Utterly Meaningless

I once saw first hand uncertified teachers thrust into middle school classrooms. The district had a serious shortage of math teachers and hired engineers to teach math. No preparation in education classes at all. It was a nightmare. The kids just destroyed them. I was teaching science right next door. The engineers knew math backwards and forwards. It didn’t help.

I’m sure some training in pedagogy is advantageous. What I doubt is that it takes 2 years of Ed School classes to become minimally trained (after all- most everything you learn is on-the-job anyway). TFA’s success (with only 6 weeks training) speaks volumes. Personally, I think that Ed School is a racket designed to keep people out of the profession and maintain artificially high salaries.

Daryl, what are you talking about? Artifically high salaries???? What a hoot. I’ve been teaching since 1962 when my starting salary was $5040. I love this job and have survived, but high salaries?

Supply and demand. Restrict the supply and the price goes up (absent any reduction in demand). Ed Schools and credentialing exist to restrict the supply. In a free market, teachers are overpaid.

I probably have this all garbled. But I think I read an article recently to the effect that Mississippi used to have an emergency certification program for teachers, that allowed them to teach a subject they were qualified in (had a degree but no teaching certificate) for up to three years, but after that they had to have the certification. So they were losing a lot of teachers after three years because these people couldn’t invest all the time required to get certified, in addition to teaching and taking care of their families. These were people, unlike the engineers Atlas knew, who were proven in the classroom. They must have had some preparation. Anyway, the state wised up and allowed these people certification after they attended, IIRC, a three-week “boot camp” during the summer. Sometimes common sense does win out.

Ed Schools and credentialing exist to restrict the supply.

And on the other side, the obsession with decreasing class sizes works to increase demand. It’s a good scam.

Note that Daryl did not say “high salaries” in an absolute sense — he said “artificially high salaries”. Private school teachers, whose salaries are actually market-based, make on average a lot less than public school teachers, yet produce work of equal or superior caliber. Ergo, PS salaries are artificially high.

Here’s an interesting analysis from Wisconsin that compares PS teacher salaries with private school teacher salaries and salaries for other public and private sector workers of similar educational attainment:

wpri.o....3.pdf

But let’s look at the absolute numbers too. With the lowest average starting salaries in the mid-20s (and the highest average in the mid-30s) and the lowest average salaries in the lows 30s (and the highest average in the low 50s) — for a nine-month work year, the rich benefits and retirement packages that only government workers seem to have any more, and, unless you’re an abusive pervert, rock-solid job security — I don’t think there’s any room for complaint.

aft.or...me.htm

The best school I taught in paid the least. The course management was mostly mine; daily class work was my decision. Verbal testing at the end of the year showed satisfying results. Public schools paid their subs better, but only a minority of the *AP* kids could match the result verbally.

Anecdotal evidence, yes; but I didn’t learn to teach at teacher’s college. That was garbage, time and money wasted. I learned to teach working as a volunteer with kids before college. I’ve since dropped my license, because g-schools are hopeless.

Sorry it didn’t work out for you Ed. But, we are better off with you in another career. Teaching is tough enough even with a positive attitude. I’ve taught in government schools for many years and just don’t see the garbage and hopelessness you refer to. Given the constraint of having to take all students and even worse, their parents, we turn out a pretty good product. For my four decades in education I have seen nothing reports of what a complete disaster education is and has been getting worse for each of the forty years. During that time we have led and continue to lead the world in just about everything. Pretty good trick for a nation of illiterates.

Tim,
Thanks for clarifying my thoughts and especially for the links.

Indeed, but don’t get tired patting yourself on the back, atlas. It may just be that all that elementary schooling is irrelevant to what most people do on the job — and people do learn when they’ve got the motivation (i.e. money).

One of my sisters was a horrible student (I remember her asking me what “liberate” meant, when she was in 12th grade) — until she got to college, away from her old friends. It was all up to her at that point, and she buckled down and became a CPA. Most of the learning she did then was directly from reading books and working on problems.

I think part of the reason we put out such great product is how competitive our employment market is, in the private sector. Produce, or get fired, is the order of the day. And with that motivation, people jump to it. I’ve taught math to college kids and adults returning to college, and I can tell you those going back to school to polish up skills to make themselves more marketable are the best students of all.

meep, no question that older motivated students are a dream to teach. Would that all classes were like that.

But the purpose of education is to help you get the skills to make a life, not just make a living. Most elementary students move out of elementary school with grade level reading, math, spelling and writing ability.

Your sister is a CPA and surely makes good money. But is she educated? That matters to me. Our society requires educated people, not just money makers.
atlas

Atlas, I agree the world is better with me in another career field. Perhaps your failure to see the disaster I saw is just a matter of perspective. I still spend an awful lot of time with children, voluntarily. Those in g-schools are markedly less pleasant as a whole, though with much work they often come around. The educational ‘product’ is merely a symptom of cultural decline. If you think our culture is okay, you’ll think pub-ed does good.

I consider education’s goal is to teach a love of things good, pure and beautiful — that is, decidely Christian. What g-school kids tend to value is deadly in the long run. It happens specifically in the g-school atmosphere. Being good citizens of one’s particular state or being productive is purely secondary to me. JT Gatto is right.

Ed, we have some areas of agreement here. Public schools never has and never will turn out the product that private schools and home schools do. It’s a race we will never win. We have to take ’em all, the lame the halt and the blind. If we don’t we get our butts sued off. That’s reality.

You want to teach things that are ‘good, true, and beautiful’. I completely agree. I’m a biologist. I think evolution is good, true and beautiful. I really do, and I teach it that way. But I’m the one making the judgement about what is good and true and beautiful. That can get to be a very close call in a school that has to take all persuasions.

In this country we simply have to have mass education. It has great limitations but the alternative is hundreds of thousands of totally illiterate street urchins. Now there’s time bomb.
atlas