grade (then we left the US); for a couple of those years, I worked with the same urban school system through a university-affiliated NGO.

My wife and I found that the teachers were basically a good lot (the principal, by contrast, was a bufoon, but a harmless one). The big issue was not that they were unfireable, but that they were overwhelmed. Our kid was bright, attentive, enthusiastic and motivated -- she was and is the kind of kid who loves school as a place and education as a process. As a result, she got next-to-no attention from her teachers. Why? Because they were all too busy dealing with the problem kids, and the kids with problems.

I'll never forget the open house I went to when she was in the second grade. Her classroom was decorated with a recent art project: the kids had been asked to write down their fondest wish for the world, and then make a drawing to go with it. I found hers: "I wish we would all treat our planet better," with an appropriately eco-freindly Crayola illustration. And right next to it, the drawing from an African-American boy in the class: "I wish people wouldn't hurt each other with knives." Yes, with illustration.

In a college classroom, the worst students can basically be ignored; eventually they'll stop showing up, fail, and with any luck leave school. In the workplace, toxic employees can mostly be worked around. But in a second grade classroom, the problem child -- either the one who creates problems, or too-obviously has problems -- takes up all the energy available.

I'm sure there are crap teachers; I had some of them. Besides, there are crap workers in every field of endevor, and perhaps moreso when a government paycheck is involved. But we forget what teachers are up against, and forget they they signed up to be teachers, not social workers. Yet they are expected to be both.

[-Jrabbit]

Well said, Rufus.

What disgusts me about primary and secondary education in the US is its MBA-ification. Treating education as a product, making everything "outcome based," teaching to the standardized tests, etc. It's all designed to help the careers of administrators through the appearance of success. Actual education is relegated to incidental status.

There are some great teachers out there. They're frustrated. It's the modern style of administration that is killing education.

[Bosh]

Well the big problem is that crappy teachers mostly work at crappy schools. If they fire all the crappy teachers how are they going to get enough teachers to fill all the spots? Unless you can think a way to make more people who would make good teachers want to become teachers, all firing more teachers would do is shuffle around the bad teachers from school to school.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Bosh
Well the big problem is that crappy teachers mostly work at crappy schools. If they fire all the crappy teachers how are they going to get enough teachers to fill all the spots? Unless you can think a way to make more people who would make good teachers want to become teachers, all firing more teachers would do is shuffle around the bad teachers from school to school.

I'd take it even further: the problem is that the most talented peopel in a society don't want to become teachers.

A personal observation: I graduated from an Ivy League school -- best and teh brightest, blah blah blah -- and had friends and classmates who wanted to do all sorts of things with their lives, from pursuits that would make them obscenely wealthy to pursuits that would leave them impovershed but satisfy their souls. But no one I knew -- no one -- wanted to make a career of being a teacher. Professor, yes. Teach English in Asia for a couple of years, sure. Teach at a private school for a little bit while you figured out what you really wanted to do, absolutely. But a career in teaching? Forget it; it wasn't on anybody's radar.

Were we all just elitist snots? Not at all. Many of my friends were interested in social work, counselling, Third-World NGO work, etc. But we'd all grown up in a society that regarded the teaching profession as something that people of our level of achievement didn't enter.

That may have changed some, especially with Clinton's Teach America program. But that's how it was.

[Kuciwalker]

I'd take it even further: the problem is that the most talented peopel in a society don't want to become teachers.

That's because it would be a tremendous waste of talent.

[Proteus_MST]

It´s not really different in germany.
After the primary school we have a three tir school system. Gymnasium, which prepares pupils for university, Realschule (which takes the only moderately gifted people and should prepare them for things like office jobs) and Hauptchule, where normally only those people go that aren´t bright enough to go to either Realschule or Gymnasium.

Therefore, along with people really wanting to learn but not being considered good enough for Realschule or Gymnasium you will find lots of problem children in Hauptschule, making it a very difficult terrain for teachers.

This also reflects the job wishes of those studying to become teachers. You will find many with the wish to teach in primary school and also many who want to teach in Gymnasium, but you will find only few who want to teach in Realschule and much less who plan on teaching in Hauptschule.
And, as in other countries the job of a teacher isn´t considered to be one of the desirable jobs because of the stress involved (but we still find enough people studying to become teacher, to fill all available slots, but the better ones you will probably find in Gymnasium and primary school with only those with no other option ending in Hauptschule).

[b etor]

Originally posted by Wezil
Catholic girls

/Zappa

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

I'd take it even further: the problem is that the most talented peopel in a society don't want to become teachers.

That's because it would be a tremendous waste of talent.

I don't necessarily disagree, at least in the current system, but you've just put your finger on the problem: we consider a career in education to be a categorical waste of time for society's most talented members. I can think of no other knowledge-based profession of which that is true. And yet we piss and moan about the quality of our teachers -- and imagine that if only there were non-unionized (and, presumedly, paid even less as a result), that somehow things would get better.

[Jaguar]

If we wanted to have more talented teachers, we'd have to both pay them more and make them easier to fire. Teachers Unions are for the former, but against the latter.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Jaguar
If we wanted to have more talented teachers, we'd have to both pay them more and make them easier to fire. Teachers Unions are for the former, but against the latter.

Actually they are against both paying better teachers more and making it easier to fire them. At least based on the positions they've taken in the past.

[Wernazuma III]

In Austria, teachers are the professional group most likely to quit professional life because they're "incapable for psychologic reasons".

The stress involved is enormous:
you don't have any power over pupils beside marks (I recall a case where a pupil provoked the teacher to the blood, pushing him, then grinning and saying "if you dare to touch me, you're done.").
Many parents tend to blame exclusively the teachers when they failed to educate their brats.
Society tends to see teachers as lazy, overpaid bunch since a full contract involves only 20-25 hours of actual teaching. Few take into consideration the preparation and the time it needs to mark tests etc. - agreed, a physical ed teacher has little of that, but a teacher of German, Maths, Latin etc. puts a fair amount of time on that.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Jaguar
If we wanted to have more talented teachers, we'd have to both pay them more and make them easier to fire. Teachers Unions are for the former, but against the latter.

Yep. Whereas taxpayers are against the former but for the latter.

I long ago came to the sad conclusion that almost no one making noise about this problem was actually serious about solving it.