Brad DeLong peers back into his archives to find a years-old post with the simple title "Pay Teachers More Money" because, after all, "the best and quickest way to make teaching a more attractive profession is to pay teachers more." I agree. That said, there are also a lot of weird barriers to entry into the teaching profession -- formalistic requirements centered around getting degrees from education schools -- that have little relationship to effectiveness in the classroom. It's one thing to have basically pointless credential-based barriers to entry into a lucrative field (the third year of law school, etc.) but it's a very harmful bottleneck for something like teaching.
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Mo' Money Mo' Teachers
18 Oct 2007 09:40 am
Comments (130)
1) We have an EXTREMELY high incarceration rate -- far more than any other civilized nation. And the rate for some groups like Afro-American males is far higher. We basically run massive concentration camps.
2) Which is extremely wasteful -- I saw an estimate that we could send every prisoner to HARVARD for the price of what we pay to keep them jailed.
3) But the really hideous cost of the US educational system lies in the stupid curriculum -- which is NEVER the subject of public debate.
The curriculum is expressly designed to create the most ignorant, ill-informed, and unqualified group of citizens on the planet. It is justifiably ignored by many teenagers because it is of little to no value.
The best way to bring up standards in education is no longer to make it mandatory. Do away with public schools, only a small percentage will go to private schools, and the standards will drastically improve.
In most European countries, where only about 30% of the population goes to high school (the rest go to trade schools), the standards obviously will be higher.
The best way to improve education in the U.S. would be (1) abolish schools of "education," and (2) defund all public schools.
Yes, it would a lot easier to determine how much money is needed to attract talented people to teaching absent the idiotic barriers to entry into the profession. Unfortunately, as is typically the case with regulatory capture, the people who are already in have a strong vested interest in maintaining the barriers, or even building them higher.
I don't agree with defunding public schools, but I do agree with not making high school mandatory. In place of high school somebody could go to a trade school, where they'd learn how to do something productive. That way we don't waste a huge amount of money educating students that have no desire to be there.
Of course removing barriers to entry and reducing actual training in education would make it easier to become a teacher, but would be unlikely to actually make teaching better. Knowing how to teach is a substantively different set of knowledge and skills than any other given subject area.
It could also discourage talented people from teaching by perpetuating the notion that teaching is something that just anyone can do. For someone who sees themselves as talented and hopes to see that talent recognized by others, teaching is not a high status occupation. More money but less training would be sending decidedly mixed signals here.
I really wish every post about the supposed failures of American public education, in every blog, would begin with some show of evidence that American education is, in fact, in some sort of state of crisis. Correcting for the fact that American standardized testing includes the large majority of special ed students, in contrast to almost every industrialized nation in the world, American standardized testing scores are in the middle of the pack. And considering the sheer number of students the American system teaches, and the vast diversity of parenting, social and economic class/status, social programs, etc. among those millions of students, we do a good job. We actually do. It's just one of those blog/pundit memes-- like "globalization is inevitable and good"-- that can just get thrown out there, unsupported by evidence, because "everyone knows" it's true.
Rufustfyrfly is absolutely right. Knowing a subject and being able to teach it effectively to a roomful of adolescents, many of whom:
1) Don't want to be there
2) Don't really care what you have to say
3) Don't really care about the minimal consequences a teacher has at their disposal for poor work
are completely different skill sets. I'm not going to defend all schools of education, as many of them are pretty poor, but there are also many that very effectively train new teachers, especially for the k-5 grades.
"A headmaster at a prestigious boarding school once told me that he simply refused to hire anyone with a degree in education. Why? They are idiots. He said he'd prefer to hire someone with a real degree."
SO TRUE.....
The barriers to the profession are indeed too high. As an engineering physics PhD I probably know more math and physics than the vast majority of HS instructors and I'm perfectly qualified to teach students paying thousands in tuition when they attend college.
But I'm expected to get yet another degree to teach at the K-12 level? What a lousy proposition.
As far as elementary education is concerned, you can not just throw some smart, well-intentioned college graduate into the classroom (without some sort of training and internship) and expect the kids to learn to read. It is a much harder job to do well than it may seem to the casual observer.
I agree with the criticisms of teachers' colleges, but one of the reasons they turn out a poor product is because of who enters the field in view of the relatively low financial rewards and prestige.
The US has still not adjusted to the fact that the job options of one-half the population are no longer as limited as there were when smart, educated young women had few alternatives to career as a teacher.
American standardized tests include special education students but we also disaggregate the data (note: thanks to NCLB). The better large international education studies disaggregate as well (think TIMMS, etc). Even when comparing relatively similar groups (say, elite high school students here and in nations with comparable GDPs and education spending) we don't do terribly well. That's not a myth.
It is a myth, however, that schools in the U.S. aren't as good as in the olden days. We have been steadily improving, just not as rapidly as many other industrialized nations.
> I really wish every post about the supposed
> failures of American public education, in every
> blog, would begin with some show of evidence
> that American education is, in fact, in some
> sort of state of crisis.
Coupled with this is the fact that the average American now lives in a suburb or exurb, not a historical urban area. Suburbs are quite often organized around school districts (I read about one a few months ago that was incorporated out of desire to buy a school bus) and most suburbanites are satisfied with _their_ schools.
Ah, there's the rub. The Radial Right has been very very successful in triggering the "over the hill" reflex. As in "we are civilized here in this valley, but over the hill live savage cannibals". Were you to travel over the hill you would find in 99/100 cases that they are quite civilized over there too, but that doesn't stop the fear mongering in the valley. Similarly the Radical Right has convinced a large number of Americans that while their own school district might be OK, somewhere over the hill every other public school district has utterly failed - and that failure is creeping over the hill toward the valley...
As noted here yesterday this is all part of the Norquistian plan to drown public education in the bathtub and separate our society even more sharply into a few big winners and the rest losers.
Cranky
I would disagree even about elementary education. I was involved with a homeschooling coop. None of the teachers had degrees in "education." The elementary-aged students were taught by PhDs (in real subjects, not "education"), and they turned out way ahead of the curve. Most had a firm handling of Greek and Latin by 14, and two additional modern languages by 17. They had advanced understanding of mathematics, European history, philosophy and rhetoric, etc.
Look at 19th-century academies. These children are being taught by headmasters who had no "education courses." And these children were turning out better than those today. The curriculum was very rigorous (most students would have mastered Greek and Latin, French and German, by 12, and advanced calculus and trig by 13).
Schools of "Education" are the cancer that have destroyed American education.
I would disagree even about elementary education. I was involved with a homeschooling coop. None of the teachers had degrees in "education." The elementary-aged students were taught by PhDs (in real subjects, not "education"), and they turned out way ahead of the curve. Most had a firm handling of Greek and Latin by 14, and two additional modern languages by 17. They had advanced understanding of mathematics, European history, philosophy and rhetoric, etc.
Look at 19th-century academies. These children are being taught by headmasters who had no "education courses." And these children were turning out better than those today. The curriculum was very rigorous (most students would have mastered Greek and Latin, French and German, by 12, and advanced calculus and trig by 13).
Schools of "Education" are the cancer that has destroyed American education.
As far as elementary education is concerned, you can not just throw some smart, well-intentioned college graduate into the classroom (without some sort of training and internship) and expect the kids to learn to read. It is a much harder job to do well than it may seem to the casual observer.
"some sort of training" is a long way from requiring a four year education degree. Especially if the teacher is reading from a script.
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/09/teaching_without_heroism.php
The role of sexism, as Ben Brackley mentions above, is enormous and (I think) generally under appreciated in the literature on this subject. Teaching in the U.S. is a low status occupation because it has traditionally been gendered female, and seen more as surrogate mothering (especially at lower grade levels) than as an actual profession requiring knowledge and skills.
Compare this to Japan, which sees teaching as much more of a profession, or Germany where it is more of a civil service role. Both have better test results than the U.S., and both have male-gendered teaching professions.
As usual, feminism is the answer.
> As an engineering physics PhD I probably know
> more math and physics than the vast majority of
> HS instructors and I'm perfectly qualified to
> teach students paying thousands in tuition when
> they attend college.
>
> But I'm expected to get yet another degree to
> teach at the K-12 level? What a lousy proposition.
While I am fully in favor of optimizing the requirements for non-traditional paths into K-12 education, as a college professor you are working with 100% self-selected students and you are not responsible for their emotional state, social development, or physical well-being. K-12 teachers are responsible for those aspects of their students' lives - a high school teacher can't just call security have have a kid who isn't devoting 100% of his attention to the lecture out of the classroom the way one of my physics professors once did. While the teaching skills are similar the management of variance and development is not, and even many people who self-select for K-12 teaching find they don't have those skills.
Cranky
American public education is a complete failure.
Any parent who cares anything at all about his child's education will either send him to a private school or homeschool him.
It is a crime that these parents have to pay hard-earned tax dollars to public schools, which basically are Orwellian daycares.
Defunding public education is the only answer. (Just like defunding the war in Iraq is the only answer.)
"a prestigious boarding school" has students who start out with above-average intelligence and parents who care a lot about their performance. It has the ability to kick out the kids who are disruptive or incapable of learning at the pace the school demands. It is nothing like a public high school.
"Look at 19th-century academies."
No, comparing the modern school system with anything before 1950 is silly. The modern secondary school system has to deal with a large number of kids who don't want to be there, and who know they simply aren't going to flourish in college. Before the 50s, less than half of the eligable population attended high school. Teaching students who aren't interested requires a completely different skill set than teaching motivated children.
Aside from that, comparing our system to Suropean systems is pointless, too. We have massive income inequality and pockets of concentrated poverty that Eruope lacks. Again, teaching only children from middle class households requires a different skill set than teaching 8 siblings whose parents didn't graduate high school, and who have to scramble to find food every day. The neoliberal wonks who ignore those facts lack credibility.
I would grant easily that education schools can be better, but it is simply false that someone with a PhD in a subject is well-qualified to teach high school or elementary students in that subject.
Hell, people with PhDs aren't really qualified to teach WELL to college students. There is no real evidence that students learn anything in in college.
And there is plenty of evidence that Teach for America students, for example, who lack pedagogical training, do not teach as well as people who do have that training.
The classroom management techniques and skills are completely different between college, high school, and elementary school. Anyone who thinks that teaching is only a matter of knowing the subject matter has no idea what they are talking about.
P.S. That said. I would point out that state educational bureaucracies are some of the worst in the business (but private medical insurance companies are much worse). Getting my certification transferred from MA to IL was a huge pain in the ass, and I even had qualifications.
I'm rather shocked at the number of people defending education schools. Obviously there are a lot of skills to teaching K-12 students beyond just knowing the subject matter.
I am, however, quite dubious that those skills are particularly well conveyed by education schools. There is, so far as I can tell, no substitute for experience in learning how to deal with all the non-academic stuff. The idea that one actually needs to have a multi-year degree in education to teach high school students, at least, is ridiculous.
I agree that we will need to increase teacher salaries if we are going to improve the pool of potential teachers. But money is not the only thing keeping potential teachers out of the profession, and causing current teachers to leave. Another reason is the ever increasing focus on standardized tests that results in an over emphasis on drill-and-kill instructional methods designed to boost test scores. This is not an especially exciting prospect for many potential teachers who would -- understandably -- like to think of themselves as creative professionals.
On another note. I guess proof of the "complete failure" of public education is that as recently as the 1990's we had the biggest economic expansion of the post-war era and we are the sole superpower on the planet. Thank god we had all those graduates of leafy, waspy New England boarding schools, Our Lady of the Holy Lima Bean and Ed & Ginnie's Christian Academy to show us the way.
It seems like this entire movement to delegitimize an area of academia (schools of education) is just another extension of the wretched "beggar thy neighbor" attitude that has swept across this country. For example, this:
"I am, however, quite dubious that those skills are particularly well conveyed by education schools."
Really? Have you obtained a degree is education and found that it lacked value? And, if so, did it lack value because you didn't apply yourself properly? Or are you just taking potshots without any real substantive knowledge?
I'd say that this "beggar thy neighbor" attitude is facilitated by the large number of engineers/economists in our society, who completely lack the ability to engage in critical analysis, or to understand the concept of point of view/perspective. But I'd just be taking pot shots...
It's also worth noting, IIRC, that the U.S. doesn't so much have a problem attracting people to teaching, but rather has a problem retaining the teachers we get. A rather staggering number of people enter teaching and only stay for a few years. This is particularly true of schools in low income areas, which shed teachers rapidly to other, more affluent schools and other fields. This leaves them with the unexperienced Teach for America kids that Patrick mentioned above.
Many people see teaching as only a temporary stop before they can find something "in their real field." Other people aren't able to deal with the low pay and little respect, others aren't able to translate their classroom experience into better teaching. This is a very different problem from the one lower entry requirements would solve.
> I'm rather shocked at the number of people
> defending education schools.
Who in this thread is defending Education (capital E) schools? I see many explaining that K-12 teaching techniques and skills are different from subject matter expertise, but that doesn't mean they have to be acquired in BA.Ed programs. Our middle-middle school district is pretty typical and most of our teachers have a liberal arts BA or a BS in a technical subject with additional teacher's certificate classes (except the K-2 teachers who often do have a BA in primary education or child development).
Cranky
RE "Knowing a subject and being able to teach it effectively to a roomful of adolescents, many of whom:
1) Don't want to be there
2) Don't really care what you have to say
3) Don't really care about the minimal consequences a teacher has at their disposal for poor work
are completely different skill sets"
---------------
You are explaining why your system is a massive failure and you don't even realize it.
If what you were teaching had any value, it would not be difficult to engage the interest of the kids.
They're not stupid. In fact, that's the problem. They're smart enough to know that you're wasting their time --for your benefit, not theirs.
A friend of mine, who sat on MENSA, and who had graduate degrees in Classics and Mathematics, got a bug a few years ago that he was going to be a public-school teacher and "make a difference."
After taking courses for a few weeks at Columbia's Teacher's College, he came back to Earth, and quickly dismissed the idea, as well as dropping the courses. He said he never seen so many slack-jawed morons in his life. The students were barely literate (other than with the latest politically correct clichés), and some of the faculty had basic deficiencies in English Grammar.
When one of the faculty, who is supposed to be a specialist in English, was confronted with a question regarding Fowler's axiomatic rules for the use of "shall" and "will" (from the King's English, a classic for Homeschoolers), she, as he tells me, stood there with a blank look on her face, as if he were speaking a foreign language.
These people are fools. Schools of "Education" are cesspools of mediocrity.
"If what you were teaching had any value, it would not be difficult to engage the interest of the kids."
Right; learning the fundamental skills required for reading, math, and expression are completely without value, either monetarily or intrinsically. They are complete wastes of time.
is it really true that people have to get a 4-year education degree to teach in most public schools?
surely if some idealistic math ph.d. decided to become a high-school math teacher there's a greatly expedited path to doing this that doesn't require jumping through as many certification hurdles as matt and others are claiming, no?
this, btw, a real question. i'm totally ignorant on the matter and willing to be convinced either way.
But teaching fellowships are creating their own barriers to entry, which is great for selectivity, but not always the best predictor of classroom performance. Teach for America, for one, requires the corps to pass a McKinsey-style case study. Though data analysis is critical in effective instruction, classroom management must be in place for any of it to have an effect on performance, and TFA can't screen for that as reliably, just for relevant "leadership skills."
Regardless Teach for America alumni have been proven to get better results... by the start of their third year teaching, by which time 40% of the corps has left education altogether, and more have left classroom positions. Those who stay, though, are some of the best in the business. And they deserve more compensation for what they do.
Re "On another note. I guess proof of the "complete failure" of public education is that as recently as the 1990's we had the biggest economic expansion of the post-war era and we are the sole superpower on the planet"
-----------
We are the sole superpower largely because a lot of European scientists came to work on the Manhatten Project. Even Oppie went to a German school after Harvard to get his PhD.
And if you look at the people who got rich in the Computer/Internet boom, you'll find a lot of college dropouts. Bill Gates. Paul Allen. Larry Ellison. Michael Dell. etc. And lots of programmers in Silicon Valley who thought only a lame moron would waste his time in a college program.
The public education system takes young people at the prime of their life --when they have the most energy, the most freedom ,and are not yet saddled with the burden of providing for a family. And it destroys them.
"A friend of mine, who sat on MENSA"
Was it Debbie Schlussel?
If you were excited about learning and loved intellectual stimulation, the odds that you would choose to major in Education are quite low.
Demanding some kind of post-graduate degree or certification in order to teach is not unreasonable, but it is unreasonable to ask people to abandon their intellectual goals while in college for the opportunity to teach in a public school.
But, yeah, burnout and teacher retention is a major problem. I think selection bias means that we only remember/know teachers who've been in the profession for many many years. Plenty of our acquaintences probably spent a couple of years in teaching a long time ago.
And as far as the focus on testing turning off people who see themselves as "creative professionals" -- well, honestly, I think we have to stop feeding the delusion that all teachers are creative professionals. I think it's more reasonable to accept the fact that only a few can make it or be qualified enough to be "creative professionals," and the wide majority will be more like workers doing a job. Our perception of computer programmers is that they're all crative professionals, when in fact there are only a few who are in that kind of position while they're supported by large numbers of "assembly line" programmers churning out individual modules. Perhaps the sooner we accept this about grammar school teaching, the better.
Speaking solely of Texas:
If you have a relevent bachelor's degree, you can become alternatively certified in a year (that includes a semester internship, I believe) -- they teach you the basics of classroom management, scheduling, student development, learning styles, the rudiments of the laws you're required to follow (regarding learning disabled kids, suspected abuse, that sort of thing) and generally give you at least the rough outline of what teachers do that ISN'T related to their specific subject.
Then you have a year of teaching with an experience teacher more or less looking over your shoulder and a lot of in-class observations. After that, you're fully certified.
If you take your average "I have a degree in math" person and toss him into a classroom he'll probably do semi-okay, if he/she is naturally skilled with students, at the high-school level -- especially if his fellow teachers help him with all the non-math aspects of his job until he gets it down.
He'd struggle hard and screw over students in middle school, and would totally fail in K-5.
Why? Because 10 and 11 year olds don't learn like adults. 13 and 14 year olds don't learn like adults. 7 and 8 year olds CERTAINLY don't learn like adults. And how they learn, and the best way to get them to learn, varies widely between students and as they develop.
And your average "I have a degree in math, I can teach math to kids" person isn't going to have a damn clue how kids learn. He can teach adults, assuming he has minimum interpersonal skills and probably muddle through High School assuming motivated students.
> is it really true that people have to get a 4-year
> education degree to teach in most public schools?
No. A person with a bachelors degree (or in many states an associates degree, or experience equal to either) needs to have a teaching certificate which can be obtained after taking a certain number of classes on the theory and practice of education and completing an internship. Most people I know who have a BA/BS have completed the process at night in one year. Some school districts will hire a person with a BA and experience on a provisional contract that requires obtaining the certificate within 12-18 months (one of my family members just finished this process in a very high-achieving school district; I thought it was cheating to "intern" in his own classroom and write his own evaluation!).
This "you must go to Ed school for 4 years" meme is one that the Radical Right pumps quite well but is _not_ factual.
Cranky
If it is so easy to go into teaching without an Education degree, why do we hand out undergraduate degrees in Education in the first place? Why do we bother to hire people with undergraduate degrees in education?
"They're smart enough to know that you're wasting their time --for your benefit, not theirs."
While not endorsing your point that there is a "massive system failure" in all of public education, it is certainly true that the very best teachers are much more able to engage their students, and that often teachers are wasting their time in classrooms in part because of poor teaching.
Teachers who combine intelligence, a natural aptitude for teaching, subject matter expertise, rigorous training and administrative support are wonders to behold. The problem is that the system for a whole of host of reasons (money, prestige, poor training, politics, etc.) produces too few of these teachers.
At the end of the day, the quality of teachers are more important to a society than the quality of its doctors. While a particular individual may benefit more from superb doctor and medical system than from a superb teacher and educational system, the common good favors that much more attention be given to the educational system.
Thirty years ago, education and medical care each consumed about 7% of GNP; that's still roughly true of education but medical care now consumes about 15% of GNP.
> Demanding some kind of post-graduate degree or
> certification in order to teach is not
> unreasonable, but it is unreasonable to ask people
> to abandon their intellectual goals while in
> college for the opportunity to teach in a public
> school.
Good thing we don't require that then (in the majority of states anyway).
I have commented before on the problems with having unmarried, childfree twenty-something policy analysts acting as the progressive representatives in the battle with the Radical Right over the future of public education. The Right knows what it wants - the destruction of public education - while the twenty-somethings have never ever set foot in a K-12 school as an adult much less been a parent, volunteer, teaching assistant, or teacher.
Cranky
Freddie:
I really wish every post about the supposed failures of American public education, in every blog, would begin with some show of evidence that American education is, in fact, in some sort of state of crisis. Correcting for the fact that American standardized testing includes the large majority of special ed students, in contrast to almost every industrialized nation in the world, American standardized testing scores are in the middle of the pack. And considering the sheer number of students the American system teaches, and the vast diversity of parenting, social and economic class/status, social programs, etc. among those millions of students, we do a good job. We actually do. It's just one of those blog/pundit memes-- like "globalization is inevitable and good"-- that can just get thrown out there, unsupported by evidence, because "everyone knows" it's true.
-- Terrific comment. --
Here's a great article, "Counting People and People who Count," by Thomas Fleming.
Excerpt:
"Isocrates, Cicero, and Quintilian would tell him that the object of education is to turn out a good man who can be useful to his neighbors and to his community. There is, they would add, a certain set of books that can be used effectively to teach both sound moral and civic principles and the art of effective writing and speaking. Civilization itself, they would conclude, depends on the process of inculcating these values and techniques, year after year, and generation after generation, into the human beastlings who need to be domesticated.
Education, then, occupies a space somewhere between theology and toilet training.
The ancient system had its shortcomings, and nothing could be more foolish than to design a school around Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, much less to pretend to revive an imaginary trivium and quadrivium that more often existed on paper (or, rather, parchment) than in practice. However, the fundamental objectives of education remain, and not just the objectives but the methods that have proved useful and indispensable: the teaching of Latin and mathematics; the study of grammar and rhetoric (which includes logic and composition); and a systematic reading of the books that make us who we are, particularly poetry, drama, and history—and not the pseudo-scientific history written by professors but the history of historians who can write and think: Thucydides and Livy, David Hume and Shelby Foote. This is a far cry from four years spent on the Five Foot Shelf.
The study of languages, live and dead, is essential. The Greeks were mostly content to know their own language, but educated Romans, by the end of the Punic Wars, had to learn Greek. In the Middle Ages, Western Europeans, whatever language they spoke at home, had to study Latin, and a 17th-century Englishman had to make a stab at Greek, speak at least a traveler’s French, and, if he wished to set up for a literary gentleman, make shift to read the language of Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso."
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=319
Re Cranky's comment "this is all part of the Norquistian plan to drown public education in the bathtub and separate our society even more sharply into a few big winners and the rest losers"
------------
Except that many of the "few big winners" are those smart enough to see that US education is a joke. Kids who focused on THEIR goals, who became intensely focused on what interested THEM --not their moronic teachers -- and who either didn't go to college or quickly dropped out. Some even dropped out of high school.
Year after year, membership on Forbes' list of the 400 Richest Americans changes. However,
"over the past twenty-five years, about 10 percent of the Forbes 400 either dropped out of high school, only graduated from high school, or never finished college." (Ref: "All the Money in the World", Bernstein and Swan, p. 24.)
The fact that K12 education says NOTHING about entrepreneurship --that it does NOTHING to teach kids how to become independent businessmen -- shows what a pathetic failure it is.
Of course, inner city kids are bored and disinterested. They know what life holds for them -- either wear a uniform on an Iraqi battlefield or wear a uniform in prison. If their teachers showed them a third option, the kids would leap for it.
But the kids know you ain't going to get the secrets of success from obvious failures. Not from People employed on public works programs which would not last 6 months if subjected to the value-added test of consumers in a free market -- vice state-imposed coercion.
Programs based more upon politicans pandering for the votes of a union than upon any clear definition of the public interest.
If you look at the seriousness of pre-1950s schools, and the third-world wasteland that schools have become, it leads one to the conclusion that ideally we want no more than 10% of the population to be educated. As Nietzsche once said, "universal" education is the worst thing ever to happen to education.
> But the kids know you ain't going to get the
> secrets of success from obvious failures. Not from
> People employed on public works programs which
> would not last 6 months if subjected to the
> value-added test of consumers in a free market --
> vice state-imposed coercion.
You might want to submit your 11:47 to the OED for use as an example under the entry for "irony".
Cranky
So, Bede and Don Williams are both passionate critics of public education.
When Bede writes that a quality education requires teaching Latin and Greek and Don Williams writes that it requires teaching kids how to be "independent businessmen", it's hard to imagine changes to the public educational system that would please both of them. All the different agendas people bring to the table are part of the problem for public education.
Don Williams clearly attended a school that didn't teach statistics, or the difference between the base rate and the anecdote.
As your "teaching entrepreneurship," explain exactly what that means, and the age at which children would be ready to learn it. What's that? You don't know, because you don't have a degree in education? I guess you're just casting aspersions without any knowledge.
(As an aside, did my 6th grade social studies teacher instruct us in "entrepreneurship" when she required us to interview local businesspeople about their businesses, and what it took to maintain and run them? Or was that "sucessmanship?")
Bede, the thing is that most Americans think that their specific public school is doing a good job and are happy with it. It's always everyone else's public school that people seem to have trouble with.
The problem is not that only 10% - 20% of the population is educable. The problem is that the lower 10% - 20% is extraordinarily difficult to educate.
Perhaps you think you are part of the top 10% that deserves to be educated, so the idea seems reasonable to you, but I think that is the result of a very inflated view of yourself.
> and the third-world wasteland that schools have
> become,
As per the above comment, can you please provide some documentation for this assertion. Some historic urban school districts have become third-world wastelands - but the majority of Americans now live in suburbs and their school districts are pleasant well-ordered places. They may not do as well as some would like or turn out the type of graduates that some think we need, but to tar them with the brush of inner-city Philadelphia is not factually supportable.
Cranky
"When Bede writes that a quality education requires teaching Latin and Greek and Don Williams writes that it requires teaching kids how to be "independent businessmen", it's hard to imagine changes to the public educational system that would please both of them. All the different agendas people bring to the table are part of the problem for public education." ~ Ben
Exactly!
There is no one-size-fits-all standard, which is why standardized tests are ridiculous. While Celtic-Anglo Americans like myself will require a more aristocratic education that does involve Greek and Latin (among other things, at private schools or via homeschooling), in the inner cities they could probably do with more courses in business or welding.
The public system, which tries to accommodate everyone, is a failure. It should be defunded, and in its place will rise private schools or homeschooling networks that cater to their local communities.
Bede,
There is nothing stopping anyone from getting the kind of "aristocratic education" you desire through private or home schooling (though I wish you would consider Chinese and Arabic instead of Latin and Greek). Go for it, but don't insist that the system is a failure just because it chooses not to indulge your preferences.
"The public system, which tries to accommodate everyone, is a failure"
Bede, the public school system does not try to accomodate people with illegetimate notions about education, like you and Don Williams. If it did, we would have a terrible system. But, as both of you admit, you don't have degrees in education, so (hopefully) nobody in your respective school systems listens to you about anything.
If I'm going to be against making racist statements, I'm going to have to be equal-opportunity about it and refrain from resorting to stereotypes that give lie to Bede's claim that "Anglo-Celtic" people need "aristrocratic" education.
But the inflated view people seem to have of themselves is rather stunning. Regardless of race or ethnicity, simply looking at overall averages, Bede, you and your children are likely lazy and of mediocre intellect and have little ambition other than an idea that they want to make lots of money but have little idea how to go about this and wouldn't want to go through the effort if they did have that knowledge. What they probably need is not "aristocratic learning" but rather a good kick in the pants and to be told not to think so darn highly of themselves when the ambitious kid just arrived in this country with a poor command of English will be more successful than he.
Ben,
I am neither Chinese nor Arab.
I am more concerned about studying my own ancestral traditions. Although I'm Celtic-Anglo, my culture has had over 2,000 years of Graeco-Roman influence, and we are both a part of Western Civilization. Perhaps my civilization is not the _best_, but it is _mine_, and thus worthy for my study and my descendants' study.
Michigander,
I don't care what they do. I just don't want to pay any tax-dollars to them. All taxes for public education should be voluntary.
Re the Thomas Fleming quote: "The study of languages, live and dead, is essential. The Greeks were mostly content to know their own language, but educated Romans, by the end of the Punic Wars, had to learn Greek. In the Middle Ages, Western Europeans, whatever language they spoke at home, had to study Latin, and a 17th-century Englishman had to make a stab at Greek, speak at least a traveler’s French, and, if he wished to set up for a literary gentleman, make shift to read the language of Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso."
-----------
I strongly disagree. The K12 requirement to learn a foreign language is one of the more idiotic requirements in the K12 curriculum.
Americans are not multilingual because of our geography. We're separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans, most of us still have infrequent contacts with Eurasia, and Canada speaks English. Moreover, most of the foreigners worth dealing with also speak English-- because it is the language of the world's superpower.
If you're a rich dilettante who has no real purpose in life, then it's fine to waste your time on such pursuits. That, after all, is what creates the "coolie- rich man -playboy -coolie" cycle that gives new men a chance to displace the pampered rich. But it's idiotic to REQUIRE that K12 students learn a foreign language.
If you are a spy -- or a businessman dealing in overseas markets -- then learning a foreign language is worthwhile. But in that case, you have reason to learn to speak it well and to maintain your ability. In such case, the last thing you want to do is to make yourself look like a moronic lout to foreigners by trying to use your poorly-taught high school French, German, etc.
MY writes:
That said, there are also a lot of weird barriers to entry into the teaching profession -- formalistic requirements centered around getting degrees from education schools -- that have little relationship to effectiveness in the classroom.
Further to josh bivens and Cranky Observer, this statement is just not true. You don't need a degree from an education school to teach, with the possible exception of some very specific kinds of teaching positions (e.g., teaching the disabled). You do typically need about 24 credits of classwork from an education school to get a teaching certificate, which you can frequently start taking part-time after you've started teaching. (The specific requirements vary from state to state.) If anything, these requirements have been relaxed in the last 20 years.
My major field in college was a foreign language, and I could have gotten a teaching certificate while in school if I had taken about 4-5 additional courses, a couple of which pertained specifically to teaching that language and a couple of which focused on education and development more generally. (The remaining credits would have come from courses I would have taken anyway for the major.) I understand the same was true for math, English, history and science majors. I won't argue that such courses may vary widely in quality or may even be affirmatively lousy, but the burden is not enormous and certainly not anything like the burden associated with law school.
"But it's idiotic to REQUIRE that K12 students learn a foreign language." ~ Don
Fleming is not arguing this. He is talking about private and home schooling, especially for people of Anglo/European descent.
No one would require this of public schools. It's daunting enough to get them to leave their AKs at home.
Re Michigander comment "Bede, the public school system does not try to accomodate people with illegetimate notions about education, like you and Don Williams. If it did, we would have a terrible system."
----------
Who defines "illegetimate"?? Who creates the K12 curriculum? Doing an idiotic task well is still doing an idiotic task.
The "consumers" of the K12 system have no say at all in whether the system wasting their time serves their needs. Their parents have little say -- because they have a football game to watch and are happy if you simply babysit their sullen guttersnipes for 9 hours a day and then keep them quiet with homework.
Anyone who has ever worked as a parent on a K12 planning project knows how the Teachers/Administration stack the deck and game the process to ensure parents are there to give figurehead support but have little say in the predefined end result.
You already have a "Terrible system".
Your $1 Trillion systems produces large numbers of graduates who end up in prisons for years. Most of the remaining are out of jail but are stuck in hopeless economic slavery in which they have no control over their lives -- can only work themselves into the ground at miserable dead-end jobs for 45 years (if they're lucky) and hopefully die before having to draw upon their bankrupt Social Security/Medicare system.
You produce "educated citizens"?? Give me a break -- your graduates elected George W Bush to two terms of office and think 19 Saudi Arabians committed suicide in the Sept 11 attack "because they hate our freedom". You take intelligent young people and creat idiots. Because that's what the corporations and politicans want.
I originally came just to gawk and laugh at the incredible stupidity of considering it "weird" to expect people to get a degree in the field they're going to work in- but stayed to get mad.
Because, basically, most of you feel safe attacking a profession dominated by women because you know the rightwing money machine has got your back.
Say, Mr. Engineer, please let us know when somebody has been held accountable for the bridge that collapsed a few months ago. I won't hold my breath, because the last engineer I read about who took responsibility was involved in the Mulholland Dam Collapse in LA about 75 years ago.
In fact, it is mind-boggling and astounding to look around at the wreckage of our society, and then blame the teachers. Nine trillion in debt, with several trillion more needed to keep bridges from falling down and water mains from collapsing, 100,000 dying each year in our health care "system" because of mistakes, our jails stuffed to overflowing, radiation and other poisons entering our aquifers, a society so grotesquely inefficient that 5% of the world's population uses 25% of the world's energy, yet supposedly all of this will be changed eventually if we just let down those "barriers to entry" and allow the "magic of the market" to transform our schools.
You won't see any professional teachers responding on this thread, for a while at least, because they are working.
And frankly, most teachers would just ignore most of the comments here as more of the rightwing nutcase jabbering they hear all the time.
Take, for example, the idea that Bill Gates got rich by being smart, and going to school was just a hindrance to his awesome intellect. In reality, Gates was born into a family that had been rich and powerful lawyers for decades, and Gates got richer by using legalisms mixed with illegality to build a de facto monopoly.
I will cheerfully agree that many commenters here have apparently learned little from their time in a classroom. That fact, however, tells me more about them than it does about teachers.
You may now resume your regularly scheduled igno-rants.
Year after year, membership on Forbes' list of the 400 Richest Americans changes. However,
"over the past twenty-five years, about 10 percent of the Forbes 400 either dropped out of high school, only graduated from high school, or never finished college." (Ref: "All the Money in the World", Bernstein and Swan, p. 24.)
That means, apparently, 90% finished college.
Do the math, chief. Which side would you rather be on?
Bill Gates is one person. On the whole, the more EDUCATION a person has, the better. A high school graduate makes a lot more money than a dropout. A person with some college makes a lot more money than someone with only a diploma. A person with a college degree makes a lot more than any of these people.
The fact that K12 education says NOTHING about entrepreneurship --that it does NOTHING to teach kids how to become independent businessmen -- shows what a pathetic failure it is.
Of course, inner city kids are bored and disinterested. They know what life holds for them -- either wear a uniform on an Iraqi battlefield or wear a uniform in prison. If their teachers showed them a third option, the kids would leap for it.
This is nonsensical garbage. The teachers do show them a third option. It is, study and work hard and pursue your goals. Success is tied to education in this, and I think pretty much every other country. If teachers are telling them they will either become cannon fodder or gangbangers then they should be fired. Of course I doubt many are. Do you think it would be good if 15 year olds dropped out of high school and started opening businesses? 15 year olds are morons, all 15 year olds. We all know that.
Shorter Bede:
You want to get test scores up? Don't let dumb kids write the tests.
Re Michigander's comment "Don Williams clearly attended a school that didn't teach statistics, or the difference between the base rate and the anecdote"
----------
Ah, yes. The "go with the herd" imperative of the public school system.
I could care less about test scores.
I am more interested in the continuity of handing down my ancestral traditions, Western Civilization, for my children, kith and kin.
educatio est mores maiorum docere.
Handing down your ancesteral traditions is YOUR job, Bede. Not the school system's, which is, after all, required to teach lots of people with different tradiitions. Including more than a few of whom have some rather legitimate grievances with "Anglo-Europeans" (your term).
As for claiming "Western Civilization" as one's ancesteral tradition, well, wow. Those are some pretty terrific ancestors.
Re Joshua's comment "15 year olds are morons, all 15 year olds. We all know that. "
--------------
Ah, yes. Another recognizable comment from the public school system.
I imagine the Greeks said the same of young Alexander, the pirates said the same of the young Julius Caesar (who crucified them a few weeks later) and the Roman Senate thought the same of young Octavius --he whom they would later fearfully title "Augustus".
Don,
Nicely said.
"Handing down your ancesteral traditions is YOUR job, Bede. Not the school system's..." - Matt D
Exactly. It is my job, and should be. I don't want some semiliterate knave with a degree in "education" to have anything to do with my children, kith or kin.
I, however, don't want to have to pay taxes for public education, a failed and useless system - it's robbery. Such taxes at best should be voluntary. But given the widespread failure, we should just defund public schools and let private schools and homeschooling networks rise up in their place.
I guess it is good that all "15 year olds are morons". That makes it easier for their learned elders to send them to die in battle at age 18 --while learned elders stay at home and give erudite lectures about American democracy.
Well, Bede is right about one thing. If you do the math and go back about 1000 years, you'll find that you are related to everyone who was alive in Europe at that time.
Unless, of course, there's a little inbreeding in your family tree...
I figured most on here had college educations and many had post-grad work as well. I have to say I have had the experience of very few quality teachers through out my life, but I would say the ones who performed above average were my K-12 teachers. In college and grad school the teachers didn't care about my motivation level nor were they exceptionally attuned to whether me or my classmates understood anything.
An earlier commenter had it right, education schools aren't necessarily a problem. The reason why they put out such a seemingly poor product is that many of the people who end up in education had other aspirations and failed but ended up in education because there is so little competition for employment and the classes were easier to pass. Why is that? Because the pay sucks! Some of my crappiest courses in college were in business and engineering, courses that I did poorly in (mostly due to my own lack of motivation), but others did well because they were very focused on the end prize, a high paying job.
The amazing thing about Bede (and he'll probably claim it was the public schools that made him this way) is that he wants to discard one of our most basic values because he doesn't want to pay taxes.
The basic idea that society should be built around what he wants is not, of course, new. People murder and steal and rape each other all the time on that basic principle.
But Bede obviously thinks he's one of the well-educated people upholding values. He just doesn't uphold our values.
The principle of universal free public education was stated in the Virginia Resolves back in about 1775. It was given specific substance in the Northwest Ordinance in 1787. Much could be said and written about our our system, but I'll get to the bottom line:
If you don't like it here, Bede, why don't you leave?
Because the one thing that everyone in the world knows for sure about America, is that if you come here you can enroll your kids in a public school.
That's a feature, not a bug.
I think Don Williams should run an "anti-statistics" class, where he teaches children that the anecdote is more reliable than the base rate, a high r2 indicates a low level of correlation, and so on. The "consumers" would love your class, Don!
All joking aside, the "consumers" of public education have a major "say" in the public school system; milliges and elections. To pretend that they don't is base ignorance.
"If you are a spy -- or a businessman dealing in overseas markets -- then learning a foreign language is worthwhile."
Right; there's no benefit at all in learning a language to better gain the ability to learn. Further, Don, its astounding to me that you assume that school children all know exactly what they want to do while they are in school.
"Who defines "illegetimate"?? Who creates the K12 curriculum?"
People who understand these issues better than you. But, feel free to prove your ignorance with half-witted fly specking.
CatOwner,
It's not that I just don't want to pay taxes; I don't want to pay taxes FOR public education. It's a failed system and a waste of resources.
There have been public schools throughout most of American history. The real problem is "universal education," which has become the mantra of public schools. If you do away with the mandates of universal education, and return to a 19th-century system where only about 10% of the population goes to school, then you would probably see some improvements in the few remaining public schools.
bede writes:
While Celtic-Anglo Americans like myself will require a more aristocratic education that does involve Greek and Latin (among other things, at private schools or via homeschooling), in the inner cities they could probably do with more courses in business or welding.
and, in referring approvingly to an article in Chronicle magazine, continues
Fleming is not arguing this. He is talking about private and home schooling, especially for people of Anglo/European descent.
Bede justifies these thoughts with:
Although I'm Celtic-Anglo, my culture has had over 2,000 years of Graeco-Roman influence, and we are both a part of Western Civilization.
bede, along with Chronicle magazine, believes that a thin veneer of classics is sufficient to hide a racist core. bede may profess an admiration for his culture but he betrays it when he chooses to emulate its worst elements rather than its best. A suit and tie may hide the jackboots but the thought betrays the man for the racist he is.
Bede: school system is a failure.
Rest of group: please prove that school system is a failure.
Bede: . . .
Bede: School system is a failure. I don't want to pay taxes for it.
I and most people I know are of Anglo/European ancestry. It is all of a sudden "racist" for us to want our children to learn about their ancestral traditions (i.e. western civilization)?
Wow. You must worship at the shrine of Political Correctness.
The teacher side of the bad educational system is trivial to solve:
(1) Quardruple median teacher pay.
(2) Ban the "education" degree. Teachers must have degrees in *academic* fields, with a strong preference to those with advanced degrees in academic fields.
Within 5 years, all the idiots will be gone from the profession. I.e., about 90% of teachers will have been replaced.
Next up at bat: parents.
People are always quick to advocate for public benefits being limited to the top 10% of the population when they are strongly -- though unreasonably -- convinced that they are part of the top 10%.
And the top 10% in academic would be a distinctly un-Anglo-Celtic group, which Bede may find a bit upsetting.
Re Michigander's comment:
-------------
"Bede: school system is a failure.
Rest of group: please prove that school system is a failure.
Bede: . . .
Bede: School system is a failure. I don't want to pay taxes for it. "
---------------
A la Galileo, let's try a real world experiment.
How about if we make K12 voluntary and allow parents to decide if they want to pay for their kids to attend --instead of establishing and supporting K12 via state coercion with NO influence from the parents or children.
See how many citizens disagree with Bede. If they don't , then is it not a failure?
The last thing teachers want is a market test of K12.
Cut Bede some slack. He just wants to teach kids about the concentration camps used by the British during the Boer war, and the Irish initiated draft riots in NYC in the 1860s.
I am not arguing for some big-government solution: "only 10% may go." I was giving a historical analogy as a guideline.
Ultimately, it should be left up to parents to decide whether they want to send their parents to school and, if so, how they will pay for it; or whether they will homeschool them.
Part of the problem is the flooding of our schools with people from the Third World. Via attrition and deportation, we could do much to clean up some of the schools.
I and most people I know are of Anglo/European ancestry. It is all of a sudden "racist" for us to want our children to learn about their ancestral traditions (i.e. western civilization)? Give me a break.
Yah - it's racist Bede - no matter how low you crouch behind your "plausible deniability" shield.
Don Williams:
"1) We have an EXTREMELY high incarceration rate -- far more than any other civilized nation. And the rate for some groups like Afro-American males is far higher. We basically run massive concentration camps.
2) Which is extremely wasteful -- I saw an estimate that we could send every prisoner to HARVARD for the price of what we pay to keep them jailed."
What do you imagine these "Afro-American" prisoners would do when they got to Harvard? Rape white women and beat up nerdy Asians and Jews?
Wait, I'll even go further. However about if we abolish the state requirement that kids attend school, replace it with a requirement that they pass some minimum test on reading/writing/arithmetic --but allow the kids to prepare any way they want, and then allow the public schools to compete with alternatives (private schools with alternative curriculums/courses, computer software,etc.).
Give each child a tax credit good for $8,000 /year at the educational institution of his choice. To study whatever he/his parents think is best --once a basic 6th grade level of reading/writing/arithmetic has been met.
Note that a kid who is 8 years old but can pass the minimum test would then be free to study what he chooses.
Let's then see if the public schools succeed or fail.
Don Williams, all your experiment would "prove" is the effectiveness of the anti-intellectual attack on the public school system.
I'll give you an experiment, Don: you claim to have a wonderful idea about how to teach "entrepreneurship." Submit your method to the NEA or the AFT. If your program has merit, they'll use it, right?
If that doesn't work, start a charter school where you teach your concept of "entrepreneurship" to underprivileged youth. Then, we'll compare your students level of attentivness and engagement to a comporable set of public scool students. If your system is great, you'll win, hands down!
In my college no one could get 'just' an education degree-- they had to double major in another field. Master's, etc. were different, of course. They turned out some pretty good teachers, at least from the ones I've known.
Bede, you must be a lot of fun at parties. I have to admit I'm relieved your kids will never be sullied by public school, as that means at least another twelve years before I have any threat of meeting your spawn. I do support teaching foreign languages though-- they're a great way to learn about the English language, even if you're the kind of crazy person who finds no value in traveling outside our borders or learning about different cultures.
And this thread is a great demonstration of why no one wants to be a teacher these days-- the pay is crap, you'll get no respect, and you're blamed for, as serial catowner pointed out, everything.
"Michigander: school system is a success.
Rest of group: please prove that school system is a success.
Michigander: . . .
Michigander : School system is a success. I demand all of you pay taxes for it. "
For those who don't acknowledge that education majors are at the bottom of the intellectual barrel:
http://sherifffruitfly.googlepages.com/educationdoesn%26%2339%3Btmixwiththegre
This Bede guy is cracking me up. Apparently he doesn't realize that most of what he calls "western civilization" came from the Greeks, the Arabs, the Romans, the Jews...
Or maybe he really is talking about what you find when you poke around in the attics of England, Scotland, Ireland, etc. Having done some of that poking around myself, I would definitely label what you learn as "for Mature Readers only".
Being apparently of a somewhat illogical turn of mind, he simply ignores the fact that universal free public education has become a core value of western civilization. Like the Queen in Alice, when he uses a term it means exactly what he intends for it to mean.
bede writes that I must worship at the shrine of Political Correctness. No, I understand the moral and political achievement of the Enlightenment which made us recognize finally that all people are equal. bede prefers to recognize the barbarism that existed before the enlightenment. Unlike bede I have no wish to wander in a darkness lit only by candles labelled luceo and uro.
bede asks if:
It is all of a sudden "racist" for us to want our children to learn about their ancestral traditions (i.e. western civilization)?
It is not "all of a sudden racist" to teach our children about "their ancestral traditions." It is racist to teach our children to believe in white supremacy - which is the core ideology pushed by bede in this thread. bede can couch this ideology in words like "Graeco-Roman" and "Western Civilization" but in doing so he betrays these ancestral traditions.
1) I should note that I do support public education --but with strong limits on what the state can mandate.
2) Which is why the failures of the existing system is infuriating. It baffles me that no one discusses curriculum reform -- the need to decide what to do before deciding how to do it.
3) Nor do I blame the actual teachers all that much -- aside from the logrolling and featherbedding done by some of their unions. Rather, I blame the political system, empire-building administrations, and indifferent parents.
4) But the people really at fault are the Ivy League Universities and the corporations.
For some reason, K12 has become driven by the need to get X percentage of kids into prestigious colleges. Hence, they surrender control over their mission and let the universities define the K12 curriculum --even though the university requirements are stupid.
5) For some equally strange reason, corporations demand college degrees even for jobs which neither require the degrees nor can reward the job holder for the cost of acquiring the degree.
6) One can understand the corporations reasoning -- the way to get docile workers is to make them spend years of their life acquiring a degree and to then sweetly note that all that work will be for naught if the degree holder doesn't immediately go somewhere where he can "apply his knowledge" -- i.e., work for the corporation.
And if the the degree holder has run up a $40,000 debt in educational loans, then he is really over the barrel. He has to jump on the corporate treadmill at a low wage -- and once there, will never get off.
7) If I was a superrich plutocracy, I could not think of a better way to protect myself from COMEPETITION -- from 300 million potential Bill Gates -- than by diverting all the enormous energies of those millions of young people into years of frustrating, purposeless, time-wasting, expensive "education".
Nmd,
I do not hold any supremacy views. I don't even think that my tradition (western civilization) is necessarily better. Who knows, it may be worse. But it is MINE, which makes me want to pass it on to my children, kith and kin. As Cicero said, it is the mos maiorum (tradition of one's ancestors) that he seeks to make basis of his morality and to pass on to his descendants.
CatOwner,
By Western Civilization, I include what is in Europe. Greece and Italy are in Europe, and such a classification has been recognized at least since Herodotus.
As I say above, although my ancestry is Celtic-Anglo, we have been influenced for over 2,000 years by Graeco-Roman culture. Thus, it is part of our ancestral tradition too. The Latin language itself permeates most of Modern European culture.
"Universal education" has NOT become "a core value of western civilization," unless by 'value' you mean the worshipping of mediocrity. There is still a contingent of cultured gentlemen who oppose this barbarism, and we are the true torchbearers of Western Civilization, as we are the ones seeking to preserve (the true sense of conservare) our ancestral traditions and Western man.
barbari veniunt, barbari nos spectant. Vir occidentalis se defendere debet aut occidit.
Don Williams, you appear to believe in a false dichotomy; schools are either failures or sucesses. No middle ground. Hmm, there's someone in the white house who thinks like that...
Aside from that, Don, check this out!
"In a recent report by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, asked the question, "Are private high schools better academically than public high schools?"
The answer was a qualified no, once family background, including parental involvement, was statistically removed as a factor. That's a sharp contradiction from decades of research that consistently concluded private schools offer children a higher-quality education than public schools.
"This suggests that the private school advantage is a chimera," the report says. "It merely shows that private schools contain a larger proportion of children whose parents have characteristics that contribute to learning than do public schools."
Michigander, this is true that private schools aren't "better" in the sense that they can accomplish more than public schools, but parents who want to place their children in an environment which contributes to learning and don't live in a public school district where that's available are going to derive great benefit from access to a private school.
On the other hand, most families seem to ffeel that their public school does provide such an environment.
Nothing's more insufferable than the white-bread middle-aged middle manager who, late in life, discovers Latin and "western civilization" and decides to tell us all about it.
Fetishes over "How the Irish Saved Civilization" aside, "the west" as you understand it, Bede, was a repository of barbarism and illiteracy, and even when they began to emerge out of it, no one would have thought that you nor your "kith and kin" was worthy of any sort of "aristocratic education." Why you think that it's your birthright now -- and not anyone else's -- is anyone's guess.
And to follow up on what Tyro said -
And the number of Bedes who actually know anything significant about the gems of western thought - the Kants, Hegels, Newtons, etc, is approximately nil.
Re Bede "barbari veniunt, barbari nos spectant. Vir occidentalis se defendere debet aut occidit."
------------
The real tradition:
"Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. "
Just ask the Iraqis.
bede asserts I [bede] do not hold any supremacy views. Yet, earlier in this thread bede wrote:
While Celtic-Anglo Americans like myself will require a more aristocratic education that does involve Greek and Latin (among other things, at private schools or via homeschooling), in the inner cities they could probably do with more courses in business or welding.
So bede claims that privileged white boys like himself require a more aristocratic education than underprivileged black boys from the inner cities. This is canonical white supremacy. bede can delude himself, and lie to us, as much as he likes but he is a white supremacist and a racist. This foul ideology looks no better wrapped in a purple toga that it did dressed in a brown shirt.
"parents who want to place their children in an environment which contributes to learning and don't live in a public school district where that's available are going to derive great benefit from access to a private school."
What, in your opinion, prevents these public schools from providing an "environment which contributes to learning?" If you are blaming the students, I concur, but there is literally nothing public schools can do about this other than early expulsion, which would provide a whole host of other societal problems.
Thus, I'd say that the problems facing urban schools are caused by inequality and concentrated poverty, which are factors that public schools can do almost nothing to rectify.
(2) Ban the "education" degree. Teachers must have degrees in *academic* fields, with a strong preference to those with advanced degrees in academic fields.
And what you'd have is a bunch of REALLY confused kids after about 5 years. See, a degree in math teaches you how to DO math.
It doesn't teach you how, for instance, to teach math to 7 year olds. It doesn't teach you what, developmentally, a 7 year old is capable of grasping, nor the best methods for teaching a 7 year old what he can grasp.
It doesn't teach you how to identify and handle a class of 20+ students, some of whom are visual learners (And thus won't remember a damn thing you say), half are auditory learners (and thus will ONLY remember what you say -- not what you write on the board). One or two will have some form of learning disability -- you'll have to figure out how to teach them despite their dyslexia.
I can teach math to juniors and seniors in High School, because 17 and 18 year olds learn pretty much like I do. 7 year olds don't.
Which is why few people get pure Education degrees (unless they plan to teach educational theory), but instead get education degrees with a focus on math, or reading, or writing, or science.
Any plan that starts with "Get a bunch of guys with relevent degrees and throw them into the classroom, and that'll make it all better" fails pretty much immediately. I know lots of folks with advanced degrees, and some of them do quite well one-on-one with their own kids. But they are in no way educated, prepared, or capable of teaching 25 little strangers what they need to know.
I personally wouldn't try it. I can teach MY kid -- because I know my kid very well. I know how he learns, I know how he doesn't learn, I know how to tell if he's confused or gotten the right (or wrong!) idea. I know when he needs a break, I know what areas he struggles in, and basically I know everything I need to know to teach him. Because I've known him for a decade.
Those things don't port over to his peers.
Probably one of the reasons education is one of those fields idiots like to look down on. They could teach their kid if they wanted, so how hard can it be? They don't ever work out that kids vary widely, and what they know about THEIR kid doesn't freakin' apply to everyone else's.
They'd drown in a class of 20+ kids, assuming they could even get their attention.
NMD,
You can choose to believe me or not, but I have no reason to lie to you. I am not a supremacist. I don't know if my ancestral traditions (i.e. occidental civilization) are superior to others. Maybe they are not. But because they are MINE, I am proud, and will talk them up, which is natural. Also, since they are MY ancestral traditions, I want my children, kith and kin to learn them.
EVERYONE,
I know the headmasters at a few private schools. As a general rule, they refuse to hire anyone with a degree in education. Why? These people are idiots.
People teaching at grammar schools at private institutions do not hold education degrees, and these students outperform their public-school rivals.
A degree in "education" is a joke. The students who receive such degrees, in general, are at the very bottom of the education barrel.
At my homeschooling network, we have people with Ph.Ds (in real subjects, not "education") teaching 7 year olds. We have kids who are 9 years old and doing same level of mathematics taught in 11th grade in public schools. We have 14 year old kids who have mastered Greek, Latin, French and German. Guess what...none of our teachers have degrees in "education." No one has even taken an "education" course in college. (Perhaps this is why our kids are doing so well.)
Schools of "Education" are seriously nothing other than cesspools of mediocrity.
"People teaching at grammar schools at private institutions do not hold education degrees, and these students outperform their public-school rivals."
As noted above, no they don't. Your assertion is demonstrably false, Bede. Maybe you should have one of those bright PhDs in you "homeschooling network" give you a lesson about statistics.
> Any plan that starts with "Get a bunch of guys
> with relevent degrees and throw them into the
> classroom, and that'll make it all better" fails
> pretty much immediately. I know lots of folks with
> advanced degrees, and some of them do quite well
> one-on-one with their own kids. But they are in no
> way educated, prepared, or capable of teaching 25
> little strangers what they need to know.
Yeah - it is always funny to watch those guys when as new members they try for the first time to lead an activity with 20 young Cub Scouts. The mothers (whether new or experienced), the experienced Cub Scout leaders, any Boy Scout volunteers (in the 15-18 range) who are there fall on the floor laughing it is so funny (as long as someone keeps an eye on the exits and other potential dangers to make sure none of the young ones actually gets hurt).
Cranky
"In fact, it is mind-boggling and astounding to look around at the wreckage of our society, and then blame the teachers. Nine trillion in debt, with several trillion more needed to keep bridges from falling down and water mains from collapsing, 100,000 dying each year in our health care "system" because of mistakes, our jails stuffed to overflowing, radiation and other poisons entering our aquifers, a society so grotesquely inefficient that 5% of the world's population uses 25% of the world's energy, yet supposedly all of this will be changed eventually if we just let down those "barriers to entry" and allow the "magic of the market" to transform our schools."
What's mind-boggling and astounding is that someone can point out all these problems, which are true, and yet believe that a failing system of basic education has nothing to do with it.
Good to see the idiot's defense brigade showed up.
In a backhanded way, though, you're probably right. There's no need to EXPLICITLY ban the education degree. Quadrupling median teacher salary would have the same effect - though it might take a couple years longer.
This whole idea about having an expert mathematician teach K-12 math makes about as much sense as thinking a doctor could deliver nursing care, because, after all, doctors know all about sickness and health.
But any doctor will tell you that nursing is different from doctoring, and they don't know how to do our jobs.
Now, most of us can say we've rarely had a really great teacher, and most teachers could tell us they've rarely had a really great student. Oh, sure, teachers at the Nels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen probably have lots of great students, but most students are getting a small part of their education in a small part of a system that has been, for reasons of economy, modeled very much on the assembly line.
And judging from what I see where I live, this ain't working so bad. Sure, we have a few nuts like Bede, but most of us support the teachers and schools because the teachers and schools are doing a pretty good job and most of our young people are turning out pretty well.
At least they're not boring us to tears with assertions that they are "cultured gentlemen who oppose this barbarism" who are the "true torchbearers" and blah blah blah.
What's the Latin for "garbage in, garbage out"?
I used to be a lawyer and now teach high school in Texas. It took me one summer to be alternatively certified. There are still some problems (three years of law school did not count for anything)but generally if you majored in it you can teach it. For people who really want to get their feet wet they can substitute teach without certification but for low pay. I do agree with some of the comments about schools of education, I can remember being in college and making fun of the education majors. Karma is a bitch.
Re Michigander's comment:
"Aside from that, Don, check this out!
"In a recent report by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, asked the question, "Are private high schools better academically than public high schools?"
The answer was a qualified no, once family background, including parental involvement, was statistically removed as a factor. That's a sharp contradiction from decades of research that consistently concluded private schools offer children a higher-quality education than public schools.
"This suggests that the private school advantage is a chimera," the report says. "It merely shows that private schools contain a larger proportion of children whose parents have characteristics that contribute to learning than do public schools."
------------------
1) The above statement says more about the poor intellects at the Center on Education Policy than it says anything about reality.
2) Reality is more complex.
3) For one thing, there is little Parental involvment at the top private schools -- by definition. They are boarding schools.
4) Two, before talking about something, you should (a) define what it is you are talking about and (b) define how to measure it.
The top private schools have a very high mean SAT scores in their graduating class -- although this is not a realistic measure because such schools self-select many top students. But not totally -- they also accept many not so top students whose parents are wealthy or influential because that is needed to pay the bills -- and to build the endowment. How do you think George W got into Andover?
Plus they select high quality athletes, art students etc who add to the quality of the student environment but who don't necessarily score high on the SATs. Students headed for Juilliard or Hollywood don't necessarily score well on math --because that's not in their area of focus.
5) Nor is acceptance in the Ivy League a good measure. While a fairly high percentage of top private school graduates (20-35%??) go into the very competitive universities, there are many who are only admitted to less renowned colleges.
The reason is that it is very hard to get high grades and a high rank in your graduating class if you are in a very selective group -- as opposed to being in the top 10 of a normal suburban school.
Plus people on admissions committees tend to favor the underdog who did well in an unfavorable environment over the preppy. In part, because the admissions staff themselves did not necessarily go to a very elite college -- that's why they're working on the admissions staff instead of being full tenured professors.
6) The education IS very different at a good private school, however. Whether it is significantly better is subject to debate.
Instead of 25 kids setting in a lecture and taking dictation, you have 10 or so kids sitting around a table arguing various viewpoints and exploring a problem in order to discover the truth. Plus answering questions from the professor intended to guide the discussion, to raise points not yet considered, or to point out flaws in an argument. The Socratic method, if you will. Which exposes what you DON'T Know versus what you do know.
This Demands a lot of preparation BEFORE the class and also requires that the student reason and assemble the facts rather than just suck up spoon fed info and spit it back out without really questioning whether it is true or false.
7) Math works somewhat differently, but even there the emphasis is on the STUDENT figuring out how to solve a problem -- and using math concepts to do so -- rather than just learning cookbook recipes/processes. Again, requires much small classes and more teacher interaction.
8) On the other hand, the private schools suffer from much of the same problem as the public schools -- the college prep curriculum. While their course offerings are more diverse and sophisicated -- with college freshmen courses,etc -- their graduates are still as largely ignorant of important matters as are our public school graduates.
But if you think about it, entrusting a class of second graders to a clown with a college degree but no knowledge or experience in how you teach seven-year-olds is an ultimate "bottleneck" on educational efficiency.
Think about it- that's an entire year of a kid's life, typically spent with one teacher. Just about the worst thing that could happen to that kid would be to have a teacher who was, for example, a great historian of the frustingerer fabrics of Upper Wearingover, but had no experience or theory to guide them in making lesson plans, involving the whole group, meeting the curriculum objectives, meeting with parents etc etc.
This is how we get to the point that, in the elementary schools, you want a good generalist. You don't need a math major last seen working on the Poincare theorum to teach 20 seven-year-olds how to multiply. To force even one of those kids to spend the whole year with somebody who only knew math would be a crime against the kids education.
I know this will sound fantastical and hard to believe, but there is the possibility that people who spend their entire lives studying education might actually know more about it than people who don't.
Hmmm....sounds a lot like the claim that people who spend their lives studying math know more about math than somebody who "just" has an education degree. Go figure.
The degree in education truly is an embarrassment. My European friends often make fun of it. Not only is the degree fluff, but those who pursue it are generally the type of people who should not even be in college, much less entrusted with the care of our kids.
And to answer gadfly KevinD, the men at the top who decided we needed nuclear weapons and nuclear energy before we knew how to handle the waste were overwhelmingly educated in private schools.
The next layer, of men who built the weapons and power plants, were mainly very qualified and well-educated engineers, physicists, etc etc.
So the problem we have with our education system is not that we don't have enough private schools or well-trained engineers.
In fact, some people have argued that the real problem is a lack of instruction in basic values in the home.
A radical assertion, I am sure.
Catowner,
I agree that young kids in elementary should be be taught by education specialist who know how to teach young kids multiple subjects, but what about High School? Shouldn't teachers have more specialization in subject matter, especially if they're teaching kids who are going to college?
And thanks for "answering" me, but I don't understand how nuclear weapons got thrown into this, why you think I support private schools, or why you think I'm a "gadfly"
regards
Serial catowner -
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Not an exact translatory equivalent of course, but it's precisely the same thought.
I agree that young kids in elementary should be be taught by education specialist who know how to teach young kids multiple subjects, but what about High School? Shouldn't teachers have more specialization in subject matter, especially if they're teaching kids who are going to college?
Did you miss all the bits where even education majors tended to have a focus in a particular field? Math, reading, science, writing?
Most high school teachers DO have the equivilant of a strong minor in their field, if not an outright degree as well. It's much easier for a high school teacher with a relevent degree to adjust to teaching, since high school aged kids are developmentally much more akin to their teachers. (In short, they learn the way adults do -- for the most part).
"Education degrees" are somewhat focused -- a friend of mine's degree was in Education, with a focus on math, K-5. Her classes, internship, and career were built on teaching math fundamentals to children age 6 to 11. Her higher math courses stopped at Cal II, but she actually took (and has a better understanding) of things like number theory than I do (and I have a math-heavy degree).
Another friend of mine, who teaches high school, had an education degree with a focus in science, 6-12 education. She teaches physics, and certainly has the background and understanding to teach AP mechanics and electromagnetics.
He had a much smoother adjustment than her husband, who had a BS in math and got alternatively certified to teach High School math. He floundered his first two years, mostly because he tried to teach Algebra and Geomatry classes to a room full of teenagers the way he'd teach to a room full of college students who were paying to be there. Thankfully his department head was also his mentor, and the department head more or less rode herd on him until he grasped the basics of teaching 14 and 15 year olds.
But High Schools these days rarely get past first semester of college level of classes -- and even THOSE are starting to get outsourced to local community colleges ("dual credit" classes in which a student takes, say -- government or calculus from a local community college in return for both high school and college credit. They have to pay for the tuition, but the school busses them there and back and offers a lot of study-related support. It's a nice bridge between the expectations of high school and college).
My K-5 math teacher took two semesters of Calculus in college and a number of math theory classes, as well as a lot more classes on HOW to teach math to kids. Frankly, that's enough to teach high school math practically anywhere, as only a small number of high school students even get to Calculus.
It's fascinating the way this debate goes on at great length while hardly ever referring to the actual certification and degree requirements for teaching in public schools in this country. In Connecticut, for example, the certification requirements state that candidates must have a bachelor's degree with "A major awarded by an approved institution in any one subject area except that a major in professional education may not be accepted in fulfillment of this requirement." The education classes and standardized certification tests (the restrictive "barriers" Matt seems to be citing in his original post) are in addition to whatever degree you obtain. As far as I am aware, there is no state in the country that requires an education degree for certification, and by all reports more states are moving toward the CT policy than away from it.
I agree with Don Williams and Bede.
Any degree in education (graduate or undergraduate) is a complete waste of time.
We send our kids to a private school because we want them to have teachers and administrators with REAL DEGREES, not some blowoff degree in education.
Public education has fallen beyond repair. The only parents who send their kids to public schools are those either too poor to send them to private schools, too dumb to care, or too busy to homeschool them.
The only parents who send their kids to public schools are those either too poor to send them to private schools, too dumb to care, or too busy to homeschool them.
How do you even have a debate with individuals who can rattle off such ridiculously untrue and unsupported statements with a straight face?
There are definitely some advantages that private schools have in an across-the-board comparison with public schools, many of which have to do with things like discipline, increased parental involvement due to the population being self-selected, and the ability to expel students without concern for where they'll end up. Teacher quality, however, is not an area where private schools measure up well, despite the bullshit horror stories you've heard about Education degrees and the evils of unions and tenure.
As a general rule, private school teachers have less training, less experience, and recieve significantly lower salaries than public school teachers. Elite prep boarding schools that churn out mobs of Ivy League students are a tiny minority of the private school population, not the norm. Teachers in private schools are not required to be certified (unless it's a requirement the school has established), and not only do they not need to have education degrees, they don't have to have ANY degree relevant to the subject they're teaching. The same can be said even more strongly for parents who attempt homeschooling beyond the elementary level. Some will be good, sure, but some will suck, and there's no question that they'll have less relevant training and experience. How you see this as a sure-fire prescription for a better education is really beyond me.
Morat,
Your post is the classic case of someone butting in after hearing one half of a conversation and making a fool of themselves.
Good night and good luck.
Morat -
You provide a WONDERFUL example of idiots defending their idiocy and their god-given right to teach young idiots how to be older idiots.
“We remain a hunted people. Now you think you have a destiny to fulfill in the land that historically has been ours for forty thousand years. And we’re a new Mestizo nation.”
“Our devil has pale skin and blue eyes…”
“We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”
– Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, founder of La Raza
"Around the year 2040, whites will become a minority in the United States and, believe me, it will be 'payback time'."
- Pro-Immigration Activist, Jorge Sanchez
“And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem.”
- African Studies professor, Dr. Kamau Kambon
"Blond hair and blue eyes are a biological defect."
"The white race is a disease, and the only cure is a bullet. The rule of whites is history. Soon they will be our serfs. It's now the Age of the Brown Man."
- Hindu nationalist, Ramesh Sharma
“The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists. Make no mistake about it we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed–not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed."
- Jewish studies professor, Dr Noel Ignatiev
.
Certification and education degrees are the biggest bunch of BS. Schools of education wanted to create a monopoly, and thus started lobbying states in the 1950s to create "certification."
Have you seen people who major in education? They are idiots. I wouldn't let one of these people near my kid with a ten foot pole!
Private schools (where people have real degrees) or homeschooling, these are the only options.
I agree that young kids in elementary should be be taught by education specialist who know how to teach young kids multiple subjects, but what about High School? Shouldn't teachers have more specialization in subject matter, especially if they're teaching kids who are going to college?
They do. High School and Elementary certificates have different requirements for precisely this reason. Each state is different, obviously, but take my state for example - someone wishing to teach Elementary school can major in Education and be certified to teach all subjects in the primary grades, while someone wishing to teach High School takes a major in the subject they wish to teach and a minor in Education, and their certificate restricts them to teaching that one subject.
"What's fascinating the way this debate goes on at great length while hardly ever referring to the actual certification and degree requirements for teaching in public schools in this country."
Yep. And while I expect a certain degree of ignorance in comments, I'm a bit disappointed at Matt Y. - "weird barriers to entry into the teaching profession" . . . ok, you want to become a teacher?
Path 1:
Get a college degree, including coursework in education. (In some cases, on top of general admission reqs, you'd be required to pass a short-part test roughly comparable to the PSAT in order to enter such a program. Honestly, if you can't manage this, there's a genuine issue.)
As part of the above program, do a semester-long internship. Given the high teacher attrition rate, this is a good thing; far from being formulaic, this both provides actual (and sometimes extremely sobering) experience and serves a quite relevant real-world method of evaluation, yet in a controlled setting rather than an utter sink-or-swim (for student-teacher and student-students) one. (Granted, that'll come next year).
Pass a set of state-required. licensing exams. This is a feature of many other professions, including some that pay even less and garner less respect then teaching. NCLB is having quite an impact here.
Perhaps Matt can explain which of these is a weird barrier, given that we actually do want a system that provides quality control?
Path 2:
Get into one of an ever growing number of alternative certification programs, which may be for recent college grads (Teach for America, etc.) or for career-changers - professionals, etc. - who have decided to go into teaching. These generally provide an accelerated training/degree/certification process together with real-life experience. Many programs both cover much or all of the ed costs on top of paying a stipend or genuine salary.
" As an engineering physics PhD I probably know more math and physics than the vast majority of HS instructors and I'm perfectly qualified to teach students paying thousands in tuition when they attend college.
But I'm expected to get yet another degree to teach at the K-12 level? What a lousy proposition."
This early comment has been throughly battered, but let me add a bit more: the commenter may be "perfectly qualified to teach [undergraduate] students", but I think most of us realize that this doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot in terms of teaching ability even in terms of undergrads. I'm guessing many of us have had at least one prof. whose proficiency or even outright brilliance in their field might have been combined with certain less promising characteristics - inability to speak above a mumble, or an apparent unconcern as to the general level of comprehension, or a lack of basic social skills, or etc.
And of course, I could go on at length about the many ways undergrads are different from schoolkids, but let me just not one. If you go teach in a K-8 school, a significant fraction of the students sincerely believe that during a certain night an obese pole-dweller travels all over the globe on a sleigh pulled by aerial ungulates, for the express purpose of bringing consumer goods to countless millions of children.
"You are explaining why your system is a massive failure and you don't even realize it.
If what you were teaching had any value, it would not be difficult to engage the interest of the kids.
They're not stupid. In fact, that's the problem. They're smart enough to know that you're wasting their time --for your benefit, not theirs." - Posted by Don Williams | October 18, 2007 11:10 AM
That sounds nice, but it is wrong.
I was a very ambitious student in high school. I wanted to learn the most challenging math and science material. I enjoyed learning. However, there wasn't a single day of class that I did not want to be somewhere else. If I had been somewhere else, I would have wished I were learning math and science. That is not sensible, but it is part of being a kid.
We should integrate our public schools at some point. And I second Don Williams' first point as well. Our prison culture and our racially segregated public schools will be the two areas of domestic policy that future generations will look back at and wonder how we could be so backward.
Re Harry's question "What do you imagine these "Afro-American" prisoners would do when they got to Harvard? Rape white women and beat up nerdy Asians and Jews? "
--------
You speak as if that would be a bad thing.
"Ου παύσεσθε» είπεν «ημίν υπεζωσμένοις ξίφη νόμους αναγιγνώσκοντες;"
A degree in education is a sad joke. I think that a chimp could probably acquire this degree.
The reason private schools are better is because the teachers have real degrees, not some watered-down fluff degree like "education."
" I think that a chimp could probably acquire this degree."
First the presidency, next the classroom . .. Hey, I for one welcome our new simian overlords. Although I'm not certain how it'll all pan out . . .
Er . . .all your bonobos are belong to us?
But, setting aside genuine problems, what explains the utter loathing towards teachers and teaching (esp. public school) - far out of proportion to real issues - that's on display in some of these comments (and so many other places)?
"what explains the utter loathing towards teachers and teaching (esp. public school) - far out of proportion to real issues - that's on display in some of these comments?"
Sexism, anti-intellecualism, and the general belief that its acceptable to "kick down" in modern American culture.
Comments closed November 01, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Schools of "Education" are a joke. They are perpetuators of mediocrity, peddlers of mundane "theories."
A headmaster at a prestigious boarding school once told me that he simply refused to hire anyone with a degree in education. Why? They are idiots. He said he'd prefer to hire someone with a real degree.
Posted by Bede | October 18, 2007 10:04 AM