Herman Rubin wrote <<< The easiest way to get this started is to disestablish the public schools, and to make alternatives affordable. Also, requiring teachers to understand subject matter as determined by subject matter scholars, not educatists, who would not be required or expected to pass the majority of the current teachers or applicants. >>>
While I disagree about disestablishing the public schools, it is clear that requiring teachers to know the subject matter (as determined by people who themselves know the subject) is necessary. Sadly, this is a problem not just in math and science but in other subjects as well. We have teachers of English who never read for pleasure. Also sadly, it is hard to see the way out of this - there was an interesting article (in Science News, I think) that schools in some of the Scandanavian countries (IIRC it was Finland specifically) do remarkably well despite low teacher salaries and large classes. What seemed to matter is that teachers are highly respected (and teaching is a prestigious job) and that parents take their kids' education seriously. Peter . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
