Doc, Your first sentence sounds like you just can’t believe that someone would suggest that someone without teacher training might make a good teacher. You then go on to make the case for what your previously belittled.  I am confused by what seems to be a rather conflicted paragraph.  Do you really have a PHd?  Or at least an explanation?

Dr. K,

So teachers bear “much” of the responsibility?  Considering how bad things are, do we really want to relegate the education of our children to a teacher who spends 5.5 hours a day with a child?  Shouldn’t we expect something from the parents?  And if we are to expect nothing from the parents, do you expect teachers to be teachers AND parents?  Oh, we already are, and that seems to be working great!

Doctor, your platitudes and non-sequiturs are not helpful.  They belittle teachers by making them responsible for your shortcomings.  Seems unfair, and I will teach my students about folks like you:  “Watch out for self-important, smarmy academics who refuse to exert the rigor necessary to come to an enlightened explanation and solution” is what I could say.

Dr. Knowitall

Your quote:  “If you perceive that “some kids pollute the school,”
then you probably belong in some other line of work.  I am of the opinion that nothing bad that happens in public schools can be fairly blamed on the students. Think rationally about that and I feel certain you’ll come around to understand that to be true. Schools mirror society, all the good and all the bad.”

Excellent point. Thank you.  I fully endorse your summation.  When everything is said and done, this is wherein the problem lies.  It’s not any “certain” teacher or student, we could fix that.  It lies with the fallacies of who we’ve become as a society.  We’re (America) NOT the Brady Bunch (for the record, they’re fictitious),  and this is what we need to address.  The lies, cheating and viciousness that has had a laisse-faire cavalier attitude toward humanity.  And humanity MATTERS.

Paolo

The issue with libertarianism is it supports laisse-faire capitalism.  That is a neocon philosophy, NOT GOOD.  Individual rights is one thing, I think EVERYONE supports that.  But libertarianism would be catastrophic, and it has been wherever its been implemented.

Rebel…Lesson Plans can be accomodating, sure they can.  Be creative.

Hi there.  I’m a teacher.

The main issue is governmental mandates and school administrators, which results in lack of academic freedom in schools.

Democratic schools - as in schools run like a democracy - that empower students and teachers in the government of schools, and extract out the sorts of governmental mandates that reach all the way into the classroom and micromanage instruction, is the root of poor schools, frustrated teachers, and unmotivated students.  In this model there are no career school administrators, but rather teachers who are elected into administrative roles for limited terms. 

Schools should be a lot more like colleges, in short.

In a free society (what we libertarians advocate), good teachers would be well paid, because they offer an important service. The current teaching system, however, has no way of truly compensating superior teachers. Most of the ridiculous “merit pay” systems are based on the teacher just getting more and more useless School of Education courses, rather than actual, demonstrable ability to help children learn.

Let us say, for example, that two schools in a free society set up shop. One, modeled after the Prussian schools, continues to teach in 45 to 55 minute periods, in which students are continuously frustrated because they have no time to really focus and go in depth into a particular aspect of learning. The other school, based on Montessori’s method, allows children to delve as deeply into a subject as they please, taking days or weeks or months to fully develop their knowledge as fully as they are motivated to do so.

The waiting list at the Montessori school is miles long, so plans are developed to expand the business by hundreds of schools over the course of the next few years. Montessori teachers, in on the ground floor, take part in the expansion, take leadership roles, and earn six or even seven figure salaries, ensuring that quality education is not compromised. After all, that is the core of their schools’ success.

The waiting list at the Prussian school is…well, nonexistent. In fact, it goes out of business in about a year as parents flock to the better school down the street.

Compare this with the current system, in which the Prussian model goes unchallenged for the better part of two centuries, turning out functional illiterates, while “experts” dither about ways to make “progressive changes” like “look-say” reading, which makes matters much, much worse. But, the school system is mandatory, with fees collected by force from the taxpayers, so there is no real incentive to change.

As always, freedom is the answer, regardless of your question.

Expat, there’s anger out there and for good reason.  I’m probably as angry about our ed. system as anyone else.  But not at the students.  Not at the teachers or at the parents. 

I’m really pissed off with our government’s ignoring our schools (except to hinder them.)  Three trillion to destroy, virtually nothing to build in our own country.  Killing kids in Iraq, “killing” kids in America.  And John McCain has a chance to be elected?  No wonder you left.

I do understand that “it takes a village.”  I don’t believe teachers have to be, or are, miracle workers.

Kids might be making a mistake when assessing/judging themselves based on what they see in their peers.  We teachers should help them with that. 

“You need to take some responsibility for your society, not just put it on teachers and schools.”
I agree with you on this.  The reality is, though, teachers bear much of the responsibility and, I might add, generally take it on with courage and dedication.

If you perceive that “some kids pollute the school,”
then you probably belong in some other line of work.  I am of the opinion that nothing bad that happens in public schools can be fairly blamed on the students. Think rationally about that and I feel certain you’ll come around to understand that to be true. Schools mirror society, all the good and all the bad. 

To readers of this comment, note that “stupid” is in quotes because it was in response to another commenter who characterized kids as being “stupid.”  I respect my students.

I liked what you had to say.  But the very strengths you speak of, are the very things disintegrating along with our society.

^ you’re getting are pretty crude/rude.  Very similar to one I received.  And these people are teachers? No wonder the educational system is in crisis.  I’d definitely home school.

^ mis-informed comment.  There is indeed a no fail policy here in the government schools.  I refused to “not fail” my students who did fail my class.  Remember, you can’t be happy if you miss your nappy.

You’re not suggesting, are you, that lawyers, Drs. and entrepreneurs would make better teachers than those we have, are you?  Listen to what you’re saying.  Read it again.  What is it about those people that makes you think they’d make better teachers?  I agree, they MIGHT make better teachers.  People out walking the streets w/o a job might make a better teacher.  I think teacher unions are making a mistake with their closed shops.  It cuts out a potentially rich educational resource.  Some believe, I among them, that great teachers are born.  You don’t have to get formal training to be a great teacher.  I’ve seen great teaching in action by a beekeeper, by a basketball trick artist a hundred other non-professionals. Some of the greatest teachers in the world are parents.

We have to get beyond the myths.

There are tens of thousands of great teachers in American public schools.  I know many of them myself.  They love teaching children, they are extremely dedicated, some have given their lives for their students, and many go home to their own kids after school.

There are drones in every profession.  Let’s talk about some of them.  How about lawyers?  How about Drs?  How about entrepreneurs? 

To quote my good friend, Bill Clinton, “Give me a break!”

Hi Dr. Knowitall,

Like, oh wow, man.

By citing the undisputed fact that teachers are by and large taken from the bottom third of college students, academically speaking, I mean no personal insult. Heck, I went through teacher certification too.

The system we now have does not attract the best teachers. I have zero hope it ever will, given the fact it is a top-down, centralized bureaucracy.

Again, I maintain the educational system is so bureaucratized and calcified that nothing will change it. This is why I disagree with those who say we just need to make a few procedural changes. Revolutionary change is needed. As a libertarian, I believe that change should be: FREEDOM OF CHOICE. I know that many on this site, remaining convinced of government benevolence, will still want to keep a centralized, Prussian system. More and more people, however, are beginning to challenge that concept.

I concur.  There used to be “vocational ed” which many people derided because it wasn’t college preparatory.  But guess what?  It was also very expensive: lots of hands-on stuff that cost real money.  It may have been insurance liabilities that actually ended up killing these programs, I don’t know, but I do know how terribly hypocritical it was to replace these with a weakened academic program ironically (cynically) called “college prep” when the real college prep is now called “advanced placement.”

“D.E., my child, do you need time out?”

Thank you for your gentle mentoring toward a more appropriate response than I gave…..
I stand gratefully corrected….

We strive on…

I bet you’re a great mother!

We’re paying teachers too little. Passion for communicating one’s love of a subject is a delicate flower that in most cases will not survive a discouraging environment in which one doesn’t make enough (which equates, in our society, with not being valued enough) to keep body and soul together.  What is needed are the people who are going to law school and med school and becoming entrepreneurs, the best and the brightest, teaching school as a hard-core profession.  At the salary levels we offer these days for teachers in the roughest, most challenging environments, we’re basically getting amateurs and the bottom of the barrel.  Sorry to say it, but it’s true.

That is profoundly pathetic. If I were you I would be outraged. I experienced a system like that. It spoiled me and made me lazy when the big time courses came around. Underchallenging students is just as bad as overchallenging them. 12 years of education just to produce arithmeticians? Disgusting.

The problem with schools these days, mainly high schools, is that we believe that all kids are college material.  They are not! I believe that we should as a nation start creating more trade schools. Lot of the students at my high school jump at classes like metal shop, woods, agriculture, upolstery, and anything that is related to realistic job opportunities.  If we create more trade schools, then we will keep attendance up, because kids are now learning a trade. Maybe we should do like other nations and that is by 9th grade year a career aplitude test is given.  What ever that test shows is what school you go to. If you score high enough to be a rocket engineer then you go to high school to prepare you for college, if your score shows that you are good with your hands and tools then you go to a mechanic school.  Something like that.  We need to start getting our kids to be enthusiastic about school again and making this realistic for them.

Never forget that the bottom of the barrel is made of quarter-sawn oak, just like the top.

Also, never forget that one’s position in its contents may have little to do with anything about his qualities.  Empty things float to the top. 

Shall I go on?

Everything about a teaching career requires a sense of selflessness of the person considering one.  People who opt out for reasons of earning power probably will do better, and should be, in some other field.

I do think that “the majority of teachers…underqualified…” could be a popular myth.  Most of the teachers I know are highly qualified, with Masters degrees, and highly dedicated to helping their students.  It is a fact now that districts require teachers to comply with “highly qualified” parameters set by the fed. gov. 

Notwithstanding that, determining a teacher to be ineffective and the sole reason for kids not performing to standards (which in and of itself may not be valid) is not easy to do and may be unfair, given the myriad of variables effecting the process.

I’d like to offer you some encouragement:

I think a large majority of people may pass through this life not being able to credit themselves with having contributed something of real value to society.  Yet I believe that’s why we’re here. 

I know of nothing more gratifying than being thanked by a kid or his/her parents for helping.  What you do for them will last for generations.  Please don’t forget that. Those kids need people like you.

D.E., my child, do you need time out?

There are laws that ensure the rights of all students and their parents to an education that is publicly funded.  Some of these kids are mainstreamed, if the system is prepared to handle them and many sytems do their best to accomodate these students in the most financially efficient way possible.

If this is your attitude and you bear or sire children, I hope you are always blessed with bright, healthy ones.

I don’t see what the problem is with asking a question and then getting an answer. It seems almost classical in its elegance. Plato’s dialogues did not come with the philosopher giving a,b,c or d as options for the correct answer. The French waitress in Paris doesn’t give you multiple choice answers for how to order beef steak. Well there was the argument by physicists over the best neutron flux scenario for an A bomb.

(1) slow neutron fission of U238
(2) fast neutron fission of U238
(3) slow neutron fission of U235
(4) fast neutron fission of U235

But now that it is a science, why not just ask for the right answer?

Anyway you speak of some people not being interested in the subject, so “why penalize them with an essay format?” Well what good is an exam if it does show that a student is well acquainted with the material? Doesn’t MC testing mislead those who would look at the grade transcripts by rewarding people without a deep knowledge but are just good at cues?

Re: Paracelus:

MC tests are fine, provided they are adequately structured.  If you have an “all or nothing” approach you do yourself a disservice(and of course anyone who listens to you), unless of course the situation is THAT DIRE, wherein per-say, it could be applicable.

This reverts back to my comment about a teacher’s love for a subject and the student who is meeting a credit. My premise ISN’T that none of it matters, it’s just that people are people. Some find great, in fact immense accomplishment in a subject, while others construe the very same information as “interesting background”.  Will you fault them?

I see that all facts and suppositions of any given subject collide at some undetermined point. However, only those who understand the brevity of their subject will succeed at it.  The rest will merely fulfil the credit, each going their own way and specializing as their personal strengths allow. And, in some unknown time-line, ALL subjects will become paramount in their own right.

Everyone seems to be throwing around the word curriculum as if it means lesson plan.  Curriculum only means what should be covered, this is a good thing when taken in balance.

When I was young (8th grade) we moved from a medium sized school district to a extremely small one.  I was in Algebra at the original school but in the new school the math was at 3rd grade level IN 8TH GRADE.  I am not exaggerating, I had a lot of fun in my new school skipping out, getting straight A’s and the like, but I could finish my math assignment in less than five minutes, many times in about a minute. (I used to time myself, it made the banality of it all more entertaining) It was a joke.  They didn’t offer different math levels at all.  Everyone had the same book.  Everyone!

The other subjects were the same way.  The kids at my new school couldn’t compete with me in any subject.  None.  They weren’t stupid by any means, when I showed them how it was done, they understood.  Yet, the school wasn’t teaching them what they could have learned, what a tragedy. I thought it then and I think it still.  So, curriculum requirements are not in and of themselves bad, my experience has been THEY SHOULD BE THERE.

The trouble with NCLB is linking test scores to funding.  This is a back door way to allocate more funds to “better public schools” (those who have the inside track on the tests) and are in “prominent areas”.  While the schools who need the help most, will be left high and dry.  In turn, they will fall further behind.  This was a purposeful measure by the Bush Administration to get a private school quality education for well to do students for free, by increasing their share of the pie.  These schools will then be able to acquire better books, better equipment and pay higher teacher salaries thereby attracting better teachers.

Ask yourself, how many schools in prominent areas are complaining?  They’re not.  Of course not, they’ve always had more.  It’s just that now, it’ll be even MORE.  They know their students will pass.  Of course they do.  The proficiency standards ARE GOOD, you don’t want a school that can’t stack up AT ALL.  That’s like relegating students to Walmart or McDonalds for the rest of their life.

I feel in most sympathy with point 3. As to point 1., I suppose one could make MC tests that are less subject to luck, but the concern I had was that the essay form pushed fluency and virtuosity upon the student. We live in a world where being half right or partly sure is not good enough. MC testing seems to encourage a certain slackness. I would rather live in a world where a student when asked which Roman general passed the Rubicon did not have to choose between Mickey Mouse, Marie Attoinette, Charlie Chaplin, and the correct answer. MC testing doesn’t encourage deep learning. I would rather the student answered in direct fashion without cues, “Julius Caesar.” Somehow I would feel that I lived in better world without MC testing. Good on you prof for not relying on that charade of elocution.

You need a nap, too….
so many tired people on this thread..

And you, too, need a nap..

I have two kids: one who always wants to make credible scenario for the next best solution and will invariable choose that one and get zero.  My other kid never misses.  Weird. 

Couple of thoughts:

1.  MC tests where any combinations of responses (such as abd or ae or bde) provide much less luck and are often used by serious testers.

2.  Properly speaking you need to correct for guessing.  This is not simple and most testers don’t do it because it penalizes risk-averse students pretty heavily.

3.  I’ve been a college math teacher for 20 years and never have given a multiple choice test.  Well, I experimented with them one summer and found that many students did the wrong work and circled the write choice while many others did the right work and circled the wrong choice.  What a bunch of nonsense!

You need a nap.

?

The problem with k-12 education in the United States is mainly the low salary of teachers. With new teachers making anywhere from 25-50 thousand dollars a year the teaching profession is not highly coveted in this day and age. Therefore, when young scholars are considering a profession the majority of the cream of the crop seek higher paying professions. Leaving the majority of teachers educating the children as under qualified and overwhelmed.

What this country has done, perhaps by accident, I don’t know, is outsource education.  Not of our own children, of course, but as a way of getting educated people without paying to educate them, we’ve spent the last 30 years or more gobbling up immigrants who get their k12 and then attend our universities, which have been much better funded than k12.  If you’re skeptical, a visit to the math/science/engineering departments at any major US university will quickly convince you of this.

I don’t know a teacher can be multiculturally sensitive and yet teach to children from a polyglot of humanity. In this case the school system is not the place to solve such a problem which is more properly dealt with by ICE.

I know this idea will not be the end all and be all for education, but it will cause some realignmnet of teaching if it were to be fully implemented. The idea would be no multiple choice tests. Never! Not at all. All answers would be in essay form. As a concession to time limits a student could give a one word or phrased answer if we are speaking of the sciences such as 2+ 2 = ____. But forget the multiple guess test. It’s usesless.

A further problem with America’s education system is the fact that teachers, statistically, come from the bottom third of entering freshmen, and the bottom third of graduating seniors. There are a few exceptions, of course, but those tend to be the ones who leave within that five-year window. [Source: this is all well-documented by Thomas Sowell].

Thus, we are entrusting the education of our children to the least-accomplished stratum of graduating college students.

But, the goal of our government-run indoctrination system is NOT profound mastery of fields of knowledge. The goal (taken from Prussian schools via Horace Mann and others) is the “socialization” of students. “Socialization” boils down to obedience to authority, following the herd, being comfortable with a mob mentality, going along to get along.

If mastery of deep knowledge were the goal, you would want teachers who know their subjects extraordinarily well; that is, you would want them from the top third, not the bottom third, of college students.

But deep knowledge is not the goal. The goal is obedient citizens. This makes it much easier for the ruling class to get away with such crimes as inflation (which steals money from our obedient citizenry by reducing the value of their money), because most citizens have no idea what inflation is or how it is done. If they did, they would vote out the ruling class in a flash.

The same goes for illegal, immoral wars that benefit no one except the ruling class. Most of our obedient, “patriotic”, government schooled citizenry went along with the insane war in Iraq (remember, support for the war was about 80 percent when it started).

So, in a sense, our government school system is not a failure. It is succeeding brilliantly at what it was intended to accomplish.

I thought a lot of this article was self-indulgent. I know there are good teachers, but all to often they are few and far between.  One thing you find is teachers who love this or that subject and anyone who doesn’t like “their love” is considered belligerent and treated negatively.  I have over the last couple years met some newly graduated teachers who told be the most imbecilic things I have ever heard about teaching.

One concept that appears completely foreign to them is teaching IS NOT ABOUT YOU (the teacher), it’s about the student.  Each new teaching graduate I talked to “explained” to me their misguided grandiose visions of student accomplishment.  They have a extremely limited view of people in general, and mainly liked the idea of being thanked and worshipped for their good deed.  So it’s no wonder when they get in the classroom and the day to day repetition sets in, they find it isn’t all that glorious.  It’s work.

In defense of teachers, we have a stupid system.  All teachers should be trained to teach at least two subjects.  It is the exception and not the rule, for a teacher to be able to teach 9th and 10th grade math, six times a day, day in day out, year after year and NOT become thoroughly nauseated with the subject.  They really don’t want to hear that same question about that same problem. You know.. the one they just spent 20 minutes explaining.  It would be agitating to most anyone.

Things to understand and possess BEFORE deciding to teach.  Patience..yep, they’re going to ask that same annoying question (take it with a grain of salt, find the humor in it).  A genuine appreciation for the DIFFERENCES in people, don’t try to make everyone conform, that’s what YOU DO NOT WANT.  A creative bent (a scarce commodity), find outside the box ways to teach those standardized requirements, they are there.  Be fair, even when it sucks to do so.  And lastly, if what you’re doing isn’t working do something else, NO MATTER WHAT THEY TAUGHT YOU IN COLLEGE (rebel).

“I have a Masters in Education with a endorsement for teaching “Special Ed” I’ve never used it. “

Fortunate are the “special ed” kids who won’t be exposed to you.

I agree that NCLB should be canned, having experienced it as a public school teacher. This “data driven” approach to education pretty much plugs a teacher into a machine and commands him or her to follow the exact (and usually, boring) curriculum required to pass the arbitrary test designed by folks gathered around a conference table a thousand miles away.

This is essentially an extension of the “Prussian” education system imported to America in the 19th century; human beings are “graded” like eggs on an assembly line, then assigned their duties in life.

No wonder kids rebel. I couldn’t take the stultifying boredom of it, either.

I’m a libertarian. Now I know most commentators on this site are “liberals” who think we just need to make a few institutional changes in our educational system. Folks, it can’t be done; the forces pulling the system towards mediocrity (or worse) hold all the cards in a centralized, government-mandated indoctrination system.

I have observed individualistic education systems (such as Montessori) that result in much better education and much better scores in standardized tests. The public schools, with rare exceptions, won’t touch these approaches.

We need to get central government (allied with corporate) influence OUT of education if we want to have real, meaningful innovation.

A problem of the ‘beauty’ of the ‘publics schools’ is that many of the stupid kids ‘personal heroes’ were teachers, and the schools, being non-‘judgmental’, promoted them, and the institutions of higher learning, being positively ‘non-discrimnating’, degreed them, and voila! they were teachers.
No matter that they might not be literate, intelligent, or knowledgeable, they were teachers!  And guess who they promoted?
But their opinion, as children, adults and teachers, is that they are OK, or ‘better’, and good ‘teachers’. They base their opinion on comparison to their peers, and that no one ‘abused’ them as children by pointing out that they were more competent in some areas than others, and intellectually, they were ‘different’, limited.

I recommend, for anyone wanting to really study what’s wrong with public education, the books by John Taylor Gatto, who was Teacher of the Year in NYC and NY State back in the early 90’s. You can download his books for free at his website.

Gatto, like so many teachers, dropped out of teaching shortly after winning his awards because he realized he could not do good in a system that was built on bad foundations.

His historical observations are particularly interesting. Early public school advocate Horace Mann got his ideas for public education after visiting Prussia. The Prussians, after losing a war with France, decided to set up a public schooling system that would produce obedient soldiers and factory workers who would know enough to perform certain complex tasks, but not enough to question their superiors.

The Prussian system called deliberately for shallow learning; this is why they set up short teaching periods of 45 to 55 minutes, interrupted by bells, whereupon the students would march to the next class. Sound familiar? The Prussians, and Mann, did not want students really delving deeply into any particular subjects.

The Prussian system “worked,” in a sense, as it did produce really obedient soldiers and factory workers. Mann, and (later) corporatists like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, and J P Morgan, embraced this system enthusiastically. This is, more than any other reason, why we find ourselves in this situation where our young men march obediently off to war at the behest of those in authority, without questioning the reasons. This is what made Iraq possible.

Hi,

Maybe you should look up the spelling of the word “fascist” before you start throwing it around. Just a suggestion. Have a nice day.

If all flawed people were prohibited from propagating there would be negative population growth and no humans within a generation. 

The beauty of publics schools is that they take everyone, even “stupid” kids.  If you’re a kid, you don’t know you’re stupid, unless some insensitive person drills that into your head.  You just want to live and be happy, have fun, learn and grow up to be an adult, hopefully one like your personal hero. 

If any kid enters a school, he should be a better kid when he leaves, every day and every year. If he isn’t, it’s no fault of his.

One more thing, to impose on the kid what being better means without the fullest regard for the kid’s opinion on that matter amounts to child abuse. And that’s where our system is flawed.

How to solve the education problem? Simple. Don’t let people who are genetically deficient intellectually from propagating.

That would, eventually eliminate most of the stupid kids from the classrooms, and, perhaps even more important, eliminate most of the idiot presidential contenders, and thus, idiot presidents.

This would greatly improve education in this nation, by having leaders who understand it’s importance, and support it’s improvement, instead of giving fraudulent ‘lip service’ to eduction, by such farces as ‘No Child Left Behind’.

It would also eliminate the tragedy/comedy of having an inept dolt serving as a negative ‘role model’ in the top political position in the country.

More than 30 years ago Ralph Nader said that education would be the handmaiden of the corporations; in this he was prophetic, because that is exactly what has happened.  I agree that government and corporations have no business controlling or influencing education.  I have taught English to freshman and senior high school students for 4 years here in Thailand at a government school.  It’s a mess.  Everything the students are taught is geared to the tests they will have to pass to move up the ladder for their continuing education.  There is also a “no fail” policy.  The Thai elite always go abroad. 
I have long thought education, true education, is a rare thing in this world.  In order to get a true education, first one must understand what a true education is and then and only then can one proceed.  Very few will follow that path.  I sometimes think that true education died with the ancient Greeks circa 300 - 500 B.C.

I agree, “the proof is in the results.”  P