Posted on 12/20/2007 6:58:59 AM PST by wintertime
(snip)
American education will never be improved until we address one of the problems seen as too delicate to discuss. That problem is the overall quality of people teaching our children. Students who have chosen education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major. Students who have graduated with an education degree earn lower scores than any other major on graduate school admissions tests such as the GRE, MCAT or LSAT. Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university. As such, they are home to the least able students and professors with the lowest academic respect. Were we serious about efforts to improve public education, one of the first things we would do is eliminate schools of education.
The inability to think critically makes educationists fall easy prey to harebrained schemes, and what's worse, they don't have the intelligence to recognize that the harebrained scheme isn't working.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Sorry to break it to both of you, but the "No Child tax money" is based on standardized test scores, not class grades...and those individual, not group, efforts.
Oh no. I was hoping you were joking. ack!
Been there, done that, but fortunately my husband has a "real job"....
Not to say that teachers are not aquatically paid but until the concept of paying by merit really catches up I don’t the starting salary for a teacher will be high enough for me any time soon.
I think you mean "adequately", but then again, I'm not an English teacher...
By the way, what do you call an engineer wearing a hard hat?
I also tested out of English, but I didn't have to take it to get a teaching certificate. Requirements vary by state.
The quickest way to defund the Left and bring multidisciplinary reform across our society is for millions more families to homeschool.
THEN, and only then, will enough pressure be brought to bear on guvmint schools that they will become more suitable and effective options for the children who must attend them.
I switched from Latin Education to Classics in my undergrad, and while in a MA program in Latin, I got certified to teach.
It took 3 classes to be certified to teach. Of those 3 classes, only one was useless. Something about foundations of education or something. The others were things like ed pyschology, which helped learn how to write appropriate tests, methods, taught by a HS teacher with a PhD in Greek philology and certified Latin teacher, and we learned about tools to help you teach Latin.
I wanted to become a Latinist first and a teacher second. Unfortunately, you can’t do much with a degree in Latin, besides teach. Jobs at the college level are impossible to get and pay much less than I make teaching HS.
I now teach English and Latin in S. Georgia.
But I do agree, most of the education departments and programs are as useless as convincing a Freeper to vote for Hillary.
“I might transition to teaching eventually. Still kind of mulling it over right now.”
Go for it! It will make your days a bit more interesting after retirement.
It’s nice to know some schools still offer Latin. Around here it’s only Spanish with French available only if a teacher can be found. I took Latin in high school and still use what I learned when figuring out definitions of English Latin-based words.
Some of this may not matter. You don’t need to be a genius to teach the 3rd grade, or high school mathematics. You DO need to be good at organizing, communicating and leading - skills not tested by the SAT.
My wife, born in the Philippines, is considering certification to teach elementary school. She spent 20 hour days working to become an RN in her second language (third, actually). She worked for awhile, but stopped and has been homeschooling our daughter. She loves teaching, and she is a genius at getting kids to do what she wants.
Would she ace the SAT? Not without a lot of studying. Would she make a great elementary teacher? Probably. If nothing else, she would be well prepared for any health problems that came up...
Teaching school is not rocket science, but it is something many rocket scientists couldn’t do.
I wasn't aware of the TIMSS data. What I was referring to were the "Calculus, Physics (also Chemistry)" type tests. And the results for all of them gave a truly abysmal showing by the USA. The teaching "profession" has a great deal to answer for, but I doubt they'll ever be "brought on the carpet" to make that answer.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The reason teachers, as a group, have low SAT scores is not likely due to their being born and raised in the Philippines.
By the way, IQ and SAT score are correlated.
It is also a strawman argument to say that teachers do not need to be geniuses. Walter Williams, ( nor I ) have made that claim. How can Walter Williams defend an argument that his never made?
I am also willing to bet that there is a direct correlation between the ability to lead, organize, and communicate and one’s IQ. You failed to mention creativity and originality. I would add that these, as well, are directly correlated to IQ. ( My anecdotal experience only.)
MOsby, surely you are aware that the “Useful Idiot” does not refer to IQ. The term is attributed to Vladimir Lenin but the origin of the term is actually unknown. Some of the most useful of the “Useful Idiots” actually had very high IQs. The following is from Wikipedia:
“political jargon, the term “useful idiot” was used to describe Soviet sympathizers in western countries (particularly in the United States) and the alleged attitude of the Soviet government towards them. The implication was that the person in question was naïve, foolish, or in willful denial, and was being cynically used by the Soviet Union, or another Communist state.”
(snip)
“The term is now used more broadly to describe someone who is perceived to be manipulated by political movement, terrorist group, or hostile government, whether or not the group is Communist in nature.”
Origins unknown
The term is purported[citation needed] to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin, sometimes in the form “useful idiots of the West”, to describe those Western reporters and travellers who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West.
Great Wintertime..whatever..
I was really just trying to be nice and chide a little...
Since we had butted heads before I was trying to add a bit of levity by recognizing that you said something about FReeper teachers that was particularly positive.. and wish you a Merry Christmas..
Clearly I shouldn’t have bothered..
Good Day..
I don’t want to be a teacher because I don’t want to deal with parents. When I get my Masters in Geoscience, the last thing I want is some soccer mom telling me how to teach my class or run a lab. I also would not want to deal with all the highschool drama.
I sure hope she didn’t teach science.....
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