Why Are Unqualified Science Teachers Prevalent in US High Schools?

[vaatc]

Well I think it is safe to say that nobel has little to no experience working with moderatly sized groups of average grade school students. Also, he is clueless as it has to do with knowing what teachers really have to deal with.

So $ 50,000.00 is what you consider appropriate to pay someone to figure out how to teach 100 plus students per semester, tutor each of them seperately, grade papers, make sure each class is interesting enough to engage each and every student in their own favortie fashion, and then also to have a life?

You make me laugh!

Your concept of making every class interesting enough for each and every student to learn effectively and at the same rate, is laughable, and harkens back to the days of small classrooms, where the teachers had close to martial law inside the school room. Not even possible by a long stretch for the general population.

You say that Fenyman suggested that ideal physics education would occur in a 1-1 fashion yet fail to explain how this even possible.

Are you serious in even considering that is an option in the world of advanced acedemia much less public school systems?

So, please do explain how you would fix the current public school system.

 

[Chi Meson]

Folks, let's not go flaming here. A lot of Nobelgas' beef is legitimate. I think it is a bit inaccurate and oversimplified. Then again, I've seen a lot of posts (here and elsewhere) that are supportive of teachers in which the heroics of all teachers are over-glorified.

I wish to maintain that teachers are human, and like the human population in general, there are teachers the fill the spectrum from super incredible to utterly intolerable.

If you gather 12 people in one room and ask them what the best method of public education would be, you would get 20 different answers.

 

[noblegas]

Well I think it is safe to say that nobel has little to no experience working with moderatly sized groups of average grade school students. Also, he is clueless as it has to do with knowing what teachers really have to deal with.

So $ 50,000.00 is what you consider appropriate to pay someone to figure out how to teach 100 plus students per semester, tutor each of them seperately, grade papers, make sure each class is interesting enough to engage each and every student in their own favortie fashion, and then also to have a life?

You make me laugh!

You make me laugh! I think a teacher's salary should be based on the overall performance of the students in the class. You think that teachers should received $50,000 , no matter if he is a good teacher or bad teacher. Teachers should receive high pay based on the performance of the students in the subjects that the teachers teach and based on how engaged the the students are in the class, not how many students teachers teach. Quality is what should count, not quantity.

Your concept of making every class interesting enough for each and every student to learn effectively and at the same rate, is laughable, and harkens back to the days of small classrooms, where the teachers had close to martial law inside the school room. Not even possible by a long stretch for the general population.

I am not in favored of the class model unless the students take the initiative to go to a class on their own based on their own free will, not through coercion. That way, most students in the classroom will be eager to be their in the first place. The model for learning that I propose is to have either students learn whatever subject matter they want to learn own their own and this would not be hard for a student to do given that most teacher basicallly summarized what is in the textbook anyway. The other method I propose is to have parents higher private tutors for their sons and daughters and then that would spawn a market for private tutors in a variety of subject matter and not just tutors who tutor for SAT prep courses. Parents would easily assesed if the teacher that they hired will suit the learning needs of the individual child, and not have the child be taught by some random stranger who's teaching crendentials they are not familiar with.

You say that Fenyman suggested that ideal physics education would occur in a 1-1 fashion yet fail to explain how this even possible.

Why do you figure teaching a subject with only one teacher and one student is not possible? Have you ever heard of homeschooling and hiring private tutors to help students catch up in the class? If you don't believe what I said about feynman views on learning, take a look at the prefaces of one of his introductory physics books and you will see that I am correct.
Are you serious in even considering that is an option in the world of advanced academia much less public school systems?

So, please do explain how you would fix the current public school system.

I would get rid of it and completely replace it with the models of learning that I proposed.

 

[noblegas]

So Noblegas's student designed class schedule

Period 1. Video game walk through
Period 2. Advanced Ipod.
Period 3. Hacky sack.
Period 4. Let's play another video game.
Period 5. Politically incorrect jokes.

I am sure that most parents are concern about the quality of education that their child receives. They would not allow their child to just goof off and try to direct their children to devote more time to their interests.


Sounds like fun, I bet you would get good student participation and happy students.

Trouble is after a few years of this there would be no new games, So the first period might have to be changed to nap time.

The concept of letting the students have say in what is taught is ludicrous.

How so? Why don't you think strangers know what's best for what the students should learn and not the students themselves or the parents? Maybe the students think that most of the subjects that they learn in school are not relevant to what they encountered in the real world or related to their individual interest and frankly I agree with them. Why should a student be forced to learn about what mitochondria is or be forced to read all of the plays of Shakespeare if he will never apply what he learned to his entire life ?

Unfortunately your illiterate views are all too common in this country. Meanwhile in Asia for example the students take education very seriously. Perhaps we need to add Japanese to the schedule so you can understand what your boss is saying after you get out of school.

Well, they may take their education seriously, but what does that have to do with the way students learn in the United States? Why do you believe that we need to focus on behind ahead of China and Japan on standardized tests when we should be promoting an individual style learning approach and not what the school board wants the children to learn.

 

[Jack21222]

So Noblegas's student designed class schedule

Period 1. Video game walk through
Period 2. Advanced Ipod.
Period 3. Hacky sack.
Period 4. Let's play another video game.
Period 5. Politically incorrect jokes.


Sounds like fun, I bet you would get good student participation and happy students.

Trouble is after a few years of this there would be no new games, So the first period might have to be changed to nap time.

The concept of letting the students have say in what is taught is ludicrous.

Unfortunately your illiterate views are all too common in this country. Meanwhile in Asia for example the students take education very seriously. Perhaps we need to add Japanese to the schedule so you can understand what your boss is saying after you get out of school.

According to studies done on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_valley_school" , the students learn quite a bit, and have no trouble being accepted into college. Of those that want to go to college, something like 80% get accepted into their college of first choice. I can't find a link to the study, but the one I read said the biggest side effect of the Sudbury Valley education was a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs.

While it is true that some students try to get away without learning anything, those students will get weeded out pretty quickly. What the teachers there will tell you, though, is that learning is much more efficient in an environment where the students actually want to learn a particular subject. One teacher mentioned that he was able to teach, and his students were able to grasp, the entire elementary school math curriculum in just a few months. Because of this, even if students spend more time "playing," it's made up for by having less time wasted in a classroom, repeating things that were already learned.

Simple peer pressure works to get students to learn certain things. Nobody wants to be known as the 7 or 8 year old who still doesn't know how to read. Besides, it makes it harder to play video games, board games, Magic: The Gathering, or whatever other type of game you can think of if you can't read. Similarly, nobody wants to be the one to get the lowest grade on the SATs. Pressure from parents is another factor in determining what kids learn. If a student isn't learning enough to make their parents happy, they get pulled out of this paradise-like environment by their parents.

Plus, there is something to be said for informal learning. Kids can learn a lot by just talking with other kids, sharing things they've learned.

I have the belief that people, young people especially, are just built to learn. If you just stay out of their way, they'll learn a lot. When you start forcing them into unnatural situations, telling them to keep quiet, and boring them with details they have no interest in at the moment, you're actually preventing them from learning. That's why throughout middle and high school, they go over the same concepts year after year after year. How many times did you learn sentence structure throughout middle and high school? It must have been about 3 or 4 times for me, then once again when I got to college. That's a lot of wasted time where I could have actually been learning something, instead of rehashing something I already knew.

I'm kind of rambling a bit, so I'll sum up by saying it's irresponsible to just dismiss an educational model without digging a little deeper into it. Real life evidence shows that your hypothesis that kids will sit around and do nothing all day is not true in the majority of cases.

 

[noblegas]

I have the belief that people, young people especially, are just built to learn. If you just stay out of their way, they'll learn a lot. When you start forcing them into unnatural situations, telling them to keep quiet, and boring them with details they have no interest in at the moment, you're actually preventing them from learning. That's why throughout middle and high school, they go over the same concepts year after year after year. How many times did you learn sentence structure throughout middle and high school? It must have been about 3 or 4 times for me, then once again when I got to college. That's a lot of wasted time where I could have actually been learning something, instead of rehashing something I already knew.

Moot point! I swear that in my 12th grade english class, we were learning the same topics on grammar and sentence structures that I learned in fourth grade. I had basically the same reading list I had in 7th grade that I had in 11th grade. As far as science goes, we actually did not do science, we learn science facts which isn't science at all and when we attempted scientific experiments in the lab, we would know before hand how the experiments were and how they were supposed to turn out, which isn't science at all if you know what the experiment is beforehand! I think we also set up a school system dominated by standardized test and change , and not an atmosphere where students want to actually be their discussing the various ideas in each subject that is being taught to them. You know, when the the Academy opened up in ancient Greece , students at the Academy spent their time joining in informal discussions about philosophy and mathematics , as well and worked on solving existing problem. Even though the academy catered to only the rich, tuition was free . Many of the founding fathers
Like benjamin franklin did not attend any schools , and their were very educated men. In the 19th centuries, many venture capitalists and inventors like the Wright brothers, Thomas edison , Michael faraday, never attended formal schooling and they made siginifcant contributions to science and technology. I recommend the book The history of American education by John taylor gatto if you are interested in how the american education system came to be and how it has changed over the last 200 years. Its freely available online(http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm ). It is a very rewarding read. Kind of ironic that in school settings, most of us would spend our leisure time participating in the kind of "activity" generally offered at schools , even though the greek origin of the word school literally means "leisure"

 

[206PiruBlood]

@noblegas

I am not saying your approaches don't have their individual merits, they are just not practical, and some are seriously flawed. For example evaluating the quality of teaching through student success. How will you accomplish this? Standardized testing? In the state of Washington for example, once the WASL was introduced, many teachers started teaching for this test. Year after year in school we learned less and less variety such that the scores would seem artificially higher. The teachers that took it upon themselves to disregard the test, and teach actual skills were essentially frowned upon. The result was removing the WASL as a graduation requirement year after year because so many students still couldn't pass.

If it is so difficult to find one quality math or science teacher for an entire school, how is it at all feasible to find quality teaching for each student on an individual basis?

I agree that learning is often much more efficient when the student has a genuine interest, but in practice how many students have a genuine interest in anything at that age? How many students at university have a genuine interest in any academic subject for that matter? In all of my years I have never once heard someone ask "who is a good instructor?" As apposed to the thousands of "who is easy?" Who will I get no homework from? Who will give me a free A?

I think it is unreasonable to expect that every primary and secondary level student is truly capable of developing such an interest. Further I submit that it may be even more beneficial to hold off on specialization until one experiences the breadth of what's out there. Also, you suggest that students pursue their interests and those alone. Do you not think that everyone should at least have some scientific knowledge or the ability to not just read, but comprehend and analyze text? Sure the students might not need Shakespeare in particular but they are developing important skills.

From my experience, genuinely interested students are a rarity at all levels and there is a serious lack of responsibility in the student population. The teachers can't do that much if the students have no desire to learn anything (but that's another topic :D).

How can we inspire young people to develop academic interests!

 

[noblegas]

@noblegas

I am not saying your approaches don't have their individual merits, they are just not practical, and some are seriously flawed. For example evaluating the quality of teaching through student success. How will you accomplish this? Standardized testing? In the state of Washington for example, once the WASL was introduced, many teachers started teaching for this test. Year after year in school we learned less and less variety such that the scores would seem artificially higher. The teachers that took it upon themselves to disregard the test, and teach actual skills were essentially frowned upon. The result was removing the WASL as a graduation requirement year after year because so many students still couldn't pass.

I fail to see why you considered the notion of the student's environment where the environment would encompass only his academic needs and not the academic needs of thirty or so other students is "seriously flawed" . Thousands upon thousands of americans choose to not send their kid to a public school everyday and either home-schooled the kid themselves or hire a private tutor to home school their kid. Why do you think the conventional approaches for teaching are more effective than the approaches I have proposed? Standardized tests are not the only tools that can measure the academic merit nor are they always the most means to measure the academic merit of a student

If it is so difficult to find one quality math or science teacher for an entire school, how is it at all feasible to find quality teaching for each student on an individual basis?

I am sure if people started to have a demand for private tutors and not a demand for teachers to teach students through a collective basis, you would see more and more teachers who could teach students on an individual basis . You think it would be impractical because you don't see many teachers who tutor/teach students privately and the reason why you don't see many teachers who provide their services to individual students is because their is not a demand for such services because most parents send their child to public school.

I agree that learning is often much more efficient when the student has a genuine interest, but in practice how many students have a genuine interest in anything at that age? How many students at university have a genuine interest in any academic subject for that matter? In all of my years I have never once heard someone ask "who is a good instructor?" As apposed to the thousands of "who is easy?" Who will I get no homework from? Who will give me a free A?

I Have to agree with you about students at the university being more concerned with grades and homework more than anything else. I don't see many students actually discussing the subject matter they are learning unless it is a project or homework assignments, which makes me question whether or not students would have any discussions on the topics they discuss in class on their own free will or because they have a genuine interest in those topics. I think children would developed a natural interests in the topics that are discussed in a conventional school setting that they would normally find repulsive. I think most children have a natural curiosity about their environment anyway, but this curiosity that's ingrained in them seriously becomes depleted when they enter school. I think that we should let the kids learn on their own and not be put in a situation where they are forced to learn academic subjects. You know , Albert einstein did not go into physics because the schools he attended encouraged his interest in physics , he got into physics because he was natural inclined to discover the laws of physics around him, not to mentioned his uncle brought books on natural philosophy and math that would fostered einstein's interest in physics. In fact, einstein is famous for saying that the only thing that interefered with his learning experience was his formal education. Same thing for Newton; Even though Issac Newton attended cambridge university, he was upset that known of his professors were discussing any of the latest developments in natural philosophy and so sought to read up on the ideas of corpenicus, galileo and descartes all on his own.

I think it is unreasonable to expect that every primary and secondary level student is truly capable of developing such an interest. Further I submit that it may be even more beneficial to hold off on specialization until one experiences the breadth of what's out there. Also, you suggest that students pursue their interests and those alone. Do you not think that everyone should at least have some scientific knowledge or the ability to not just read, but comprehend and analyze text? Sure the students might not need Shakespeare in particular but they are developing important skills.

Well that's your opionion. Some people might think it would be more important for students to learn martial arts than learn shakespeare. Yes, I think everyone should have scientific knowledge because it is very useful. However, I don't think that students should be forced to learn scientific knowledge. I think they should pursue their interest in scientific knowledge on their own free will. No matter what the topic is, nobody should ever be forced to participate in something if they do not want to participate in it.