Common Sense and Wonder has linked to the latest Walter Williams essay, "Educational Ineptitude," at Townhall.
Williams begins by recounting the decision by Nashville schools to do away with posting honor rolls, lest it damage the "self-esteem" of kids who didn't make the cut. He then wonders where and how this terrified, anti-competitive mindscheme develops in the minds of so many "educators:"
This is a vision all too common among today's educationists, but there's a good reason for it: too large a percentage of teachers represent the very bottom of the academic achievement barrel and as such fall easy prey to mindless and destructive fads.
Retired Indiana University (of Pennsylvania) physics professor Donald E. Simanek has assembled considerable data on just who becomes a teacher. Freshman college students who choose education as a major "are on the average, one of the academically weakest groups. Those choosing non-teaching physics and math are one of the academically strongest groups. Some of the more capable who initially chose teaching will find the teacher-preparation curriculum to be boring and intellectually empty, and shift to curricula that are academically more challenging and rewarding." Simanek adds...
I think the teacher-preparation curriculum is much more likely to drive over-qualified applicants from the field than, say, certification tests.
There are other causes for the sorry state of today's primary and secondary education. There's been the politicizing of education...Very often, good teachers and principals are faced with the impossible task of having to deal with administrators and school boards who are intellectual inferiors and motivated by political considerations rather than what's best for children.
One of the very best things that can be done for education is to eliminate schools of education. There's little in the curriculum that contributes directly to the development of the mind. Simanek says that "most teachers have learned 'methods and skills' of teaching, but don't have a solid understanding of the subject they teach. So they end up 'teaching' trivia, misinformation and intellectual garbage, but doing it with 'professional' polish. Most do not display love of learning, nor the ability to do intense intellectual activity of any kind. Lacking these qualities, they cannot possibly inspire and nourish these qualities in their students"...
To improve teaching, we must attract people of higher intellectual ability and we must make teacher salaries related to ability and effectiveness...
For CS&W, this is personal:
My wife has been considering a second career in teaching. Although she has a PhD in chemistry and an MBA, she cannot teach high school chemistry unless she gets a teachers certificate. The material she has been forced to read to accomplish this task is not only horrendously boring but it is filled with numerous inaccuracies, unstated assumptions and unsupported theories posited as fact. Her reading list is filled with peans to diversity, multiculturalism, sensitivity training, but with very little about actually teaching facts and ideas and critical thinking skills to students. It is any wonder that education results get worse every year?
Posted by kswygert at March 10, 2004 11:00 AM