Penni,
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SIGH........I have also seen this sort of thing (and worse) from teachers. Sadly, I have little hope for improvement in the situation, given the realities of the current educational system. There are still many fine teachers, I am sure, but their general educational level has undoubtedly deteriorated.
This may be just part of the decrease in (classical) educational level in our population in general. But having attended public high school in the fities, I sense that it all began around that time with the perhaps well intended but ultimately disastrous change in requirements for teachers. You may not be old enought to remember, but most high school teachers before 1960 were unmarried women who came from middle and upper middle class families and who had degrees in various subjects: English, Mathematics, Foreign Language, etc. They also had some sense of propriety and demanded the respect and courtesy they were used to. Prior to, or instead of marriage, they taught school, and having majored in a particular subject were deemed worthy to teach that subject.
But the educational bureaucracy and the "Schools of Education" which appeared on college campuses in that period of time used political muscle to exclude such people from teaching. Having a degree in English no longer qualified you to teach English. Instead, you had to have a degree in "Education". They thought it was more important to know "how to teach" than it was to know the subject material. So we got teachers who had had college courses (I am not kidding) in how to plan the seating arrangements in the classroom, or in various psycho-esoterica, the details of which I have mercifully forgotten.
As I understand it, the public schools have suffered the most, since private and parochial schools are not bound by the rules imposed by the educational lobby.
Another factor which has been good for women and bad for education, comes under the broad term "feminism". The general trend to open up other opportunities for women has caused lots of bright and educated young women to go into the business world or professions rather than into their traditional role in teaching. I don't mean to make a political statement here.
I may get a lot of argument about these observations, but that's the way I have come to think about it.
Jack |
