Let's be honest, Ed Schools primarily appeal to those with low opportunity costs (i.e., the not very bright) in other professions.
Ed schools are necessary to help foster the illusion that K-12 teachers are professionals on par with engineers, doctors and lawyers.
Teachers are the low performers on the totem pole of college graduates. They have the worst test scores and the least competence.
It's purely and simply a lie for you to act as if teaching quality matters when the education program is an excuse to shovel illiterates through the system and pretend they graduated with some sort of ability.
Most of the kids in the LA school districts are stuck with teachers who couldn't reach 500 on an individual SAT section and almost certainly didn't pass the CBEST
experienced educators by and large are only skilled at teaching smart kids and some kids who are perhaps less smart but who get help outside of school.
All this had led me to think about my own two children and their future careers. I will not encourage them to become teachers. There is too much disrespect and downright lies about teachers being circulated by politicians and the general public to make it an attractive career choice.
Would you encourage your children to become teachers?
8 comments:
Would I encourage them? No.
But if they had that particular fire in their belly, I'd sure as hell support them.
Sorry if this double posts. Getting enough rain here that the cable signal to the modem is hinky.
Isn't it nice to hear what people really think....I feel so appreciated.
That comment over there about opportunity cost, blah, blah, blah really got my dander up. I think I was the 22nd person to post but I had to have my say. Grrrrr! Thanks for linking to Jenny's post. I might have missed it.
Wow. That's awful. I wouldn't encourage my children to teach. I would not want them to suffer the same things I've had to. On the other hand, I have a teaching assignment now in a school I love. It does make a difference when you enjoy it, but it is hard to read this misinformation. I graduated magna cum laude -- 3.71 GPA (3.89 in English and education courses, I might add). I take the practice PSAT each year, and I have yet to make lower than 700 in the Verbal section (Lord knows that would not be true of math, but then, I'm an English teacher). No ignoramus can tell me "those who can't, teach."
You know, sometimes I get mighty tired of people who have never been in a K-12 classroom trying to expound on what teaching is.
Some of them mean well-- like Jenny D-- but I would like to see people who want to steer education policy first try to experience what it is like to actually try to create the magic and feel like you are not sure what impact you have. It's like the Muslim parable about the three blind men and the elephant.
Others, however, are just ignorant blowhards who try to twist numbers to support their crackpot theories. Smoke and mirrors are used to create an illusion of millions of illiterate monkey children running amok in the blackboard jungle.
Right now they just make me tired. But most of the time they make me furious.
If my kids want to become teachers I would support that. I figure they will know what they're getting into better than some kids whose parents weren't in the trenches.
At the bottom of it, I love what I do, and I really don't care what these right-wing chimps prattle on about. Talk about true ignorance....
Well pamjones, I guess you told me
NOT
Junior high reading teacher here. Encourage my kids to teach no! But it makes me sad that I can't. As you know we need good people to really do what we do, but to what end?
I'mm tired of feeling like I'm on a cattle drive or making bricks. People wake up, teachers we're preparing what is the future or the end of civilization as we know it. Probably the latter
I'm just another one of those education dummies ... who graduated with a 4.0. And that's with 6 English courses at 300-level+, and 5 History courses 300-level+ and 4 Advanced Math courses, Bio, Chem, and Physics (and all the requisite geography, econ & poli sci courses). Yes, I am just an idiot...
Oh, and the opportunity cost - I left jobs in industries in which I earned $75K+.
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