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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (15009)	3/24/2006 3:53:07 PM
From: Joe Btfsplk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543160

he importance of education ... we would fund it at much higher levels My guess would be that we spend far too much on the schooling industry. By me, it'd be great if there was a mechanism to cull the losers. Even better if the successes could reap tremendous financial gain. offer arguments or some good articles which argue such Not exactly a mere article, but Sowell's KNOWLEDGE AND DECISIONS is a pretty good start.

To: JohnM who wrote (15009)	3/24/2006 4:25:04 PM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543160

I completely agree with this. I've watched, for many years longer than I care, students choosing majors/careers. I've met a great many who would love to teach, would be quite good at it, but conclude they can't afford to do so. Given the importance of education for individual and social well being, you would think we would fund it at much higher levels. Here is an opinion piece in agreement with your own point of view: Education schools are blamed for admitting weak students who will become poor teachers, ill equipped to prepare their students for higher education. But they cannot raise the quality of the population entering the education professions. They can't attract top college graduates to the teaching profession, even if they were to commit all of their resources to doing so. The real problem is that teaching pays low salaries, has low status, and offers poor working conditions. Education is not a competitive choice for the nation's most able young people, for whom law, medicine, and business — fields that pay median salaries two to four times as large as those in education — are far more appealing. Parents, classmates, and professors advise top students not to become teachers. In focus-group interviews that I conducted, candidates enrolled at the most-selective education schools reported having been told, "You are too smart to become a teacher" and feeling as if "I would probably end up living in my parents' basement with my wife and children." On another occasion, even a foundation executive who worked in urban-school reform told of having to bite his tongue when his son, who attended a top college, announced with pride that he was going to become a teacher. The executive was about to say, "Is that all you are going to do after all the money we spent on your education?" Education schools do not determine the salaries, the status, or the working conditions of teachers. Only states, localities, and school systems can change the pool of people entering the education profession. Read it all at: schoolandcollege.com