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do teachers even "teach" anymore?
or
do they come to class (late), after the student aid has started the class....
say something like "check my twitter for your assignment"
"download the PDF and review it"
"be ready for a test on Friday"
"oh, can anyone tell me group atomic carbon is from?"
"see you all tomorrow"
Mack.
I had a college algebra teacher who was so smart he was an idiot. Didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I dropped his class. The next term I had an algebra teacher who ALMOST made algebra fun. I looked forward to class and ended up with an "A".
Didn't know anything about computers in the classroom back then. :)
Bottom line, computers are an expensive waste of time. In the UK, 16 year-old kids have the knowledge of 14 year-old kids from 30 years ago. That's despite smaller class sizes, higher pay for teachers and a gargantuan increase in the numbers of teacher's assistants (which were as rare as hens teeth back then).
Kaled.
I have formal teaching qualifications ..they are not in maths ..I had 3 cr@p maths teachers ..and one good one ..who made it fun ( well over 40 years ago )..and thanks to his enthusiasm meant I believe one can sneak maths into almost any experience ..and really surprise people with what they didn't think they could understand ..
good teachers are golden ..and should get flowers and accolades
time serving teachers should be fired ..and be pilloried ..
Most never taught to begin with. In my experience with teachers/professors, 95% of them do not know how to teach the material that they may or may not be qualified to teach in the first place. What it comes down to is the student. If the student is willing to understand that they are going to need to put a significant amount of effort into learning (mostly on their own) a particular topic then maybe some learning will come out of a class; other than that, IMO the teacher has little effect on what the student is going to take away from the class into the "real world".
[added]
Most college professors I've had read off of powerpoint slides prepared by another professor years ago and have no clue what they are talking about. If only research weren't so much more important than the learning itself we would get somewhere in education these days... Going to a tech school myself you'll find that the only professors that know how to teach are the humanities ones...all the other ones were hired for their research abilities.
School before high school is baby sitting...school during high school is a joke...and college is just an excuse to give all your money away for a piece of paper. Sorry for the negative words, but I really don't have much faith in america's school system. We go about it in all the wrong ways. This isn't to say that nothing good comes out of it...but it certainly needs improvement more than anything else.
School before high school is baby sitting...school during high school is a joke...and college is just an excuse to give all your money away for a piece of paper.
My favorite bumper sticker (also available on T-shirts, buttons, and refrigerator magnets):
I is a college graduate
About 12 years ago part of my role was to teach SQL to a college student on work experience. I was horrified to discover that one lad had done the first 12 months of a degree in "IT with Business Studies" without being able to understand the difference between the formulae 1+(2 * 3) and (1 + 2) * 3
"Schools have not necessarily much to do with education... they are mainly institutions of control,
where basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school."
Kaled.
I is a college graduate
I'll take mine on a beer koozie.
In high school algebra, I was among the worst in my class, sitting in the back row with my buddies. One day the light came on and everything the teacher was saying made perfect sense. After acing a test (with the teacher standing behind me) I was moved to the front of the row. My buddies never forgave me.
One day the light came on
Same here, no teacher had anything to do with it. Things were different in college and grad school though...
Lawman, make that 2 coozies please.
All that to say, I'm a strong believer in teachers not "teaching," but simply helping a student to learn. There's quite a difference.
especially in Jr. High and High School... the most impressionable times of their lives, they need role models...
parents come first yes, but in todays society of double employed parents its hard....
teachers need to be there for students...
someone give em a hug...
i dont think i had one teacher that i was impressed by, at all.... in high school...
of course i went to the poorest school in the region...
i dont think i had one teacher that i was impressed by
Umm. The teachers aren't there to impress you. Or entertain you. They are there, as MatthewHSE points out, to help you learn. If you arrive in the classroom not wanting to learn then no teacher on earth is going to be able to teach you. Unless they can successfully trick you into learning when you don't think you are. Give me one reason why they should bother.
It occurs to me that when teachers have to put a lot of effort and time into finding ways to 'excite' and 'entertain' their disinterested, short-attention-span, consumer-image-obsessed pupils into learning, they have much less time left to actually progress through the material.
Anglo-American society has become very anti-intellectual. This benefits only those who make money out of mass-marketing ridiculous crap to hordes of slack-jawed, credulous, non-critical consumers - and the politicians they pay off to allow them to do so.
Teaching is an admirable vocation and there are societies which still recognise as much. Teaching is particularly noteworthy when those who contribute their time and efforts to raise the potential of others do so in an environment where they find themselves fighting against the tides of a) general public indifference towards learning for its own sake and b) a cheapened, populist education system which serves up, more often than not, MacDegrees with Honours.
It occurs to me that when teachers have to put a lot of effort and time into finding ways to 'excite' and 'entertain' their disinterested, short-attention-span, consumer-image-obsessed pupils into learning, they have much less time left to actually progress through the material.
There were many classes I didn't pay attention to in school mainly because it was something that I found to be so trivial that I did not need someone to teach it to me, I had already understood it on my own and didn't need to re-learn it. While I had already learned the material for the class, I'd still be sitting there disinterested not learning anything from the class itself. So do I think teachers have a responsibility to challenge their students when they can? YES. Just because you can get something done doesn't mean you have to stop there and not excel beyond that. I spent most of my high school days doing not much of anything in class...certainly not paying attention. Didn't mean I didn't learn, though.
I've had a few teachers that I have loads of respect for. I've also had a few that I found in all honesty unfit for what they did.
eelixduppy, very similar to me experience, at that was in a very good school
swa66, could not agree more. In some schools the slow get left behind and the smart get bored - it is just for the average.
ronin: people learn best if they enjoy what they are learning.
I agree and I'm not dismissing that at all. I'm not some Victorian disciplinarian arguing that education should never be enjoyable. Merely that kids shouldn't arrive in the classroom expecting to be impressed and entertained. That should come as a delightful bonus rather than as a default expectation.
It would be remiss of a history teacher not to inspire their kids with a sense of the terror felt by those living under religious persecution or the threat of Viking or Mongol invasion. Or for a physics teacher not to amaze their audience with the spectacular performance of alkali metals in water or tantalising them with riddles such as "How does a bumble-bee fly?" Or for an English literature teacher not to make Shakespeare come alive by conveying the atmosphere of a bawdy early 17th century playhouse with enthusiastic heckling from the audience, ad-libbing, would-be duellists jumping on stage to join in with the sword fights etc...
But some things - grammar, arithmetic, foreign language vocabulary, the periodic table, times tables etc. - are simply not enjoyable to learn at all. They are tedious, monotonous and dull. (At least I found them so).
When we encourage the younger generation through popular media and marketing to expect all education to be entertainment and implicitly hint that it's more or less okay to switch off when it isn't, I don't think we do ourselves or them any favours.
When we encourage the younger generation through popular media and marketing to expect all education to be entertainment and implicitly hint that it's more or less okay to switch off when it isn't, I don't think we do ourselves or them any favours.
I've thought much the same for years. Learning can be fun but an expectation that learning will always be fun or should always be fun is delusional. Some teachers and some subjects will always be more enjoyable others, and some will be as dry as dust but that doesn't mean the subject matter is worthless (though it may be).
Kaled.
Most college professors I've had read off of powerpoint slides prepared by another professor years ago
Most college professors I know don't even know what PowerPoint is, praise the Lord! They lead collaborative classes rather than putting students to sleep with slides. But it's not easy.
1. Teaching is hard. Being a great teacher is really really hard. I put a lot of effort into my teaching. I've taught in other contexts and have always been told I was a good teacher and always got a lot back from the students. In the standard university setting, though, students were unbelievably passive, like energy sponges.
2. 90% of students are incredibly lazy. Some of their laziness was like a kick to the ribs for me some days. Example: hand out a study guide to aid them in their homework reading. They shouldn't need it. I never got such things when I was in school, but I'm busting my butt to help "facilitate learning" as someone said. The students show up in class and not only has nobody done the reading (I did not get to choose the readings in this class and they were rather dry), but they haven't even read the guide. How do I know? One of them says "What does symbiosis mean?" A week they have the guide, but they can't even look up a word in the dictionary. And when I asked, not one student in the class knew what that word meant. So not one in 25 could bother to open a dictionary. And some variation of that repeated every week.
3. There is a shocking lack of curiosity among students. I believe in guiding, not spoon-feeding. Yet every semester, I would get literally 1/3 of the students who would write, unsolicited in the "any other comments" blank on evaluations, some close variation of "Teacher should not answer questions with questions." Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't believe in teaching any other way. This is the university level and you should not be teaching so much a set of facts, but a method of approaching a problem. You should be teaching them how to be their own teachers, not giving them "the answer" because five years after they graduate "the answer" is totally useless, but the skill of being able to learn on your own is not.
4. Most professors I know would like to devote themselves more to teaching, but promotions and raises are based entirely on research results. A university teacher who focuses on teaching essentially renounces career advancement and raises and it's not like it's a highly paid profession unless you're in a technical field. Even then, you make a lot more on the "outside". This is because of a stupid public who shops for universities based on "reputation" and measures reputation by the prominence of the faculty as researchers, which is utterly and completely irrelevant to undergraduate teaching. It's also making university education much more expensive. So lower quality, higher costs. And it is NOT the fault of the teachers, but the market that drives those types of evaluations.
Hmmmphhhhh!
Teacher should not answer questions with questions
Best they avoid law school. :)
One of them says "What does symbiosis mean?" A week they have the guide, but they can't even look up a word in the dictionary. And when I asked, not one student in the class knew what that word meant.
If one has to be 18 years old to go to college ?
Then the fact that at 18 they don't yet know the meaning of that word ( and can still get accepted into college ) makes me think of hades and handcarts ..and confirms my belief that degrees nowadays are way too easy to get ..
but then like you know I like kinda you know like thought that you know like anyway..innit
Teacher should not answer questions with questions
Maybe your question should be "have you heard of a Socratic dialogue?"
Really, that is incredible laziness: my six year old daughter can handle so your students should be able to.
What I feel is mostly lacking is good teaching of young children (pre-school and primary school), especially of maths and science, and lack of flexibility to cater to individual strengths, weaknesses and interests when they are older. The age group your are talking about make their own choices, and should be able to live with it!
[ted.com...]
And if you're still bored....
Best they avoid law school
The "pre-law" are the worst. The difference between pre-law and pre-med? The pre-med students, faced with a C on the first exam will come to your office and ask how much work they have to do in order to get an A for the course.
The pre-law ask you to regrade the exam. I've only had one student cry over an exam. She said I couldn't give her a D because she wanted to go to law school. I tried to explain (albeit tactfully) that the law school up the hill was counting on me to give Ds to kids who wanted to whine their way in.
Then the fact that at 18 they don't yet know the meaning of that word
Now that's a funny story. I asked "Didn't any of you take high-school biology?" This kid, a 19-year-old Marine ROTC student looks at me and says "Well, yeah, but that was like two years ago."
I said "Well I remember that word from high school bio and I graduated in 1981."
His jaw drops and he says "Dude, you're ancient!"
that is incredible laziness: my six year old daughter
With all due respect, that is an unfair comparison. Your daughter has not had the curiosity trained out of her by a long career of public education (I have taught skiing to home schoolers and they are a different breed altogether).
My academic field is history, but I also teach skiing to all ages, 2.5 to 70 and the simple fact is, the most teachable age by far is 7-10. Kids at that age are an absolute blast!
So most six-year olds are like your daughter. The trick is getting an inquisitive kid to stay like that through college.
What isn't beaten out by grade school and secondary school, is often finished off by college at the large state schools. With classes with 100-400 students, they are conditioned to sit in chairs doing crossword puzzles while someone lectures for 45 minutes on supply and demand curves, which 75% of the students could learn in 12 seconds. But the prof is stuck, because every semester that he does it in 12 seconds, he gets reamed on student evaluations and students complain to the department head. So he's bored and so are 75% of the students (by the way, I am *not* making any of this up. This is generalized to protect the guilty, but these are all real classroom situations).
Anyway, so they show up in my classrooms as juniors, who have never had a class that demanded participation and they're utterly unprepared to actually take part in a discussion.
One more funny story. I'm leading discussion sections in grad school for a course with maybe 120 kids in lecture and then 6 discussion sections with about 20 students each.
Student comes into class and says "Do you have the exams corrected?" I say, "Yes I do, what's your name?"
Someone makes a snide remark about me not learning names. I say "I know the name of everyone who comes to class."
Someone makes a snide "Yeah sure" remark. I go around the room and name off ever single student, about 18 present, first and last names. When I finish, I hear a kid say "Uh oh. I've been going on the assumption that I was anonymous". That was an eye-opener for me, because I address students by name whenever I have the chance until I think they know that I know who they are. I don't do this as a threat (how that student perceived it), but as a courtesy and to show that I actually care about them as individuals.
So when you have a system where students operate under the expectation of anonymity, you have to expect that they won't rise to the highest level of their ability.
By the way, I have had some really good students and, not that anyone here is in school, but let me dispell one myth: I don't really care what grade they get, I like and don't like students based on personal qualities.
One last example. I gave an engineer a C on an exam. No problem, but it was clear he had all the facts he needed to get an A, he just didn't know how to organize and present them, so I wrote a note with some brief tips to help and added "Please come talk to me. You could be getting much better grades without any more work."
So he comes up and thanks me and says "Honestly, I'm taking this pass/fail and I have a lot of work in my major this semester, so I'm fine with a C". And I say, "Well, you know how to use your time. If you're happy with a C, that's less work for me. If you want to be a better writer, come to office hours and I'll help."
And I remember that kid and respect him. They don't have time to work hard in every class and you can't expect an engineer being forced to take a history class to make it his top priority.
The pre-law ask you to regrade the exam
It sounds like they have the right attitude to be lawyers.
With all due respect, that is an unfair comparison. Your daughter has not had the curiosity trained out of her by a long career of public education
Certainly, bad schools have made them that way. So why are kids being sent to schools like that? Why do so few people think its a problem that schools are like that?
I have taught skiing to home schoolers and they are a different breed altogether
The British government is trying to stamp out home education (not by banning it, but by regulating it out of existence) and is making private schools as expensive as possible. That is one reason I am reluctant to go back to Britain: I am swapping political freedom, for freedom from the nanny state and a low cost of living.
Why do so few people think its a problem that schools are like that?
They don't know any better. Did you watch the video I linked at the beginning of my last post? About the 1/2 way point he tells you why it is the way it is and why it should be different.
BTW, are you home schooling your daughter? I've found that kids who were home-schooled are less whiny, more responsible, and better self-learners than kids who come through the school system.
My grandmother taught in a one-room school, and I think that was probably a lot better too. She couldn't teach to 12 ages at the same time, so kids had to work on their own once she got them started. To keep the school running, the oldest boy was responsible for showing up an hour early and starting the fire. The older kids taught the younger kids, and thus didn't forget material from earlier grades.
The problem is that Henry Ford didn't think it trained kids well to be factory workers, so he was instrumental in the promoting the school where kids moved from task to task as the bell rang. It was better preparation for the assembly line.
That was fine when you were trying to prepare farm kids for factories. But now, we need to prepare assembly line kids for "farms" - farmers need to be self-reliant, come up with solutions every day, adapt to changing conditions, and master many skills and juggle many tasks and responsibilities; they also need to be savvy and entrepeneurial.
I think that a lot of people have a huge emotional investment in the idea of schools. If you tell them that schools do a bad job, you are implicitly telling they wasted an important part of their lives.
BTW, are you home schooling your daughter?
No, but she only has three hours school a day, so she has a lot of time to learn at home. The school is also very good: they have only three or four kids in a class and they are willing to be flexible. My daughter's reading is way ahead of the syllabus (thanks to using look and say flash cards when she was tiny) and they give her harder books to read for homework than the others - but they are still easier than what she reads for fun.
Home schooling might be an option in the future.
I think one-room schools are a great idea. Not only do they have to teach themselves more, but mixing ages is much better for socialisation.
