Educator Ineptitude
Walter Williams has written a pair of columns about the current state of the education system in this country, including a look at the educators whose responsibility it is to teach our youing people. I'd strongly recommend you read them. The first column is here, and the second here. Williams doesn't make blanket judgements against all teachers. But he does present statistics that show concerns, and needs for improvement, in some areas. Some of the highlights...
In Tennessee, the success of some students has made other students feel badly about themselves. What're the schools' responses? Public schools in Nashville have stopped posting honor rolls. Some are considering a ban on posting exemplary schoolwork on bulletin boards. Others have canceled academic pep rallies, while others might eliminate spelling bees. Nashville's Julia Green Elementary School principal, Steven Baum, agrees, thinking that spelling bees and publicly graded events are leftovers from the days of ranking and sorting students. He says: "I discourage competitive games at school. They just don't fit my worldview of what a school should be."
Teachers have recruited students to write letters to the president protesting the war and participate in demonstrations against school budget cuts.
Very often, good teachers and principal 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.
Retired Indiana University (of Pennsylvania) physics professor Donald E. 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.
A National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) publication shows average SAT scores by student characteristics for 2001. Students who selected education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any major (964). Math majors had the highest (1174).
It's the same story when education majors finish college and take tests for admission to graduate schools. In the case of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), education majors have an average score that's the lowest (467) of all majors except for sociology majors (434). Putting this in perspective, math majors score the highest (720), followed closely by economics in third place (625).
