[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 @ 17:33 -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo said:

> On Apr 15, 2007, at 12:34 PM, wa2egp at att.net wrote:
> 
> > That's total BS.  For the same education?  I don't think so.
> > And don't look at the top scale.  Too easy to use that.
> 
> You may know people with good educations who are teachers.
> 
> All the teachers I know took easy majors like Psychology etc. and are 
> ... just ... not ... very ... smart.  There. I said it.

There are plenty of teachers that don't even have the equivalent of a
4 year degree. In some places they are reducing the requirements, or
already have.

In 13 years, I can count the good teachers I had on one hand.

It's not just incompetence either. A good number of my teachers were
abusive on top of the rest.

Those of you who have seen good teachers in a good system, you don't
know how lucky you are, or at least you don't seem to.

The only way I'll ever support increases in teacher's pay, is if they do
three things at a minimum:

	- require a four year degree, and not in some trivial program
	- classes specific to teaching are *extra* requirements
	- teachers who don't perform or abuse the kids get canned,
	  efficiently and without mercy

> Try to find out the average SAT scores of those who end up teachers.
> Those you know are probably way off the charts.

Maybe... I've never thought SAT was a good measure of intelligence
myself.

A lot of the key to doing well in school and on tests is not
intelligence, but cleverness, knowing how to work the system.

Testing is not a skill everyone has in equal measure, so what are we
really measuring?

In fact, do we even know why we measure? The original purpose of
examinations and grading was not to score people, but to guide the path
they took through their studies.

-- 
shannon          | If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
                 |         -- Mark Twain