Teachers do the job that terrorists can’t
There’s an article from Associated Press that reports a study done on Army entrance exams show that 23% of the people who take those exams score so low that they don’t qualify for any branch of the military.
“Too many of our high school students are not graduating ready to begin college or a career – and many are not eligible to serve in our armed forces,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the AP. “I am deeply troubled by the national security burden created by America’s underperforming education system.”
Many of you have seen it first hand when you left the military – remedial reading, writing and math classes in colleges for freshmen who can’t string more than three or four words together coherently. High schools don’t prepare students for more than fashion shows and putting a condom on a banana. Teachers who can’t perform are destroying our national security. al Qaeda can take some time off and watch our wonderful education system do their job for them.
Kenneth Jackson, 19, of Miami, enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school. He said passing the entrance exam is easy for those who paid attention in school, but blamed the education system for why more recruits aren’t able to pass the test.
Putting to rest the lie that the military is the last refuge of the poor and minorities;
The Education Trust study shows wide disparities in scores among white and minority students. Nearly 40 percent of black students and 30 percent of Hispanics don’t pass, compared to 16 percent of whites.
So now, when I meet someone who has never been in the military, I’ll just take for granted that they’re drooling morons who couldn’t pass the tests that we all aced.
Category: Military issues
A teacher I know told me that part of the problem is that teachers now get a degree in education, instead of a degree in an area of expertise; in other words, they get a degree in “teaching” instead of Math, English/Language, Science, etc. If this is accurate, I would think that it would only be useful until just about the fifth grade or so; then the teachers would have to begin to specialize, to pass on the amount of knowlege the students would need to advance appropriately.
I have no contact with the high school system at all, and I would be interested in any comments on this.
My wife is a teacher, and it is in fact true that most teachers have education degrees, not context area degrees. There are exams that have to be passed to be certified to teach specific areas, but they are just beyond basic. If you want to learn how to teach math and science, talk to a math and science teacher. If you want to learn math or science, talk to a mathematician or scientist.
My Bachelors was in Psycholgy and Secondary Education, Social Science Comprehensive. I double majored but my Education degree part was to be able to teach the Social Sciences.(A B.A. in psychology is worthless) Others were in stuff like music, English, etc. If Pinto is correct….we’re screwed worse than I thought. Teaching is 2 things. Knowledge of your subject and THE ABILITY TO PASS THAT KNOWLEDGE on to your students. From what I’ve seen, most lack the ability to pass that knowledge on effectively to an audience that doesn’t really care. I wasn’t a great student by any means but I listened to those that could teach and the ones that couldn’t, lost me within a day or so. Our educations system is like a broken bottle. There are so many reasons why I doubt it will ever be put back together again. Sad…really sad and horrible for this country. Luckily my GT score was so high the Marine Corps wouldn’t take me.
Honor and Courage
PintoNag:
Yep, it’s accurate. Teachers aren’t teachers, they are “Educators” (stretch the pronunciation to 5 syllables). They know how to teach, but not necessarily what to teach.
Being an Educator is like being a Systems Engineer: you do whatever you’re paid to do, and not a whit more. Educators like to play to their strengths, e.g. Math, but if the school hires them to teach English, they teach English. Usually by learning the lesson the night before teaching it.
There are 2 other legs to the stool: parents and students. Parents usually take the easy way out whenever an Educator tells them they aren’t educated enough to converse with an Educator. Parents, regardless, remain the student’s number 1 partner in education.
The last leg of the stool is the student him or herself. Unless they are diagnosibly incapable of learning, they can be taught. It’s just work. That a person can’t pass the ASVAB is stunning. And as far as I know, there’s no limit on the number of times one can take the test.
The Left never stops the drumbeat about the military being the last refuge of people who can’t do any better. Doing better is usually defined as going to college.
It’s rather insulting, although they don’t mean it that way. They rationalize it this way–“Sure, the military is full of dummies, shop class kids, C-minus students, etc. But we’re not BLAMING them, we’re sympathizing with them. The system screwed them because they were born poor, and it’s screwing them again by forcing them into the military and onto the battlefield.”
There’s a lot wrong with this forumalation. I will, however, say this–rich folks don’t join the military. Find me a rich man in uniform and I’ll find you a unicorn. Even the upper middle class is few and far between.
Here’s my solution. Not fewer working class people in the military, but MORE wealthy people. The problem isn’t that too many farmer’s sons answer the call to service. The problem is that TOO FEW lawyer’s sons do the same. College students at Williams, Amherst, and Tufts should drop out and join up. That ought to even the numbers out a bit.
I’m about to enter a Teacher Preparation Institute here in Florida. The certification process for those without a degree in education includes study in the education discipline, classroom internship, and several tests which depend on what area you intend to teach in and if you intend to specialize, subject tests as well.
The education majors have to take the same tests to achieve certification which also includes a certain number of subject hours in the discipline/subject area whether elementary ed or middle school/high school. My degree is in business administration. So if I apply for a temporary certificate in business related areas like marketing, accounting, etc. I’d probably qualify. But to receive permanent status I still might need a course or two. In math or science I would have to take some more subject courses.
So here a High School teacher has to reach “Highly Qualified” status in addition to certification. That would include subject test passing, subject mastery as demonstrated by transcript, certification by the state, and in demonstrated ability in the classroom.
It’s a lot. I’m looking forward to the challenge.
There are people who were grandfathered in, and there are always people who test well but don’t transfer info to others well. But much of the problems rest in the home. I’m a pastor in a small church in a poorer area. The families are a mess and the kids reflect it. That’s one of the reasons I want to teach elementary kids. More time with them = more influence.
Bad teachers should be exposed and terminated. But what do we do with bad parents?
Well the only reasonable solution is for the federal goobermint to take over education.
Ummmm, no wait I didn’t go yet!
I think DaveO hit the nail on the head in his third para at #4. My kids went to public schools all over, some “good” and some “bad.” They both got great educations and are now intelligent, well-read, thoughtful people…one a Summa Cum Laude graduate, another about to be, from 4-year universities. The second is going to law school in the fall.
Why? Because we actually parented them. Discipline, homework, spelling and grammar in daily use, books more than TV and video games, incentives for great performance and disincentives for poor performance.
One of my son’s favorite profs, during a discussion on how well our two kids have done, said we were very lucky to have been blessed with great kids. My son told him I would say it wasn’t luck, it was hard work on our part as parents.
The boy gets it.
If obesity is a national security threat, then stupidity must be as well. I eagerly await the incarceration of the stupid until they can be rehabilitated.
PintoNag,
When I got my BA in History there was us History majors and then there were History Education majors. We took the same lower level courses. But while I was taking 400 level history courses they were off spending a bunch of time learning the education part. So they would never, ever, have the same level of history knowledge that I would.
Most of us History people had very little respect for them anyway. Most of ’em didn’t seem that bright and spent most of their time (a)drunk and (b)telling us how bad it was that they were drunk because if they were caught they’d never be teachers because of some law. Nobody ever cared enough to see if (b) was true.
Anyway, the other part of the problem is that school boards that sometimes do the hiring aren’t held to a standard and are comprised of idiots. Where I come from one of the local papers did a story on public school hiring practices. One school board member said her method of picking a teacher was to scatter all the submitted resumes across her living room and have her very young daughter randomly pick 5 of them. She then recommeded hiring the best out of the five. She didn’t see a problem with this.
When I talked to my recruiter, before going down to take the ASVAB, I mentioned what MOS I wanted and my recruiter replied “we’ll talk about that after you take the test”. When I got back to the office after taking it, my recruiter already had the results and said “you can do any MOS you want”. It’s not that hard, so I guess I’m kinda perplexed that so many can’t pass it…….wait a minute; no I’m not. We have been passing through our schools a generation of morons.
Thank you VirtualInsanity.
I am of the impression that most folks equate teachers/Educators/Professors the job with “scholar.” Scholars add to the body of knowledge. Most folks today can be a scholar. Educators, on the other hand, don’t necessarily add to the body of knowledge.
I’m won’t disagree with Spade’s second paragraph. I would add to your observation the first thing a school board/administration does when hearing of a budget shortfall is to fire Educators, as if they are low-rate commodity. They never first the 3d-6th Assistant Principals, extra secretaries, or the Strength Coach, or cancel the fleet of cars for school officials use. Nope, always fire the Educator first. If that doesn’t raise enough alarms, fire more Educators. Then renege on paying the pensions of retired Educators.
After all, “[I]t’s for the children.”
Heck, how much money did they spend to figure that out?
As having been a civilian cop for over 30 years, and 20+ with the Army/ Nat Guard, I’ve seen a lot of really, really stupid people who told me:
“I’m hoping to go into the Army…if I can ever pass the test…please don’t arrest me for stealing and using drugs Mr. police officer…I really want to serve my country…I can’t help it if I’m too stupid.”
I know the Army I served in had some really smart soldiers…and a few retards who slipped in…most being officers and senior NCOs.
If your school board is full of idiots do something about it.
DaveO:
I would tend to think that what they’re doing is holding the children hostage to the budget. It’s so bad here, the joke is: “If they held a school referendum and nobody voted on it, would it still pass?”
You probably already know the answer to that.
From the mid 80s until 1990, I was a Navy recruiter. I was simply AMAZED at the amount of high school grads that couldn’t pass the ASVAB. I worked several stations in the metro area and the inner city was the worst. Seems like nothing’s really changed with the public school systems. I had heard that Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were even worse.
I taught Boy Scouts. Its amazing in that, they weren’t dumb kids, some were sharp as tacks (some were utter morons but you get a bell curve with every population). But ask them to name the 16th president of the United states and they were clueless. I find that shameful.
Ben,
You make a good case for reinstating the draft in your post (#5). But as far as education goes, the parents are the single biggest factor, and many of them don’t hold up their end of the bargain. Don’t know what you can do about that – a license required to procreate? Also, many, many teachers get out of college, and their first day flying solo they realize, “I haven’t been trained for this!”. There is a disconnect between the courses taught in college and the skills needed in the classroom. I believe there are many great teachers who just need to learn some practical skills in managing a classroom, rather than, say, in the theory of education. Interesting tangent, a guy named Doug Lemov sifted through mountains of No Child Left Behind data (perhaps the only good thing about NCLB, some useable data), narrowed to down to a few consistently great teachers in disadvantaged districts (as indicated by several years of test data), video taped those teachers for hundreds of hours, analyzed the tapes, and found a number of strategies common to great teachers. He’s distilled them down to 49 discrete teachable skills necessary to succeed as a teacher, now known as “Lemov’s Taxonomy”. Things as simple, as, say, “When giving instructions to the class, stop what you’re doing (grading papers, writing on the board, etc.), and stand facing the class”. A very pragmatic approach. Also, he makes a good point – abolishing unions, imposing free market incentives, and supporting charter schools will never fix the public education. There are approx. 4 million teacher in the US, and no matter what kind of bonuses, incentives or merit pay you dangle in front of them, you are never going to recruit 4 million brilliant teachers – there aren’t nearly that many brilliant people in the pool. His blueprint, which I support on pragmatic and ethical grounds – take the teachers you have and teach them to be great. The skills are teachable, and we’re beginning to tease out what those skills are.
Also, he makes a good point – abolishing unions, imposing free market incentives, and supporting charter schools will never fix the public education.
Well, the purpose of proposing vouchers/school choice and charter schools is to take the power away from the unions and to give it to the parents. In other words, the purpose is not to “fix public education”, which has had decades to fix itself. The purpose is to give parents choices to go somewhere else, since the Public School system is broken and parents are tired of waiting on it to fix itself.
If parents are given vouchers and choose to go somewhere other than public schools, this might then finally put a burr up the teachers unions’ collective ass to actually fix itself. But right now, they have no incentive to bother. They don’t care about the children and their education, they care about their fat paychecks and power to control children’s lives/indoctrination. For proof just look at Billy Ayers’ and Obama’s Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Kevin Jennings’ efforts to “fix” our school system.
Thus, the goal of vouchers and charter schools is to take that power out of the hands of incompetent, power-hungry indoctrinators and put it back into the hands of parents who want the best for their children.
“Thus, the goal of vouchers and charter schools is to take that power out of the hands of incompetent, power-hungry indoctrinators and put it back into the hands of parents who want the best for their children“. Which explains why the goobermint had to do away with DC’s voucher program. Have to feed the union mouth, to hell with the parents, and to hell with the kids.
My current assignment is working at a middle school in the vein of the old DARE program. Most the teachers and administrators I work with are pro-police and military. This was surprising since I work in SoCal. Most the teachers seem dedicated to teaching the students “other than spelling and punctuation.”
As many others have commented; many of these problems go back to the students and parents. Students as they progress through the middle school towards high school start to think of education as less cool. Many parents are not much better and some do not speak English which means they can not assist with homework. I don’t think the media or entertainment industry should be left out since they are also dumbing down our society. This is affecting the way kids view the importance of at leats graduating from high school.
This has been a problem for a very long time. Being a dependent my whole life, I had been in and out of the DoDDs schools. Thank goodness when we were stateside, my mom paid attention to which school district we’d be and made sure it was a good one. Usually those were districts with a large % of military dependents. I had been in TAG (talented and gifted) program since 3rd grade. I had honors and AP classes throughout my school career. However, my elective of Spanish was a regular class, my one easy class. After graduating in 1994 in Okinawa, I went to Kent State University. My first semester I had to take a honors Spanish class due to an Honors scholarship I had received. Imagine my utter shock to find out that the college level honors course used the same books and curriculum (albeit at a faster pace) as the regular DoDDs 11th grade class. It was completely disheartening.
yat yas pointed out the problem– in my opinion. The teachers are dedicated to teaching the students “other than spelling and punctuation.”
I wish they’d shut up and teach some spelling and punctuation.
There have been neglected kids, poor kids, kids busy on the farm, kids working to pay the rent, etc, etc, etc, since the dawn of education. But schools seemed to be able to give them at least a rudimentary education… but not anymore…The whole system is in the toilet. Period.
I have been a high school history teacher for the past 15 years, after service time and a career doing other things. I have taught in both public and private schools, and will tell you that not only are they worlds apart, they are so primarily due to two reasons, the parents and the commitment of teachers. As a rule of thumb, most private school kids have parents that value education and invest heavily in it (sometimes too heavily). Many public school kids enjoy this happy state as well, but the overwhelming majority in the schools I taught in did not. Without the direct involvement of the parents at some level *and* the value of education being taught and reinforced at home, most students do not have the self-motivation to make much of a go at it. Teaching is a call, not a profession or trade. A teacher does need to know the theoretical and philosophical basics of teaching, but as in so many other fields, on the job training is the biggest part of teacher prep, and the reason the first year of teaching is traditionally a nightmare. Without the commitment that a call brings, few will stick around long enough to master their craft, and the ones that do are the “30 and out” crowd that finds a safe academic hole to hide in, and gives teaching such a bad reputation. And Spade, not all History Ed majors are lame on the content area side. I went to school later in life, and most of the people doing the History Ed program at my college that were in my age range did the same thing – take 20-30 more hours of history courses than necessary for graduation, putting the BS and BA folks at my college on about the same level in the end, content wise. One slightly amusing related story – I write books on a specific area of history, which is mostly dominated by college and university professors. I was invited to a historian’s panel a few years ago, where we discussed our latest work. We… Read more »
Joe, I’m actually offended you want to bring the draft back. We’re better without the hassle of idiots shooting themselves to get out of going to war.
you can’t argue that people that end up in collage are close to retards. Believe me I know. Teachers in public schools have utterly failed their students. The Apathy is just astounding.
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doc, You are so right. I live in a county with what has historically been one of ohio’s best community college and the creator of the University Partnership here. It took me almost 10 years to get my AA (hey– I have TEN KIDS) and I was shocked by the deterioration in the quality of education kids were coming into school with– not stupid, really- they just didn’t KNOW anything!
Kids are expected to GO to college, ready or not– and I think colleges are lowering the standards to accommodate them.
And… the quality of education between the local schools and the suburban schools most of my kids are open enrolled into (the rest are homeschooled or in college…)is unbelievable. It’s surreal. And I mean the education offered, the work expected, the teachers, administrators themselves. Not the books, buildings, etc. The suburban schools are actually making due with much older buildings.
Second what Thor said–and I was the Nuclear Field Recruiter. I saw a LOT more schools than the average field guy. It never ceased to amaze me how a kid who could barely spell their name, cut 850 on the SAT I, and was barely out of the “Square-Root GPA Club” was convinced the 1–were going to USC on a scholarship, 2–would blow the ASVAB away. After cutting a 24, they promptly ignored the reality staring them in the face. Kids like these were NOT outliers.
“I have been a high school history teacher for the past 15 years, after service time and a career doing other things. I have taught in both public and private schools, and will tell you that not only are they worlds apart, they are so primarily due to two reasons, the parents and the commitment of teachers”.
The line here that stands out is “the commitment of the teachers”. I read an article by a teacher who had worked at a prestigious private school in S. California where the kids had very high scores, and she stated that this success was borne almost entirely on the backs of the teachers and staff. The principal developed multiple stress-related health problems, as had many other staff members, burn out and turnover were high, hours were long, time spent with family members was at a minimum, with ambitious young teachers worn down after just a few years. After years of stress she quit. She stated that with the current state of affairs, this kind of success is unsustainable, with good teachers being chewed up and spit out. I would warn you that scapegoating teachers is easy, and popular, but the teachers I know and work with have a level of dedication rarely found in other lines of work.
…scapegoating teachers is easy, and popular, but the teachers I know and work with have a level of dedication rarely found in other lines of work. ========== Your personal anecdote is nice, Joe, but the reason that ‘scapegoating teachers is easy and popular’ is because the rest of us have personal anecdotes as well that are the complete opposite of your experience. Bad teachers, bad principals, bad curriculum, teachers exerting control over people’s kids and threatening parents if they dare try to have any involvement in the kids’ education/indoctrination, etc etc etc. While it’s great that you have had a good experience in your personal circle, most others have not. And that is the reason for the ‘scapegoating’. Because this is not an isolated situation. This poor performance and quality of education is occurring all across the nation. And it has been happening for decades and not getting any better, but rather getting worse. I was in grammar school in Chicago from 1982-1990 and then High School from 1990-1994. My parents worked their butts off to earn enough to send my brothers and I to Catholic grammar school and High School (Brother Rice HS in Chicago). And thank goodness they did, because back then the Chicago Public Schools were some of the absolute worst in the nation. And that was 20+ years ago. And not much has changed since then. That’s one school system in one City in one State. But, as others have noted here in this thread alone, they have anecdotes from plenty other Cities and States. So this is a major problem and it’s not ‘scapegoating’ to put the blame on the people directly responsible: teachers and teachers unions. They have one job: to teach kids within their subject area of expertise (Math, Science, History, English, etc). However, all we hear about these days are stories of radical sex education (which schools should NOT be teaching), political movements (teachers taking their students to Amnesty rallies and homosexual ‘marriages’ and Mosques), debates over the use of cell phones by students in school… while seeing generation after generation of… Read more »
I went to Central WA University, which is locally renowned for its teaching program. I was seriously disturbed even as a 19-year-old kid by the borderline intelligence of some of the future educators in my dorm. At that time, at least, you had to have a 4.0 in the education classes themselves in order to get your teaching certificate.
Think for a moment about how dumb the classes have to be to ensure that most students get a 4.0. If you’re envisioning “classroom technology” courses in operating overhead projectors and DVD players, you’re in the ballpark.
There are a lot of fantastic, dedicated teachers out there; my 1SG is one of them. But they select themselves; the way we train, promote, and retain teachers does NOT select for or reward excellence. This has predictable results on the students.