Your idea of what a teacher should do is quite... horrible. Teachers have at least an undergraduate degree, often two, and many have a master's as well. Some even have Ph.Ds - and this is at the high school level.
They spend their educational and professional careers studying how to teach. They learn how the teenage mind works, they learn about varying teaching methods, presentation methods, communication skills etc. You coming in and telling them what they should and shouldn't do is, well, ignorant.
I wouldn't walk into an engineering firm and tell them that their designs are all wrong. I wouldn't go to a doctor, get a diagnosis, tell him he was wrong, and then tell him what it should have been.
If you check out the curriculum of AP Psychology, you'll find the topics to be taught include:
There's also a whole bunch of stuff in there about societal influence on responses, societal conditioning etc.
As the teacher why subject yourself to this when you already know the answer?
..... I was wrong you guys were right. This is exactly what kids need.Why should a math teacher bother plotting a parabola in front of the class if he already knows what it looks like?
This is just another episode in Republican war on teachers. They won't rest until any self respecting person avoids the teaching profession like a plague, and we only have dumb regurgitating losers teaching our kids.
An undergraduate degree is a dime a dozen, no? The teachers that get Master's degrees often get them so they can get a lane change and there is very little thought put into where they get them just that the necessary amount of credit is received for the lane change. Having done consulting for the school board I can tell you the only thing that is important to the vast majority of teachers is money. You may find a diamond in the rough story here and there but the vast majority of all issues simply relate to money and how the teachers aren't getting enough. This idea that they care about the students and their psychology, at least here is completely baseless.
Obviously, as I said research is on my side. The public education system in this country is shit and it starts with the administrative aspect and moves to the teachers.
To teach something that has been proven by science/math. A five year old joke e-mail forward with no discernible psychological basis now passes for teaching? That is obviously what is wrong.
This is just another episode in Republican war on teachers. They won't rest until any self respecting person avoids the teaching profession like a plague, and we only have dumb regurgitating losers teaching our kids.
A lot of people are getting undergrad degrees yes. And a lot of people use them to go and do work. Try telling every programmer at Microsoft that their undergrad degrees are a dime a dozen.
I have several friends who are teachers, and my wife is one too. They are all very highly trained. My wife in particular has authored a paper on asteroseismology while working in a lab which had its own space telescope. Now she teaches science to kids. The other physics teacher at her school graduated top of his class in undergrad physics and could have gone to any grad school he wanted to. He chose to teach. High school.
If anyone came up to her and told her that she should be teaching science by "reciting a textbook" and shouldn't do anything creative or out of the box, I'd ask them where their academic publications, B.Sc in physics, and B.Ed are.
Now, with this information, I can tell you that the most important thing to the vast majority of teachers is a fulfilling, enjoyable career (just like most people). That means money comes first to a point where the bills are paid, student outcomes come next. More money on top of that is just gravy.
Teachers are just like normal people in that they want to have job security, enough money to live comfortably, and to enjoy their work and see it make a difference.
Well then your wife is the diamond in the rough. Congrats. I wish we had more but frankly we don't.
You missed the point. The teacher gives it to the class despite knowing the answer himself because the students don't know the answer.
No discernible psychological basis? You got a psych degree or something? There are many things in the curriculum that it might apply to.
Except they'll see soft core porn on a football field in the form of cheerleaders. They'll scenes of extreme violence on TV, and likely throughout their own school. These are students that are almost adults, they can get driver's licenses, register to vote, etc. Some can even enlist in the Armed Forces. And you claim that a quiz with sexual innuendo is inappropriate for an Advanced Placement Psychology class?
Well then your wife is the diamond in the rough. Congrats. I wish we had more but frankly we don't.
Really? You think our education system is inundated with bad teachers? That's a little absurd, isn't it?
That was a poor choice of terms by me. I was more looking for accredited papers, published articles by psychological faculty, any of the numerous tests written in psychological journals that are taken in PY100, etc.
I guess I am in the minority that thinks a five+ year old joke E-mail from an unpublished source provides worse teaching methods than many published methods that have been used in Introduction to Psychology for years.
My wife has used stuff that could be considered email forwards in her classes before. She'll take a popular email forward and do an experiment to show that the things in the forward are real or fake (kind of like mythbusters)...
From the AP Article Earlier Posted:Teacher should be fired. Lets get back to teaching state standards.
"Class today we're learning about standard 32.3.4 - Reading"