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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (13250)	5/20/2002 3:58:14 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

Sources? I mean original, not some guy restating a study in a text. I want to see how the study was done. I think we're on equal footing at the moment. I've seen no sources offered on original studies that I can see how the study was conducted that shows there's no correlation. You made the claim first. You show your sources first. In lower grades, this might be true. In high school? In college it would appear not to be true. Humanities classes can run into amy hundreds of students.... Here you seem be granting that the claim may be true for lower grades. A 1st grade class of 300 students might be hard to teach. Not something I'd like to test out personally. Even in University, the dominant recollection that I have of the mass approach to teaching in Psch or Physics lecture halls is pretty negative. A darkened auditorium with a 300 students and someone on stage that was more of an outline of a human being...lot's of sleeping went on in those classes. In most of those classes, we weren't allowed to ask questions, those were to be deferred to the grad students. Made me wonder why we had the classes at all. Give a reading assignment schedule and give the tests. The overall point though was that education costs money and to say that $15B added to a budget is or isn't effective isn't a reasonable conclusion unless you know in some detail what the money is designated for and where it's actually going....local schools have been known to do a little diversion of funds. A friend of mine is a middle school teacher that claims that funds within the county are disproportionately distributed in the county. The better performing schools get the better of the deal. The poorer performing schools get fewer computers per student than the better performing schools, etc. While they don't have enough books [in all cases] to distribute to their students or the paint is peeling off the walls, other schools are getting refurbished with the newest PCs and brand new front doors. I have a feeling it's not a complete coincidence that schools in lower income areas are getting shorted over schools in higher income areas within the same county. I have no idea. Seems like just the 3.0 would cover it. But.... hummmm.... you appear to be distracting by nitpicking. What I'm trying to point out is that the author is using undefined descriptive language, IMO, to manipulate the reader. Both positive and negative was used. We weren't taught how to make 'bulletin boards'...that's pejorative language. The theme, if you will, of education classes is how to communicate with your audience. That's not BS, that was the purpose. I think the private sector would be a whole lot better off, if engineers were taught how to communicate. But, from what you've indicated you did teach, it would seem that they would be at least helpful. And if you got to teach AP Calculus, necessary. Not helpful. Even with AP Calc, while we both know the relationship with AP Calc to linear regression analysis and Diff EQ that was well beyond what was taught in AP Calc. Any mathematics that I took beyond 1st year of the mathematics program had no benefit in teaching high school students. Clearly not. But I'd take it even further: Does the teacher need a college degree at all? Why? Teenagers learn how to run a movie projector. You don't need an "Audiovisual Media" class in college to do that. Before we get to the other extreme, let's hit the middle. The author said that he was going to shut down all education schools. That was unequivical. That completely ignores the needs of elementary school education at a minimum. Teaching is a skill that needs to be taught. Teenagers learn how to run a movie projector. You don't need an "Audiovisual Media" class in college to do that. Pejorative language. You've got teachers doing hall duty and cafeteria duty. You certainly don't need a college education for that. But you have students learning how to run a movie projector....is that the sole purpose of the class? Why not a high school diploma with a 3.0 at that level? Even that may be overqualified. I could honestly argue for that position. It's what you know and whether you can teach that is important, not the sheepskin. But that's not the way 'we' work is it? We want credentials. That's the proof that society holds on to judge competency. If you or I were to do a study and analysis on the correlation between funding and education, wouldn't you expect that it would be immediately and universally rejected. While I believe that either one of us could do the job, we don't have the right sheepskins. We're automatically not qualified. What does C. Bradley Thompson want? A 3.0 average and a passed exam, with distinction. Whether you can actually teach what you know, is pretty meaningless to him. Given that there are a lot of teachers, former teachers, and teacher's spouses on this site, I'm sure I've offended a lot of people with this. As a teacher I was so frequently offended, your post is small potatoes. I believe I did a very decent job as a teacher. Then there's the periodic student that comes in and says 'My father says that people who can, do; people that can't, teach'...that wears on a teacher. The parents and the administration that appear to think by their actions that hall duty and attendance lists are more important than teaching...wears on a teacher. How many years do you want to spend in a career where your told on a weekly basis that you're incompetent and your job is attendance and keeping the desktops scrubbed? jttmab