Innumerable tests over many decades have shown that the mental test scores of people who specialize in education are among the lowest of any college students. This is not an accident. Given the incredibly bad courses in education that abound, in even the top universities, intelligent people are repelled, while mediocrities and incompetents sail through.
I can tell you that the school board and the educational system places much more value on someone with an education degree over someone who is an expert in the field they teach. The "gift" of being an effective teacher doesn't really figure in to the equation either.
In other words, someone with an education degree and certified as an educator, with little or no knowledge of the subjects they teach, is valued much higher than someone with expert knowledge and real-world experience in the subjects they teach.
The prevailing "wisdom" is that unless you have an education degree, you do not know how to teach effectively. The fact that you know your subject is secondary. You will never be a "real teacher" if you are merely an expert in your field and good with kids.
There is truth to this and I am a teacher. Especially at the elementary level. There is little depth, but then again, may be it isn't necesasry at that level.
I had to do a transfer to attain a course for my credential in order to finsih on time. I left a reputable school and went to a school called Cal State Dominguez in Los Angeles, a rough part of town.
I was shocked at the low level of performance from my classmates there. Some of them talked and wrote barely at the high school level let alone at graduate school level. In order to staff the inner city schools they must draw from those communities, and their cultural background was so different from my middle class roots. I would be horrified to have some of them teaching my kids.
My wife, who ran screaming from the teaching profession after only one year "in country", has always railed against her mandatory 3-credit "Educational Methods" course. Out of a 14 week semester, two weeks were spent teaching the prospective teachers how to write with chalk. A substantial part of the remaining weeks was spent on photocopying, mimeographing, and the proper use of film and filmstrip projectors.
This is not true. The average elementary teacher has an IQ of around 112, the average high teacher, around 118. Of course, college professors, lawyers and doctor score much higher. But teachers don't lack native intelligence. What they lack is a proper education. Elementary teachers suffer especially from bad instruction. The education schools offer so many courses that are an insult to even persons of average intelligence. However, you are right to this extent: Education schools do not atttempt to recruit students with outstanding high school records and high SAT scores. Perversely they think of high intelligence as a disability.
A teacher who today would be a first rate engineer, college professor, or medical doctor, in my day was teaching 4th graders math and science.
Bad teachers are an unintended consequence of social fairness toward women.
You said: Innumerable tests over many decades have shown that the mental test scores of people who specialize in education are among the lowest of any college students. This is not an accident. Given the incredibly bad courses in education that abound, in even the top universities, intelligent people are repelled, while mediocrities and incompetents sail through.
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For the most part I agree with you. However, I am a former teacher, now an attorney (for the last 18 years). My "mental test scores" have been pretty high-- this DOES exclude tests of mental health, right? My only quibble with your comments is the generality of them. There are a number of highly-qualified teachers in the work force-- unfortunately, that number is very low, and good teachers are outnumbered by poor and barely adequate teachers by a large margin. I enjoyed teaching, and if I could have raised a family doing it, and enjoyed only a small amount of respect for the work, I might have continued it. That said, I find my current work much more fun and rewarding. (and I don't represent personal injury victims or criminal defendants--one of the conditions my wife placed on me when we agreed that I would go back to school.)
Folks, there is no such thing as an "education major" unless you are elementary.
Teachers at the secondary level at least major in the content they teach, such as English or history.
They just take extra courses to fulfill the education requirements.
And for those who think the classes are pud, at my school at least, they were hard. And helpful...again at least at where I was the information was sound and very helpful, not something you would just "pick up" teaching.