Medicore Students Or Medicore Teachers

Are Teacher Colleges producing mediocre students

Time Magazine Article: Medicore Teachers

Note: This isn't really "breaking news" so i'm posting this in this forum. Feel free to move it if you see fit.

Well, Time magazine does have interesting articles from time to time and i thought this one is ATS worthy.

Those of us that are Americans know how bad our educational system is. We may disagree why but we all are aware that it isn't not nearly as effective as it should be considering the amount of tax dollars devoted to it.

This article brings to light a perspective of this vicious cycle that we all should be aware of, the education of the teachers. According to this article the education that a teacher receives can be considered mediocre simply because the Teaching Colleges they are attending are less than...up to speed. Honestly, i never thought about the education that a teacher receives outside of the obvious (subject matter, professionalism, student teacher relations so on) but evidently they are being pumped full of theory and hypothesis rather than actually boning up on teaching and what it involves. I would hope that they take into account the various different types of learning styles but then again, maybe not.

But let's also keep in mind what teachers are ACTUALLY allowed to teach. If a teacher is told to cram preordained information down the mouths of 20+ students in 10 months so the students will pass a "test" (thank Bush for that) you can expect some performance anxiety.

So if the teachers teaching the kids don't know nothing how can you expect the student to learn anything? Ah, a nasty cycle it is...

A new study shows that people remember things better if they got it wrong the first time, believe it or not. So this "pampering" of our students where they are trying to make sure a child doesn't feel like they failed anything is part of the problem with how our kids are learning.

This goes with the comment you made on how our teachers are being taught. They're being told (and I believe they firmly believe it themselves) that they should make sure that a child can't do wrong on a test because of their "self-esteem".

According to this study, if a child doesn't know the answer to something presented to them, then they will learn better when they know the correct answer. It shows that you have to "challenge" people in order to get them to actually learn something, i.e. retaining it in your memory vs. learning by rote where one tends to forget it once the test is over.

Maybe, maybe with this new study, the schools, teachers, and parents will go back to what they were before all this pampering came into play. No pride can be felt if we don't ever accomplish or overcome something that makes us do some work of our own. And if there is no pride, there can be no self-esteem.



[edit on 10/24/2009 by willow1d]

See what you can find on the net about a man named John Taylor Gatto. He was New York teacher of the year, and has written several books on the issue, and given a lot of audio interviews over the years.

He has a fascinating perspective.

Basically, his view is that "the state" designed education to produce worker bees that don't ask too many questions. In the interest of creating an obedient and compliant populous willing to tolerate lower wages, declining standards of living, and increasing military violence, their minds were taught obedience while skills such as critical thinking were entirely ignored.

Much more, but you'll have to look into him yourself.

reply to post by 30_seconds


He's not the only one. Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, a former dept of ed policy adviser wrote a book about it. If you can read from a screen it's free in PDF format. www.deliberatedumbingdown.com...

Public education is at best a useless waste of time and at worse a brainwashing enslavement fest.

Well, I think it is many factors.

1. Harder classes all together. Kids are learning biology in the 8th grade now. We might look back and think oh boy, easy, but at the time, no one liked it Did I mention kids are being set up to take Calculus senior year? Or maybe the fact that (at my school at least) 4 more credits (which equates into 4 more year courses) will be needed to graduate? This eliminates any chance at early graduation which cuts your senior year in half, and eliminates any chances at those lovely study halls to do your homework in.

2. This is a generation of spoiled kids. It could be from T.V, the generation gaps incorporating past events, whatever. There is a thread around here somewhere that says the youth is at its highest unemployment rate. Well, that doesn't go good with teaching them kids a lesson, now does it...

3. What you said about the colleges teachers are attending.

What does this all mean? It means there is less balance in the system. More ups and downs. We are producing some of the brightest minds ever, while at the same time producing very dumb little brats at record rates.

The world is here for everybody to grab at. The only problem is that some are not given enough motivation to even know where to start at...

Originally posted by cenpuppie

Are Teacher Colleges producing mediocre students

It's spelled mediocre.

To me it appears that the biggest problem is the core content areas. Teachers are forced to simply teach students the facts so that they can pass tests. Basically they are not able to teach students how to actually learn. Look for things like sight words instead of phonics, etc. The children are only able to learn what is taught rather than to be able to teach themselves.

I absolutely agree with K_OS. They're not learning/teaching for life skills or knowledge anymore, they're learning/teaching to go through the motions. I'm currently a returning college student and I feel as though I've learned nothing from high school, and my first-go round at college didn't do diddly squat. It's not until a person wishes to learn (not wishes to get into a job/profession) that they really start to learn. And even then the teachers are mediocre, and students have to go above and beyond to *really* learn.

In my experience it's the Teachers. But it can be hard to train all these teachers to be really good.

Interesting topic !!

I think that the teachers become mediocre because they realize the majority of students are just that.

Students are used to learning 'the test' and rarely are forced (or not allowed) to think critically and outside the box. This creates a 'robot-race' of future worker bees, as another poster stated, which results in a 'dumbed-down' society.

It frustrates me when I ask peers or young students what they 'think about' about a certain subject; they openly respond that not only have not 'thought about it', but they they also don't care and are simply only interested in what pertains to them, and them only.

2nd graders are doing multiplication. Children s brains do not think in abstract in 2nd grade, which is multiplication. so they should be doing algebra at 1st grade? nothing is enough