How hard is teaching.

Thanks for saying it.

Kids have school for about 8 hours187 days out of the year. If we assume they are asleep for 8 hours a day, then they are only at school for about a quarter of their waking time. each year.

The implication is that schools should only be responsible for a quarter of what their students learn. The rest should fall on the parents & other relatives, religious leaders, scouts, jobs, hobbies, etc.

Our school system is suffering from scope creep, becoming the end-all, be-all education and social service agency for minors. It is just not practical.

The family needs to be the primary educational force, and take the primary responsibility for the kid's education.

 

Teachers are like anything else: Teachers are born, not made. If you weren't born to be a teacher, then no amount of training or education or seminars or self-help books will make you into a teacher.

 

Tenure and the unions hold on teaching need to be broken.

Nonsense. The minute you do that you'll have no teachers with over five years experience in a school system because school boards will look to save money by hiring kids right out of college.

Tenure is there for a reason. What you are talking about is a race to the bottom

 

Teachers rule, parents suck

 

So a masters degree means they can teach? If that's the case why do so many suck? They all have to have masters degrees don't they? You proved my point.

 

If that is true then they have to check into how many born teachers are there that are currently teaching. If what you say is true.

 

A good education is dependent on every single person involved. The teacher needs to be able to keep the kids interested in the subject they are teaching... if not, you've got a bunch of students that frankly don't wanna be there. The parents need to be more involved with their child when it comes to education... if not, the student might not finish assignments or do as well on quizzes or tests. Finally, the student needs to have an attitude to learn... if not, they won't retain much knowledge and become that homeless guy on the street cause they don't know jack or another prison inmate because their uneducated (*)(*)(*) does something stupid and breaks the law because of it.

If one of these starts going downhill, education is going to go downhill. Simple as that.

 

Wrong. All wrong. You said "From what we're seeing they don't have the skills. Why not?"

Masters' degrees plus student teaching, etc. provides the necessary skills. Maybe you meant to say "From what we're seeing they don't have talent." But you didn't. I answered your question correctly.

 

It has been shown that a highly talented teacher can inspire interest in a child previously lost in disinterest, boredom, and dullness. This goes back to the issue of good teachers being born and not trained. Yes training can bring high skill levels out of a teacher who is truly dedicated to teaching and produce great improvements, but nothing can top talent when combined with training.

 

Why are you equating a masters degree with good teaching? That's saying that that gives them the skills? if that is the case they all would be good. And we know that they are not.

 

So one question. It takes the dedication and not just the training/masters degree? There are some who think the masters degree by themselves means that a teacher has the skills needed to reach a child.

 

He wasn't. He was talking about the SKILLS that go into making good teachers. But he already told you that

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So who has these skills? What are they and how are they obtained?

You seem to have a beef against teachers. Did you get an F when you thought you deserved a D?

 

Teachers are trained properly when it comes to the material, organizational skills. I've had the dubious experience of dealing with bad schools, dangerously bad out of control schools, top notch schools and normal, run of the mill, mediocre schools. Teachers never seem to be the reason a school is bad or dangerously bad. You can blame the parents and/or the culture dictated by the principal for bad and dangerously bad schools. Mediorcre schools and Top Notch schools must have decent parents. When the parents, culture as dictated by principal and teachers are all exemplary, then you have a top notch school.

One of the most dangerous, out of control, worst schools I dealt with---had incredible, inspired young teachers whose hands were tied by factors they couldn't control. Its a shame!

 

Thank you for answering for others.

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I am not totally disagreeing with you. But there does seem to be contradicting viewpoints on this thread. There are several folks who feel it is up to the teachers and what they bring to the table.

 

Thanks for avoiding direct questions

 

To me teaching would be extremely difficult. I am an INTJ so have the wrong personality. All I can tell you is in any human population there is a variation of intelligence and maturity. We may be better served not trying so hard to educate those with below average IQs or with low maturity quotients.

 

Not sure I agree with you. But maybe this should be looked into. The only reason I say that is because whatever we have now isn't working so there is nothing wrong with throwing things on the table.

 

I think your question is whether there are differences in teachers and their ability to perform well.

Yes of course there are differences. A graph of the population of teachers against performance would probably approximate a bell curve. Some would rank as poor teachers, most would rant as better with average represented by the most, and a few would rank as great. I haven't seen such a graph but I'm speculating that this would logically be the most likely situation. There sure aren't a majority of bad teachers, and there sure aren't a majority of great ones. So what accounts for the variation if not talent?

Note that talent and skill are very different.

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Yes and who would know best if not teachers?

BTW, what is "INTJ"?

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Read what you quoted again. I answered it.

 

I agree to a point.

If education is an investment, then we should invest most in those likely to pay off big, and invest least in those unlikely to contribute, regardless of investment. We should not, however leave low IQ kids hanging in the wind.

We should also stop requiring attendance by people (older than 12) who do not want to be at school.

Allot 13 years of free and appropriate education. Make the first 7 mandatory. The other 6 can be used at any time in your life. Most of my class time was eaten up by kids who did not want to be there to work. This would solve that. They could come back when they were ready.

 

The myth of "bad schools" has perpetuated for years. What most people fail to realize is that teachers all come from the same pool of graduates. There are "bad parents", "poorly behaved students", kids who show up fully unprepared and kids who are constantly late or absent. Administrations are also to blame with poor allocation of limited resources.
Good neighborhoods with active parents and prepared students make for good schools. You can place the "best" school in America in the middle of an area that supposedly has "bad schools" and within 3 months it will become yet another "bad school".

 

What do you want the teacher to do? It's not like he can simply open the student's skull and pour knowledge in. You can make a subject as interesting as it can possibly be, there is no way anyone will learn it if he doesn't want to at some point.

Einstein was seen as a rather poor student in the lower grades. Johannes Kepler is generally admitted by most of his biographers to be a somewhat inadequate teacher.

Why is it that with such a poor educational system we remain far and above the technological/scientific leader in the world? Could it have something to do with the fact that we're generally admitted to be best at educating the greatest NUMBER to a somewhat adequate level rather than producing a small elite that are very learned? Most learning, as I was told in college, is done once you've left school behind anyway

 

That hasn't been my experience. The worst schools are ones where a high proportion of children are raised in chaotic homes and who lack a respect for authority. I've raised two broods, and I can think of only one perhaps two....teachers I might consider not qualified...not because they didn't know material but because they didn't have the talent of teaching the material. Most teachers are inspired to teach.

 

The problem is complicated, but it is the kids and the other part is that we have reduced teaching to academics--teaching to a test, rather than trying to produce productive citizens.

Teaching is hard. It's the hardest job I've ever had--emotionally and intellectually. It takes a lot out of you.

 

IMHO, it's the conditions as much as the pay. I don't know of many other professional jobs where you can't take a break to go to the bathroom without being held directly responsible for what happens on your jobsite while you are peeing. I don't know of many other professional jobs where a 25 minute lunch break, that includes supervising people during lunch, is considered normal. I don't know of many jobs where you have to be "on" for as long as teachers are. The only real good thing about being a teacher is the unpaid vacations.

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Not really. The basic structure of schools is pre-industrial.

 

A teacher's job is all of the above. Yes, your job is to transfer information, but to be successful you have to encourage habits of mind and work ethic in your student (train them not to be "unprepared, irresponsible 'dinks'"). It is impossible to transfer information to students if they aren't also taught how to learn and work.