Also, older people who have not regularly worked with kids are nowhere near prepared for the energy level they will be thrust into. Most people at retirement age are looking forward to slowing down a bit and relaxing. Tossing them into a room full of volatile teenagers is the exact opposite of what most of them want. They tend to become very impatient and angry with kids and try to be the tough guy. If they last two years, it's a miracle.
Some men can't get along with their own 2 or 3 kids. Now imagine having 100 or more kids each day, whose personality is different every day, whose families are terribly screwed up, who don't want to listen to you, and you are in for the ride of your life. Also, most adults are not tuned in to the culture of today's kids. For older folks it is like being from another planet. They spend most of their time laughing at that stupid old fool trying to teach them.
These guys MIGHT do OK in a highly academic college prep school, but in an average or below average school you had better give them a year of observation of successful (and unsuccessful) teachers before you put them in a classroom. Most of them will probably drop out of the program. Whoever thinks two weeks of student teaching is all you need is insane. Bare minimum is working with an experienced teacher for a year and slowly being integrated with constant guidance into taking over teaching that class full-time.
How do I know this? Some years ago I was a teacher. I saw a number of these guys come and go, burned out quickly. After a while on the job, they came to the conclusion, "I don't need this." If you don't have the heart and energy of an enthusiastic kid in his 20s, think long and hard about "retiring" into teaching.
Most excellent points.
I would only add that when some kids do not wish to learn, when their purpose is to disrupt the education of others, these problematic jerks aged 16 or more should be forced out. They will likely end up on the streets, so send ‘em there a couple years early and let the decent kids learn.
The only reason they are allowed to remain is that every warm body represents state/local funding and therefore jobs for the teachers union.
Maybe...just maybe, the reason these classes that you described are so difficult to manage is that most of these kids should be completely finished with formal education by the age of 13 and out into apprenticeships doing meaningful **work**.
Government schools look like prisons. In many ways they treat children ( whose only crime was being born) like prisoners. While in their prison-like “schools” all of their First Amendment Rights are either completely crushed or severely regulated and suppressed by government bureaucrats. Then, when they manifest prison social pathology the clueless government teachers blame the parents, the kids, taxpayers, legislators, ....everyone but themselves for cooperating for a system that crushes the spirit.
If our Founding Fathers were to be resurrected today they would be **HORRIFIED** to see how we treat children in the common, prison-like, government, socialist-entitlement school! When they advocated education for the nation's children, they likely had their **own** educations in mind. This included, homeschooling, private tutoring, a few years of one-room schooling organized by neighbors, dame schools, Sunday schools, and ( for those with the ability and wealth) small residential academies in the homes of high respected tutors to prepare for entrance into college as **young** teens.
Excellent comments. Just knowing science doesn’t make you a good science teacher.
And in today’s school systems, quite often the teacher spends a lot of time trying to maintain order in the class. I know three young people who started out in teaching, but quit because of the discouraging, stressful, chaotic environment. At least one of them was a science teacher.