Yesterday Charles Adler had an interesting segment about technology in the classroom.
As sometimes happens in such discussions, I think the bigger point was missed entirely by the pundits. Here’s the crux of the e-mail I sent to Adler afterwards:
Interesting segment on your show today. If I may, I’d like to broaden the discussion somewhat. The underlying problem is that finding competent teachers in any of the “non-soft” subjects is exceptionally difficult. Whether it be Computer Science or Math or Physics or Chemistry, I have strong reasons to suspect that the competency of most high school teachers in Canada in these areas would range somewhere between “Fair” to “Poor”. When it comes to basic computer skills, I wonder if most teachers would even be qualified for the most rudimentary office job that involved word processing and spreadsheets? I suspect they would not.
Let we forget, computers have had a significant presence in our society since at least 1981 when the first IBM PC was introduced. That’s 30 years ago. The fact that any teacher of any age is now expecting formal training in the basic use of a computer is mind boggling.
I graduated high school at one of the best schools in Vancouver in 1982. We were blessed to have an excellent Physics teacher, some pretty good Math teachers, and a fairly good Computer Science teacher. Fast forward to today … what I’ve been told by my many high school teacher friends is that the competency levels in these areas has dropped significantly. Oh sure, there are undoubtedly some exceptions and the kids learning from those particular teachers are lucky. But what about the majority of kids who are being “taught” by people who really aren’t passionate about their assigned subject area?
Stop for a moment to think about how many kids steer away from going into the hard sciences or engineering because of uninspiring high school teachers. Unless there’s a role model in the form of a parent or an uncle or some adult friend of the parents, it’s unlikely that most Canadian kids will go into the fields where our country most needs them. Ooops, am I even allowed to make that last statement, that Canada needs more people in hard sciences than in soft subjects?! Or is the master plan for this century to generate oodles of wealth in our nation from sociologists and womens studies majors?!?
Just the other day a longtime friend of mine, unsatisfied with the teachers at his son’s school, asked where his son could get some mentoring in the area of Computer Science. Where he’s going to get it from is from me. As an accomplished software developer I’m going to devote some time to teach my “nephew” in this area that he has an interest in. He clearly is not going any help or inspiration from the trained “professionals” at his school.
For the record, I don’t dislike teachers. But I much prefer competence over treating every single person in the teaching profession as a hero.
Update: Useful education links for students & parents alike:
– Khan Academy
– MIT Open Courseware
– Berkeley
h/t Kyla, Ron in Kelowna, Fridge Logic
In my opinion, the best way to fix the education system is to stop requiring credentials in education–close the ed schools. Instead, hire for credentials in the subject being taught. Ed schools demonstrably teach nothing of value–studies show this. Homeschooled students actually do consistently better than those “professionally” taught, for example.
There are reasons for this. No natural student or highly intelligent person can easily sit still for the BS (including the PC stuff) that ed schools shovel out; so they winnow out the best and the brightest. And too many sit through the ed school course, then discover they are not cut out for a classroom, but stick in teaching anyway, because they have invested too much in that career.
Instead, hire those who, like some folks posting here, actually understand computer science or math or physics. First principle: you cannot teach what you do not know. If they find they like teaching, they will stay, and probably be good teachers. If they aren’t, they will leave. If they don’t, fire them.
Yeah, we have to ditch the teacher’s unions too.
Robert@3:14 and Blackie@7:54:
Two examples, from a series of textbooks widely used in public schools:
(1) Teaching Science For Social Justice
(2) Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics: Toward a Pedagogy for Social Justice
It would be like having Billy Ayers and Saul Alinsky right there in the classroom! What could possibly go wrong?
The majority of teachers come from the lowest quartile of university graduates. I suspect this is the origin of “Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.”
The usual disclaimers about excellent teachers, social conditions, etc. are spot on, but the average teacher is not very effective. If one is cynical enough to believe that the objective of public education is to create compliant citizens, then that judgement might be too harsh.
All kids nowadays have a computer at home, if they have any interest in computers they will learn it at home. Computer science at school can only serve to educate the dullest students in computer basics.
The obsession with teacher standards is due to a society where “education” is regarded as most likely to get you a good salary, and parents go to any length (buy a house in a good district, send them to private school) in the belief that that is the best path towards their child´s financial success.
Problem is, the factors that make you excel in science are first order innate, second order cultural/ethics and third order what kind of teacher you had at school. But we ignore the first two and obsess about the third.
Nick 9:17 am – I noticed that the first book had no reviews at all. The second had 4–fairly positive but by the comments, it was easy to see how scrambled their heads were. The price of second is $155. >
I’d be interested in knowing who would offer this sort of class.
Amazon now permits anyone to self-publish and offer their books for sale. Likely it wouldn’t take a lot of looking to find more cr*p like this.
Rita@ 4:44:
Here‘s a link to a list of some other books in the “Teaching For Social Justice Series”.
Being able to use a word processor app or make use of a spreadsheet app have nothing to do with computer skills, they are not computer skills to begin with.
I am a well paid computer professional and couldn’t get job if it was my user app skill deciding it.
So my homeschooled 11 year old got rid of the parental controls on the Mac by hacking the password…He may know what a double reverse cowboy is, but I am delighted.
Industrial schooling is all about training people for jobs which will cease to exist before the kids are finished the schooling. Get your kids out while you still can.
[Quick question for Robert…was that physics guy by any chance The Nord at Point Grey? Because, if it was, that was a man who a)knew physics, b) was a brilliant teacher, c) pushed the bright kids to MIT and CalTech and honours physics wherever they went, d) was kind enough to give me gentlemen’s B’s for sort of getting the point, e) taught me a heck of a lot of math, f) created my layman’s interest in science which is with me to this day forty years on, g) happened to be as good an English teacher who ever walked the Earth – God help you if you wrote an inelegant lab report.)
I did the headmaster’s meeting with our tutors yesterday. It was all about science and history. What do we do this year. Ballistics with water balloons? Yup. Math speed drills? Yup. A couple of hundred words a day of writing from my 11 year old and 50 from my eight year old? Yup. And all packed into 2 hours a day so they can spend the rest of their day killing zombies and watching Top Gear.
Kids like to learn. School tends to get in their way. Which it has to because it is not and never has been about learning; rather it has been about “norming”, social control, credentialism and other useless crap. (Oh, and “socialization” with their peers…may God save us.)
If you can, never expose your kids to this. A five year old has no defences. He or she will do what they are told and you have lost them.
For the sheer fun of it, my 11 year old and I are thinking about his going to high school for a bit in grade nine. It is not at all clear what the system would make of an economically literate, global warming skeptical, kid who can – because of practice and teaching – write faster and better than the teacher and hack the school computer. (But that last worked out quite well for Mr. Gates.)