Camaro wrote:QUOTE (Camaro @ Apr 21 2011, 10:48 PM) Nay, I'd say the biggest reason why people don't want to teach is cause of the quality of children.
Public school teacher? No thanks! Maybe at a college level.
Obviously, I have a soap box here. I'll be brief.
My opinion is that a lot of issues with American education can be boiled down to a few points
1) Teaching is not a respected profession. For most recent examples, see the rhetoric RE: Wisconson, Indiana, Ohio, et al. People automatically assume I'm a $#@! up for being a teacher, despite the fact that I was offered a programming job out of college making only a little less than I do now (with a Masters and 12 years of experience). I turned it down, because I wanted to teach. On top of that, the current popular argument (re: waiting for superman) is that the problem with the American education system is bad teachers who waste taxpayer funds. I can't address that here, but
this very excellent article does a great job of deconstructing that argument.
2) It's an American value that every child have access to (and be forced to obtain) the same education. This is a value that I share; I directly benefited from it. Nevertheless, it's a value that has consequences. Right now a third of my Precalc students are honestly not ready for the level of difficulty that the class requires. However, they have a right to take the course, and I have an obligation to teach them as best I can. In theory, yes, I should fail those kids. In practice, however, a teacher "self adjusts" to whatever the middle of the room is. To put it another way, I can only go as fast as the weakest student. The course isn't nearly as difficult as I would like it to be, and I don't think my kids would stack up well against students from other countries. If I only had the kids who were really ready for the class, it would be a different story. But I don't, and unlike the business world, I can't send defective parts back. I'm kind of fond of some of those "defective parts," but I'm also fond of the kids who are going at 3/4 speed because of them. TL;DR: We're never going to do as well as countries that "sort" kids into academic tracks.
3) Money matters. I'm not talking about school funding. That's a different fight that I don't want to have today (
BREVITY FAIL!). I'm talking about the kids. Give me a list of standardized test scores from a suburban school and an inner city school, and I can probably tell you which is which. Poverty is a pretty good predictor of academic achievement, and schools in impoverished areas will have a hard time experiencing widespread success until some work is done to alleviate the symptoms of poverty (like coming to school with a full stomach, having clean clothes, having some place safe to be after school, not having to work a night shift, etc). Unfortunately, very few schools are equipped to really attack this 800 lbs gorilla, and the few that do are also sitting on a ginormous pile of cash.
4) Education just isn't a value in our country. We like to talk big about being #1 in education and blah blah blah, but watch the political rhetoric whenever someone with huge academic cred gets anywhere near an elected position. We have a myth in this country about eggheads sitting in ivory towers and theorizing while "real folk" actually go out and get stuff done.
5) Standardized testing sucks. The End. If it were used as an assessment tool, along with other measures of learning and growth (such as a portfolio), that would be a different story. But it's not, and I'm deeply disappointed that the current administration has turned out to be MORE conservative on this issue than the last one.
That's enough for now.
-T
PS. The kids aren't all that bad Camaro....even the defective ones.
