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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"The inanity of teacher training"

50 Comments -

1 – 50 of 50
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There should be no Schools of Education, no education degrees. High school teachers should be expected to be degreed in subject or in an allied subject, or have a professional degree relevant to the subject.

Department heads should be expected to have a graduate degree in subject and both teaching and real world experience.

Elementary school teachers did better when they were normal school graduates.

8/23/09, 5:58 PM

Blogger Thrasymachus said...

Well, can you blame them? American society has a genuine horror of what you term knowledge- that is the understanding of facts and ideas. This is not confined to liberal institutions, by no means, it is prominent in conservative ones such as the Marines. People who know stuff are "nerds", "eggheads", possibly even "geeks", which despite the self-appropriation of compute people is *not* a good thing to be called.

Since American society is so repulsed by knowledge, unless schools can come up with something else to teach, they have no reason to exist.

8/23/09, 6:19 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is stupid stuff for sure.

But, I thought the deal here is that NAM's can't really learn much anyway. In which case, what does it matter what they are taught?

8/23/09, 6:57 PM

Blogger kudzu bob said...

>But, I thought the deal here is that NAM's can't really learn much anyway. In which case, what does it matter what they are taught?<

You really thought that that's "the deal here," did you? Then perhaps your elementary school teacher was in the faculty lounge scarfing down Krispy Kreme doughnuts when she should have been giving you lessons in basic reading comprehension.

8/23/09, 7:12 PM

Blogger agnostic said...

Tutoring centers are a booming business in part due to the ease of being able to teach. If you want to tutor high school math, you take a decently long test, and if you know your stuff, you can teach it. How simple is that?

Still, for most students, it is pointless to try to give them knowledge -- it won't stick. For some, it's incapable of sticking. For others, it's only a brief time before it slips away. Remember: Harvard alumni couldn't even tell you what causes the seasons.

We see this even with non-science/math knowledge. Apropos of Heather MacDonald's article, even recent US history doesn't stick. How much were we taught in high school or college history class about the strikes of the late 1800s, the Progressives, the muckrackers, the Palmer Raids, anarchist bomb-lobbers, John Dewey, etc.?

And yet everyone today thinks that it was The Sixties that started all of that. It doesn't matter what -- hard drug use, radical activists, violent crime, etc. -- compared to the fin-de-siecle and the Roaring Twenties, the 1960s were for pussies.

8/23/09, 7:18 PM

Blogger teacher.paris said...

It is sad that slavery was abolished. The only sensible place to put the faculties of departments and colleges of education is in long lines of peaple chained together and carrying heavy objects up and down steep hills. Since this option is not permitted, I suggest that they be shot.
I have thirty years experience in mandatory education courses and workshops.

8/23/09, 7:33 PM

Anonymous jfruser said...

I thought about double-majoring in Physics and Secondary Education. One education course was enough to convince me that my time was too valuable to waste on ed courses.

Instead, I double-majored in physics & history and went into the service.

8/23/09, 7:56 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps what we should do is have every student take an IQ test around the 6th grade. The test would be confidential and only the parents and a small group of school administrators would know the scores. This information could be used as a baseline to judge the effectiveness of the teachers and curriculum. The teachers would not know the scores.

The data could be used to judge each individual performance and also the schools performance. It would become very easy to figure out which schools had the worst material to work with and which schools had the best.

8/23/09, 8:10 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Teacher training has got out of hand (as we all know). It has even found its way into community colleges. Some (maybe all) community colleges now give preference to applicants with teaching certificates. There are many ways to test fitness to teach that don't involve teacher's college.

8/23/09, 8:23 PM

Anonymous Bret Ludwig said...

The primary problem is that majority students get the shaft royally because education is deoptimized (to put it mildly) for them. Secondarily the problem is that (the majority of) NAMs are not learning what they _can_ learn, because again the education is not geared to them.

Bright students of whatever group need one school, average whites need another (with some NAMs in there OK if they are right of bell curve and well behaved), and the average black, and mestizo/indio/Arab kids in others.

8/23/09, 8:32 PM

Blogger The Wobbly Guy said...

I haven't read the book you mentioned but I am quite sure it's Heinlein who wrote that.

He's one of the few authors who really stress the importance of knowledge, of history, language, and maths. All evidenced in the extract.

It was the 'dangling participle' that clinched it.

8/23/09, 8:58 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

America will never reform its educational system, because America will never admit the truth; the black race is less intelligent then other races.

8/23/09, 8:58 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Check out E.D. Hirsch's The Knowledge Deficit

8/23/09, 9:11 PM

Anonymous Thursday said...

I took my education degree at ultra PC York University in Toronto. It was the most mind numbing, idiotic exercise I have ever gone through. Fortunately the program was only 8 months long (and interspersed with practicums), as I don't think I could have taken anything longer.

Interestingly, women seem to have a much higher tolerance for this kind of thing, so it tends to repel men from becoming teachers of any sort. Interestingly, most of the guys in our program ended up seated at one particular table in our university classroom. By the end of the year almost every male in the program was scrunched in around that one table. We had formed a pack and it was us against the (mostly female, ultra PC) instructors. We did the most terribly politically correct things, such as rank every female in the room by attractiveness and then by body part. We got regularly reprimanded by the instructors for bad behaviour. It was nuts.

8/23/09, 9:37 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just saw Tavis Smiley on public television a few minutes back.

I remember Smiley looking for reasons there were "a disparity in these test scores" a couple of years ago, and of course I (a Sailer-reader) knew the answer to that, but Smiley seemingly *would not* see the answer to that.


I know its painful, but just as I admit West African Blacks can (the healthy males) usually outrun me, and that certain Mexican Indian Tribes can out distance run me, and that quite a few North East Asians are better at mathematics than me, I think it would be wise for some minorities (like Smiley) to fess up to what their own lying eyes see.......Asians, Jews, and Europeans are a little bit brighter than Africans and Hispanics on average.

We should concoct an education policy based on these realities. Asking a white kid who isn't athletically gifted or particularily sturdily built not to try and achieve in school so he can pursue an intellectual profession is like asking a squatly-built lad to forgo football and attempt to compete in gymnastics. He needs to play to the strengths he has. I get called cruel for mentioning things like this in certain company.

8/23/09, 9:54 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Some places haven't been corrupted.

http://www.cafepress.com/fabercollege

"Knowledge is Good"

8/23/09, 9:58 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Everyone knows that inside every shiftless, idiotic student body, there is an inventor of peanut butter or air conditioning waiting to get out. District 9 proves this, haven't you seen it?

8/23/09, 10:09 PM

Blogger C. Van Carter said...

Schools once again stressing the four D's would be an improvement over what is taught now.

8/23/09, 10:25 PM

Anonymous eh said...

It's mostly a racket with sinecures run by those lowest on the totem pole of academia. Which is not to say that people who want to be teachers couldn't use help and guidance with that, even some training.

8/23/09, 11:37 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I never took any undergrad teaching courses and then got a M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction. 90% of the students were bottom of the barrel. To get into the program, you only had to get a 36 on the Miller Analogies Test, aka, the world's easiest admissions test. My score was more than double that. Since I was young, I wondered if it was just me, or were the classes and texts nonsensical.

The only class that made any real sense was the Educational Measurement class, which was a very watered down statistics class that explained standardized tests and made students calculate reliability and validity of items on a test they created. That's right. Essentially all you had to do was one story problem to get three hours of graduate credit. The classes were painfully easy once you got past the fog of, "am I missing something because I can't figure out the point of any of this." The low calibre of student thinking was stunning. Fortunately I only had to take a few "education" classes. Just as high schools now graciously "allow" students to get high school credit for college classes at local community colleges, the Education College would "allow" students to take content area classes to fulfill some degree requirements. That is they actually "allowed" you to learn something useful in place of the usually required drivel.

8/24/09, 12:16 AM

Anonymous RWF said...

These figures are quite interesting:

"In 2001, the National Center for Education Statistics reported the average SAT score for intended education majors to be 481 math and 483 verbal. Only those interested in vocational school, home economics and public affairs scored lower.

......

Examining an SAT-to-IQ conversion chart calculated from Mensa entrance criteria, a combined 854 indicates that the average IQ of those pursuing an education major is 91, nine points lower than the average IQ of 100. In other words, those who can't read teach whole language. "


http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42742

Most countries either have highly paid and intelligent teachers or lowly paid and unintelligent teachers. The American system is unique in that it encourages highly paid dunderheads to teach. Which is why the US is such an outlier when graphs of educational attainment versus teacher training are plotted.

8/24/09, 12:53 AM

Blogger tc said...

The link to the Jay Mathews article on Kerr says she got a GRE of 780 V, 800 Q. As anyone has applied to grad school knows, that is pretty damn good for any field, let alone education.

8/24/09, 1:54 AM

Anonymous l said...

In the nineteenth century a person was thought 'educated' if he had a broad fund of knowledge.

In the early to mid 20th century memorizing facts came to be considered less important than inculcating an ability for critically analyzing information.

Now facts and critical thinking skills are felt to be racist, sexist and homophobic. Let us strive for a consensus of proper feeling, in the context of a teachable moment.

8/24/09, 3:54 AM

Anonymous sabril said...

In theory, I don't have a problem with teaching stuff like "critical thought."

The trouble is that once you wander away from stuff which can be taught and evaluated objectively, there is a huge opening for SWPLs to inject huge amounts of BS. It also becomes much easier for the stupidity of stupid people to be concealed.

Basically these subjects are a huge magnet for race hustlers and other con-men.

Didn't Constantine Madonna (the noose lady) teach at Columbia teachers' college?

8/24/09, 6:24 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Grat post. What is very interesting in the Washinton POst Blog are the reader comments to the story. It seems that in the mind of many of our fellow americans we can discern several marked tendencies.

1.) They view any dissent as a product of unprofessionalism and or mental illness.

2.) To criticize any institution as in this case stanford you have to be perfect. Since Ms. Kerr is human and passionate and dare say has opinions at odds with the mainstream her views do not count and she is probably a racist.

3.) People do not like smart independent people as a rule--only if the smart independent people pander to them or hold up whatever the archetype of the age---I suspect the archetype of the numerical majority is a spaish peaking multiracial lesbian with two boys with a degree in urban planning and is passionate about fighting racism and working toward amnesty of the undocumented--now that is the kind of smarts, independence we want.

3.) If you are in education, government or the arts and do not tow the line and incoprporate party line with current political myths inot yur worka nd converstion you will have a rough time of it.

4.) Aside from Steves Blog most blog commenters are imbeciles.

8/24/09, 7:23 AM

Blogger idealart said...

I think McDonald missed the point. See a term coined by Roger Scruton, oikophobia.

8/24/09, 8:32 AM

Blogger RGH said...

From Evelyn Waugh:

[Headmaster:]"Parents are not interested in producing the ‘complete man’ any more.
They want to qualify their boys for jobs in the modern world.
You can hardly blame them, can you?”
“Oh yes,” said Scott-King. “I can and do....
I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world.”

8/24/09, 12:13 PM

Anonymous Melykin said...

"Americans’ nearly last place finish in the Third International Mathematics and Sciences Study of student achievement caused widespread consternation..."

I don't know about America, but in Canada they often have people who don't know a damn thing about math teaching math in high school.

In Canada, to teach high school, you would get a B.A. or B.Sc. degree first, with a major in two "teachable" subjects. Then you spend a year getting an B.Ed. degree after that. I've heard that the courses for a B.Ed. are completely inane and very easy. Some of the people who get a B.Ed. would have majored in math. The trouble is once people start teaching they often get assigned to teach things they know very little about, just because of convenience or whatever. So you end up with a phys ed teacher teaching math, and so on.

8/24/09, 12:55 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Leftism appears to be a culturally transmitted mental illness for which there is a congenital pre-disposition. Living in the current Western World is like being the good guy in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's not fun.

8/24/09, 1:04 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That should be 'recueillement', n'est pas?

8/24/09, 1:05 PM

Blogger Dutch Boy said...

Nothing new here, folks. Back in the day I regularly corrected my junior high geography/history teacher's bloopers (and earned his hatred for the indiscrete way in which I did it!). There isn't a whole lot of money in teaching so you won't get the brighter bulbs involved, in general. In the olden days before wimmins' lib [sic], intelligent women would seek teaching jobs they would keep until married. Those days are looong gone.

8/24/09, 3:46 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Critical thinking means using the facts at hand to synthesize new ideas. At some point we stopped teaching the facts and the critical thinking stopped as well.

8/24/09, 3:50 PM

Blogger Assistant Village Idiot said...

The theory behind this knowledge avoidance makes superficial sense until you observe it in action and see it doesn't work. It is more important to learn critical thinking, abstract thinking, so the educators thought it would be best to get on that as early as possible. But it turns out that you have to have some considerable store of knowledge - boring old facts and processes - to work from to develop the higher skills. That part can't be skipped.

Interestingly, those individual bits of knowledge become less important once the higher processes are developed. The templates of thought can then be applied to any number of data sets. You might forget most of the periodic table, but you can get it back quickly once you've learned it once, and once you have grasped the principles behind it, can use that in discerning patterns elsewhere.

But you have to start with little lumps of knowledge, aggregated over time. It doesn't have to be state capitals and dates of battles - but it has to be something real.

8/24/09, 7:06 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Doesn't anyone think of schools as semi-jails for kids for under-supervised youth?

I do.

The real problem is that they can't get meaningful jobs that will keep them occupied and productive.

A young kid who manages to finagle a productive apprenticeship as an electrician, plumber, etc, that kid has got his ducks in a row. Doesn't matter if he reads Shakespeare or not. Actually, probably better he not. Like we need anymore hyper-literate bums.

8/24/09, 9:54 PM

Blogger PhysicistDave said...

Steve,

I’ve just opened a blog, ”The Homeschooling Physicist” on the experience of being a physicist who is also a stay-at-home homeschooling dad, and have linked to your post in my second posting.

Anyone who wishes to pursue all this in greater historical detail, shoould get hold of Kliebard's classic The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958, which manages to be both scholarly and surprisingly readable.

I think the rot today goes deeper than just the inane teacher training. A century ago parents in general rejected the “content-free” approach to education, but, in my experience, this is actually what many American parents today really want.

If the choice is between a kid who is a “nerd” or an ignoramus, many parents will settle for an ignoramus.

I look forward to linking to many future posts by you on education.

Dave Miller in Sacramento

8/25/09, 4:01 AM

Blogger Evil Sandmich said...

Reminds me of when my mom got her Masters in Education. She said the course content was 100% bull that had no home in any world in this universe.

Doesn't anyone think of schools as semi-jails for kids for under-supervised youth?

I completely agree. Various students in our area get out of high school completely and attend the local community college instead. Mores the pity for the poor souls still trapped in the ageing high schools.

8/25/09, 6:30 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Teaching is a collective. You cannot be fired but you cannot earn a lot more than your peers. The position has relativly low pay but good benefits such as retirement and health insurance. In one sense it is also like a guild. You have to have your teaching credentials which are a barrier to allow more intelligent people in from other professions.

8/25/09, 7:05 AM

Blogger albertosaurus said...

When I was a TA in graduate school I taught calculus, statistics, and quantitative methods. But then one day one of the regular faculty got drunk (again) and they asked me to teach his class - "Bureaucracy in the Federal Government". Starting right now.

I objected that I had never taken that course or indeed ever worked for the federal government.

I was assured that none of that mattered. I was told to just break the class into groups and have them discuss something.

Yes, one student did walk out in disgust at a substitute teacher who obviously knew nothing about the nominal class subject. But most of the students accepted me and my lesson plan.

That was my first exposure to educational theory. Some years later I was in a class of managers who were being "trained" how to do training. We were taught that you didn't need to know anything about the subject matter. This theory said that the class always knew everything already. All the instructor had to do was ask the class some questions and the answers would be revealed.

By this time I had taught part time for at least ten years (computers, math, and management subjects). I could lecture without notes for hours - but I couldn't do that sort of teaching. I froze up, totally befuddled.

8/25/09, 1:50 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Many of the problem have to do with the duel role of schools.

1. education
2. testing/grading

A separation of education and testing might help.

8/25/09, 2:13 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"You really thought that that's "the deal here," did you? Then perhaps your elementary school teacher was in the faculty lounge scarfing down Krispy Kreme doughnuts when she should have been giving you lessons in basic reading comprehension."

I find the smugness here unwarrented. (And lame.)

As Steve pointed out previously - http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/10/are-they-nuts-state-of-californias.html

"In the Los Angeles Unified School District, less than one out of ten students will score 500 or higher on the SAT math test. What about the other 90+%? "

What indeed? Do you think that if the best math teachers teach these guys it will make much difference? If not, then why complain about the lack of proficiency in those that do?

What is the proposition -
Great teachers can get everyone working at AP Calculus level?

If yes, then there is a reason to complain about bad teaching methodology. If not, why does it matter?

Extra credit to those who answer without ad-homninem! (Please see your own teachers to understand why if you don't already!)

8/25/09, 9:39 PM

Anonymous SF said...

My daughter's program at San Jose State was an internship program in which you teach during the day and go to night school to advance from long-term sub to fully credentialled. You would think that this would be more practical, with emphasis on how to solve the problems they faced that week. Unfortunately, she reports that most of it was the same BS.

8/26/09, 11:29 AM

Comment deleted

This comment has been removed by the author.

8/26/09, 10:12 PM

Blogger kudzu bob said...

>I find the smugness here unwarrented. (And lame.)<

Not smugness, but rather impatience at an obvious misreading of Sailer's position. Pay better attention.

A good place for you to start is by figuring out for yourself what it is that you have so needlessly misunderstood about Sailer's writings. No way am I going to take half an hour to explain your mistake to you, any more than I am going to secure a plastic bib under your chin and then cut your food up into tiny, bite-sized pieces for you.

8/26/09, 10:53 PM

Blogger silly girl said...

What indeed? Do you think that if the best math teachers teach these guys it will make much difference? If not, then why complain about the lack of proficiency in those that do?

What is the proposition -
Great teachers can get everyone working at AP Calculus level?

If yes, then there is a reason to complain about bad teaching methodology. If not, why does it matter?

Extra credit to those who answer without ad-homninem! (Please see your own teachers to understand why if you don't already!)

__________________


It is not just the inanity of thinking that teaching methods can overcome the inappropriateness of the curriculum, there is also the overwhelming and unnatural proportion of women in the teaching profession. Most students, especially boys, respond better to men. Boys have always been lead by and trained by men. Women are better with babies, little kids and girls. However, not even 100% men teaching with 100% ideal teaching methods can overcome the absurdly inappropriate curriculum that does not prepare students for any real job. Even a valedictorian is not qualified to be much more than a bank teller or secretary. Public education prepares kids for more education not for jobs.

8/27/09, 5:21 AM

Blogger James Kabala said...

Albertosaurus, your experience is quite unusual. In most graduate schools different departments might as well be on different planets, even in closely allied subjects, let alone ones as different as calculus and political science.

8/27/09, 12:54 PM

Blogger David said...

Thrasymachus said

>Since American society is so repulsed by knowledge, unless schools can come up with something else to teach, they have no reason to exist.<

True and well-stated.

The trouble is the very idea of universal education. The project of teaching all the plain people, a moony scheme dating at least from Rosseau, was adopted, adapted, and corrupted by America's Robber Barons of the late 19th Century, who turned it into a cynical machine to produce "GOOD WORKERS" - reliable, ruly slaves for the factory and the farm. Every head would be processed, for efficiency's sake.

But if this blog or HBD teaches anything, it's that people are not equally educable. Life experience of even the most rudimentary sort tells us that not every individual is cut out for "education" by prides of professional pedagogues. Beethoven, the musical genius, couldn't add up a short column of simple figures, and multiplication was a mystery to him. He presumably had many opportunities and the incentive to learn it, early in life and later. He didn't. He had other interests. Steamrollering him for 12 years in public jail/school would probably have meant no Fifth Symphony.

If imparting useful, interesting knowledge to eager, intelligent children is the goal, then homeschooling is the only viable "system."

The truth is that universal public education is not more than a program for occupying and pacifying the lower orders, and keeping down any nascent upper orders. The elite doesn't want Fifth Symphonies: it only wants to make sure the unwashed are not rebellious and can turn the cranks. Even turning the cranks has been dropped as a goal.

Smart people don't let their kids get caught in the teeth of universal public education - if they are financially fortunate enough to avoid doing so.

The solution to all the problems of public education is to abolish public education forthwith.

Lots more along these lines, if you haven't already read it: Here.

8/28/09, 10:45 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Kudzu Bob - you don't address the points but you are pretty good with the zingers. I'm sure your teachers would be very proud. Assuming you went to a clown college.

8/28/09, 1:43 PM

Blogger kudzu bob said...

>What indeed? Do you think that if the best math teachers teach these guys it will make much difference?<

The question at hand is what Sailer thinks, not what my opinions on the matter might be.

Even in clown college they teach us to pay at least some semblance of attention. Honk! Honk!

8/28/09, 10:27 PM

Blogger Truth said...

" I'm sure your teachers would be very proud. Assuming you went to a clown college."

POW! Right in the kisser!

You're not so bad with the zingers yourself, Sport.

8/29/09, 11:01 PM

Blogger Rusty Mason said...

Four informative and entertaining books, which are also free online at SourceText.com, are Richard Mitchell's Less Than
Words Can Say
, The Leaning Tower of Babel, Gift of Fire and Graves of Academe. Mitchell (who recently passed on) was an English professor at Glassboro State College and records for us his ground-level observations of the unbridled goofiness of the teachers college there and its effects on the teachers, adminstrators, and students, along with some insightful comments on the history of American education. On the same site are his newsletters with additional wit. If you love thinking about thinking and reading about American government schooling, you'll love Mitchell.

9/2/09, 1:05 PM

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