Teacherin'

[caroljane]

Rick Salutin began an excellent series in the Toronto Star last weekend on public education. He began with a trip to Finland, a small weird country which outperforms large normal countries on international academic tests.

"Teacher autonomy" was one constant he found in Finnish schools. They close the classroom door and leave the teacher alone.

"Teacher really wants to teach" was another. To qualify as a teacher takes seven years - the equivalent of a doctorate in North American terms.

"Teachers talk to each other about teaching"- in Finland they do this voluntarily on their own time, for the stimulation of exchanging ideas on improving their value to their students.Salutin reports that this does not happen in Canada, but he's wrong.He did not interview enough teachers. We do have many workshops and professional developent seminars that we will do anything to get out of, that is true. But we do talk to each other, constructively, all the time.

There is much more to this series that I am looking forward to and I hope anyone interested in the topic of public education will read it too,

[BaalChatzaf]

Rick Salutin began an excellent series in the Toronto Star last weekend on public education. He began with a trip to Finland, a small weird country which outperforms large normal countries on international academic tests.

"Teacher autonomy" was one constant he found in Finnish schools. They close the classroom door and leave the teacher alone.

"Teacher really wants to teach" was another. To qualify as a teacher takes seven years - the equivalent of a doctorate in North American terms.

"Teachers talk to each other about teaching"- in Finland they do this voluntarily on their own time, for the stimulation of exchanging ideas on improving their value to their students.Salutin reports that this does not happen in Canada, but he's wrong.He did not interview enough teachers. We do have many workshops and professional developent seminars that we will do anything to get out of, that is true. But we do talk to each other, constructively, all the time.

There is much more to this series that I am looking forward to and I hope anyone interested in the topic of public education will read it too,

How much first class math and physics do the Finns produce? (comparatively speaking).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Rick Salutin began an excellent series in the Toronto Star last weekend on public education. He began with a trip to Finland, a small weird country which outperforms large normal countries on international academic tests.

"Teacher autonomy" was one constant he found in Finnish schools. They close the classroom door and leave the teacher alone.

"Teacher really wants to teach" was another. To qualify as a teacher takes seven years - the equivalent of a doctorate in North American terms.

"Teachers talk to each other about teaching"- in Finland they do this voluntarily on their own time, for the stimulation of exchanging ideas on improving their value to their students.Salutin reports that this does not happen in Canada, but he's wrong.He did not interview enough teachers. We do have many workshops and professional developent seminars that we will do anything to get out of, that is true. But we do talk to each other, constructively, all the time.

There is much more to this series that I am looking forward to and I hope anyone interested in the topic of public education will read it too,

Saving Public Education: Why Teachers Mattery

As the author points out, his:

"...most memorable teacher was Nehama Labovitz. She taught me Bible when I was a student in Israel. She looked like Old Dutch from Old Dutch cleanser and taught everyone from refugees in camps to grad students.

Like most superb teachers, her method didn't fit a formula and is hard to describe. It often involved citing a cryptic, one- or two-word Hebrew phrase from a medieval Bible commentator and asking: "What was bothering him?" Then drawing help from anywhere she could get it."

She’s the first person I ever heard mention the great Canadian critic Northrop Frye. 'He’s wrong,' she said, 'but you must read him.' "

Interesting article.

Adam

Edited March 29, 2011 by Selene

[Selene]

OOPS

Edited March 29, 2011 by Selene

[caroljane]

Rick Salutin began an excellent series in the Toronto Star last weekend on public education. He began with a trip to Finland, a small weird country which outperforms large normal countries on international academic tests.

"Teacher autonomy" was one constant he found in Finnish schools. They close the classroom door and leave the teacher alone.

"Teacher really wants to teach" was another. To qualify as a teacher takes seven years - the equivalent of a doctorate in North American terms.

"Teachers talk to each other about teaching"- in Finland they do this voluntarily on their own time, for the stimulation of exchanging ideas on improving their value to their students.Salutin reports that this does not happen in Canada, but he's wrong.He did not interview enough teachers. We do have many workshops and professional developent seminars that we will do anything to get out of, that is true. But we do talk to each other, constructively, all the time.

There is much more to this series that I am looking forward to and I hope anyone interested in the topic of public education will read it too,

Saving Public Education: Why Teachers Mattery

As the author points out, his:

"...most memorable teacher was Nehama Labovitz. She taught me Bible when I was a student in Israel. She looked like Old Dutch from Old Dutch cleanser and taught everyone from refugees in camps to grad students.

Like most superb teachers, her method didn’t fit a formula and is hard to describe. It often involved citing a cryptic, one- or two-word Hebrew phrase from a medieval Bible commentator and asking: “What was bothering him?” Then drawing help from anywhere she could get it."

Interesting article.

Adam

Yes! My most memorable (and everybody's in our school) was Mr Tingley, English teacher nonpareil. He didn't even have a teacher's license, and once he said that "momento" was spelled thus to mean "memory of moments," I will be forever proud of myself, that already knowing how much more he had taught me than he or I could know, I didn't stand up and challenge the spelling.

[caroljane]

Rick Salutin began an excellent series in the Toronto Star last weekend on public education. He began with a trip to Finland, a small weird country which outperforms large normal countries on international academic tests.

"Teacher autonomy" was one constant he found in Finnish schools. They close the classroom door and leave the teacher alone.

"Teacher really wants to teach" was another. To qualify as a teacher takes seven years - the equivalent of a doctorate in North American terms.

"Teachers talk to each other about teaching"- in Finland they do this voluntarily on their own time, for the stimulation of exchanging ideas on improving their value to their students.Salutin reports that this does not happen in Canada, but he's wrong.He did not interview enough teachers. We do have many workshops and professional developent seminars that we will do anything to get out of, that is true. But we do talk to each other, constructively, all the time.

There is much more to this series that I am looking forward to and I hope anyone interested in the topic of public education will read it too,

How much first class math and physics do the Finns produce? (comparatively speaking).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Baal

WSS produced a comparative test results graph on this, I am sorry I can't remember the name of the thread. I do remember that Finland was on top of one or two of math or science.

[Selene]

Educational attainment Finland 5th

Math Finland 4th

General rankings various categories

[caroljane]

Educational attainment Finland 5th

Math Finland 4th

General rankings various categories

Sorry, my memory sucks like usual. I don't dare to click on links because my internet is always telling me it can't exist -- who were the 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th in those categories please?

[Selene]

Educational attainment Finland 5th

Math Finland 4th

General rankings various categories

Sorry, my memory sucks like usual. I don't dare to click on links because my internet is always telling me it can't exist -- who were the 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th in those categories please?

Canada; USA; Iceland,; Japan for educ. ranking

Japan; S. Korea; New Zealand math

[Greybird]

Nobody hates teachers, as such. But many are getting sick of the whining from allegedly underpaid government-funded parasites.

Turn over the school facilities to teachers' cooperatives (they've been homesteaded, in a sense), give up both the tax funding and the compulsory attendance laws, and be done with it.

[Selene]

Nobody hates teachers, as such. But many are getting sick of the whining from allegedly underpaid government-funded parasites.

Turn over the school facilities to teachers' cooperatives (they've been homesteaded, in a sense), give up both the tax funding and the compulsory attendance laws, and be done with it.

That would be a good start with open competition for each student.

[caroljane]

Nobody hates teachers, as such. But many are getting sick of the whining from allegedly underpaid government-funded parasites.

Turn over the school facilities to teachers' cooperatives (they've been homesteaded, in a sense), give up both the tax funding and the compulsory attendance laws, and be done with it.

If you read the article, Finland did that, in an inside-outside-upside-down context.

[caroljane]

Nobody hates teachers, as such. But many are getting sick of the whining from allegedly underpaid government-funded parasites

Uh, what you are saying is everybody hates teachers as such, and what's not to hate? the overpayment, the whining, the parasitism, not to mention the long holidays--have I missed anything?

[Philip Coates]

If you click on 'educational attainment' for the above rankings, it looks as if all it means is what is the grade level achieved, which is a worse than meaningless statistic:

In other words the U.S. tends to have more college graduates. But what the statistics don't tell you is the college graduates know less than high school graduates in many or most developed countries.

[Selene]

If you click on 'educational attainment' for the above rankings, it looks as if all it means is what is the grade level achieved, which is a worse than meaningless statistic:

In other words the U.S. tends to have more college graduates. But what the statistics don't tell you is the college graduates know less than high school graduates in many or most developed countries.

Phil:

That was just the first link which was the tertiary scale of the largest percentage of the class of students to reach the "High School" level.

The third link is math which is defined in a link in each category:

DEFINITION: Mathematical literacy mean value of performance scale 15 years old 2000.

Adam

[Jonathan]

There was a study done back in the late 90s or early 00s which I had read about in, I think, US News and World Report, in which recent ed school graduates -- rookie teachers -- from all over the U.S. were tested against other recent graduates specializing in other fields. Not only did the teachers consistently perform very poorly compared to the others, but the interesting thing was that others generally scored better in their weakest subjects than the teachers scored in their best. For example, theater arts majors scored better in the sciences than did young science teachers, mass communication majors scored better in math than math teachers, biology majors scored better in history than history teachers. The only area in which the teachers ranked higher was in their self-evaluations of their competence and self-esteem.

J

[caroljane]

There was a study done back in the late 90s or early 00s which I had read about in, I think, US News and World Report, in which recent ed school graduates -- rookie teachers -- from all over the U.S. were tested against other recent graduates specializing in other fields. Not only did the teachers consistently perform very poorly compared to the others, but the interesting thing was that others generally scored better in their weakest subjects than the teachers scored in their best. For example, theater arts majors scored better in the sciences than did young science teachers, mass communication majors scored better in math than math teachers, biology majors scored better in history than history teachers. The only area in which the teachers ranked higher was in their self-evaluations of their competence and self-esteem.

J

I don't actually think that matters too much. The mastery of a subject does not regularly translate into the ability to help others learn it, or to inspire a passion for it in others. When you promote the best salesman or programmer to head of the training team, they won't produce clones.

The rookie teachers will usually know more of the subject than their students, and they'll learn from the students, as all teachers do.

[syrakusos]

Collectivism is a state of mind. "Teachers" ... "schools" ... "Finland" ...

I appreciate empirical statistics the same as you, but first of all, it is impossible for all Finnish pupils, teachers, or schools to "do well" or to "outperform the USA" or whatever.

The USA has perhaps 20,000 different school systems. More people in India speak English at home than do in the USA. How many Finns speak something other than Finnish at home? How many immigrants - illegal immigrants - does Finland have, and from how many different nations? Speaking to my senior class in police organization in 2008, I put up a map of the USA showing counties with more than 1% speakers of Vietnamese. Look at the US Census forms.

And we always look at the public schools - and are surprised that the Soviet Agriculture Model produces no more learning than it produced wheat. We ignore private schools, home schools, invisible learning.

I worked for a year at our local science museum. How do you measure the learning there? I made fireworks from medicine cabinet supplies and "elephant toothpaste" from yeast and peroxide and I swung a bowling ball from the ceiling and got kids to push chairs around and spin on platforms. But I never handed out a test.

Also, Ba'al's question was deeper than was addressed by the non-replies. Finland might lead the world in children who know algebra, but what does that get them? Silicon Valley is here, not there. I said before that one of my Japanese colleagues was dismayed at having to go back home because his children would not have the opportunity to be in American schools that reward creativity.

Edited March 29, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta

[caroljane]

Presumably their education could help them to build their own Silicon Valley, if that's what they want.

Edited March 29, 2011 by daunce lynam

[syrakusos]

If the subject is "teacherin'" among Objectivists, then it would seem a good place for those who actually teach or have taught to explain how they apply/applied the principles of Objectivist epistemology to their work.

[syrakusos]

There was a study done back in the late 90s or early 00s which I had read about ... The only area in which the teachers ranked higher was in their self-evaluations of their competence and self-esteem.

I don't actually think that matters too much. The mastery of a subject does not ...

I think that I know that study! Let me dig about a bit. It was true that the Education Departments at universities routinely rated their own students higher in proficiency than the science, math, and engineering departments. A more recent study found that college students who are unskilled are unaware of their limitations, even after scores are posted. (See "Unskilled and Unaware of It" and "The Dunning-Kruger Effect.")

Teacher proficiency does matter. A teacher who cannot deliver will be found out. I know a story from a one-room school house where the kids could not get the teacher to admit that the answer in the back of the book was wrong. That is not very inspiring. Sure, if you have young children, maybe even up to middle school... but you know, once a kid is interested in music or art or mathematics or science, their enthusiasm carries them. It is not that they know "more" - trivia is trivial - but a teacher who cannot grasp concepts deeply will be exposed as a fraud.

[kiaer.ts]

If the subject is "teacherin'" among Objectivists, then it would seem a good place for those who actually teach or have taught to explain how they apply/applied the principles of Objectivist epistemology to their work.

I just tutored someone last night in linguistics. He had been studying the subject in Spanish, and the teacher gave phonetic examples only in Spanish. He could not understand the concept of a phoneme or differentiate sounds from letters. I began with the premise that unless he were provided with examples from another language that he would not be able to form the necessary concepts. I gave him examples from English, asking him how he would spell various English words using Spanish spelling, then asking him what the underlying sounds were regardless of the chosen spelling system. For example, "why" could, based on its sound, be spelled "juai" in Spanish, and would be transcribed phonetically as "hway". The session began with him telling me that he had only 45 minutes available. He kept saying over and over with the different topics we covered, "OH, that finally makes sense!" We arranged the various letters of the IPA in a chart somewhat like a periodic table, and he became quite adept at deciding where in the chart a letter would go once he grasped the underlying principles, even realizing the trick questions I posed to him. The session ended up running over a very productive 2 1/2 hours. He finished up by asking me if I would tutor him in his major, marketing.

(Phonemes are meaningfully distinct sounds in a language. The letters th stand for two distinct sounds, those of thin and thick versus them and those. The "minimal pair" thy and thigh shows that this distinction is "phonemic". The IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet, with unique signs assigned to uniquely defined sounds.)

Edited March 29, 2011 by Ted Keer

[caroljane]

There was a study done back in the late 90s or early 00s which I had read about ... The only area in which the teachers ranked higher was in their self-evaluations of their competence and self-esteem.

I don't actually think that matters too much. The mastery of a subject does not ...

Teacher proficiency does matter. A teacher who cannot deliver will be found out. I know a story from a one-room school house where the kids could not get the teacher to admit that the answer in the back of the book was wrong. That is not very inspiring. Sure, if you have young children, maybe even up to middle school... but you know, once a kid is interested in music or art or mathematics or science, their enthusiasm carries them. It is not that they know "more" - trivia is trivial - but a teacher who cannot grasp concepts deeply will be exposed as a fraud.

Of course they will, by themselves first of all. And of course proficiency matters. But knowing every detail of your subject better than every student is only part of that proficiency. And the ability to grasp concepts deeply-- if a teacher cannot grasp those concepts after contemplating them term after term after term, he will realize he is in the wrong classroom.

I admit I was not thinking so much of the math and science side, though that was what the original question from Baal was about. Maybe Khan's videos are the answer to that.

[caroljane]

If the subject is "teacherin'" among Objectivists, then it would seem a good place for those who actually teach or have taught to explain how they apply/applied the principles of Objectivist epistemology to their work.

I can see where the principles would work well, but I can't use them, since I have to teach that A is A only in certain circumstances.

Seriously, the method of guiding students to "discover" general rules in grammar through deduction from examples ("reality")is very useful. Learning the use of articles, say. Native English speakers never learn the rules formally because we instinctively know when to use a/an, the or no article before a noun, but learners have to learn three general groups of rules (there are actually something like 50 explicit rules with 18 exceptions.)To look at the pattern and then figure out the rule that holds good for all the examples is more helpful than memorizing the rules and then trying to apply them.

But the students always want that list of rules too!

[caroljane]

As a teacher, I know only too well there is no such thing as teaching. There is only learning, and helping people to learn.

I speak only of teaching those who want to learn. Coaxing the reluctant, beguiling the lazy, browbeating the recalcitrant, are experiences which I have thankfully been spared.

Rationally, I think that in today's world there is no need for human middlemen or women between the eager student and the knowledge so abundant on the internet and through such excellent structured series as Khan's.

Yet education is a burgeoning industry and my hourly wages creep up. With any concept, any truth, any fact, any pronunciation of an English noun a student will want a real person to answer his question, even if the best answerer would irrefutably be a 1000 year's dead philosopher whose answer could be easily found easily on the Internet.

I know that all knowledge is self=taught, but I can never believe that souls are self-made. Too strait is the gate, too narrow is the way.