No I mean its seems to be a lot more work. Getting or not getting grants seems to also determine how well you do on your tenure track.
...
I guess what I'm saying is that when someone hands you a check for $25K-$250K for a research grant they expect more than from a $2500 grant. I don't know what you publish but it would seem less rigorous than publishing for a journal involving human subjects. Something we do for HCI research papers.
I don't know that we're really arguing about much except for these two points, which strike me as little more than discipline bias, which happens all the time and is in many ways perfectly understandable. Folks tend to think about some of the disciplines in the humanities as lacking rigor or not as research fields, which is to be expected when the undergraduate education in those subjects often has so little to do with the actual work the faculty do. And debating it is as pointless as debating whether Geddy Lee is a better bassist than Faulkner was a writer. We'd also get bogged down trying to define "rigor," which is really what your position hinges on. But again, that's for another discussion.
As for the relative value of grants. Perhaps. It could just be that some disciplines aren't as expensive as others and we confuse expense with merit.
Quote:
Done. I simply took a wild guess...you may wish to remove any location info you put on this site. The url you provide pretty much took me right there...
Fair enough. It never was an issue before now. But yeah. I need to change that.
I don't know that we're really arguing about much except for these two points, which strike me as little more than discipline bias, which happens all the time and is in many ways perfectly understandable.
I don't think we are arguing about anything other than perspectives. Grass is always greener and all that. Perhaps the only thing we disagree on is whether a $45K for 9 months work is good or bad.
It's what a GS-9 makes in 12 months...not that a GS-9 typically has a PhD. Working grade for PhD is a GS-12 and that's in the mid 60's (56K-73K). Pro-rated for the 3 months and you're about par.
So for K-12 teachers if you're making in the mid-40's you're doing almost as well as a PhD scientist in the USG (USDA, FDA, NASA, etc).
[QUOTE=vinea;1047469]How can someone ruin a good teacher (in general) by providing more choices for the students or empowering a principal to remove bad teachers?
****************** BULL CRAP :
Definition of "bad teacher" : a teacher with tenure who can afford to
speak plainly and isn't intimidated into sacrificing her personal after-school and weekend time to put on endless dog & pony shows and implement countless, bullshit , psycho-babble reform programs that Principals love to use for bullshit public relations that hide real management problems. A "bad teacher" is also one who is paid more and can help get rid of a moronic , arrogant Principal who pressures the faculty into inflating grades so as to evade publicity. This is why state-scored , standardized testing was invented : to learn the truth about grades that we all know damn well but do not dare to expose when you go about "empowering a principal to remove bad teachers " . A "bad teacher" is VERY often indistinguishable from a "great teacher" when she is given a reasonably cooperative class.
I guess you just don't read posts Vinny, you just unload your FOX NEWS - style talking points in cheap snipes. Clearly you evolved from a sample of intestinal flora left on Bill O'Reilly's chair after Olbermann was done with him. This fantasy you have about "good" and "bad" is the same load of crap that our whitehouse chimp excretes when he refers to the "evil-doers".
Here's a news flash for you Vinny, your "bad teacher" jargon has no referent.
And you can't dismiss me with "just like bad bossess in all careers ". In other careers, the employee has control over her work. A drill instructor has means of kicking a punk private's ass by, say, P.T. 'ing him until he pukes his guts out. A doctor can either restrain ( straps ) a convulsive or derranged patient, or she can refuse to treat him. A Steve Jobs can fire a punk employee ; a private school can expell - permanently - a punk student ------ PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS CAN NOT !!!!! Can you get that through your thick layer of ignorance and neo-con-man brain pan residue ?????
If I could have that kind of control over Princess and Jr's little sociopathic tendencies, then much more learning could take place.
And when the punk behavior is mostly absent ( in "honors" classes ), learning DOES take place and scores are good.
The problem with public schools are SYSTEMIC , DEEP-ROOTED, CAUSED and DEFENDED by people like you.
You ruin a teacher by removing the hard-won protections that unions have gotten for us and the students . EVERY DAY, while you sit in your spaceship of the imagination doling out simplistic crap to screw the public schools, I suspend, out of my classroom, as many as three or four punks who simply will not stop heckling and harassing me long enough for me to get a word in edgewise. These are "O.T." ( "Opportunity Transfer" ) punks who have been kicked out of one school after another but must be rotated to the next school. In fact, for every punk we OT out of our school, after he or she has ruined countless lessons, our school must RECEIVE another OT punk from a neighboring school. This insures a constant and overwhelming supply of young idiots to unload their attack on the teacher's patience, ability to teach, furniture, walls, floors, computers, fire alarms, and even attacks on the teacher's person. This right to suspend punks out of my classroom is my only tool. It is a UNION protection, a LAW that even the Principal seldom challenges. But, the punk comes back the next day ( or the next hour in a "block-schedule" school ) to pick up where he left off. For the short respite while they are gone, you can actually see learning taking place in my regular classroom. But it can not last long enough to affect overall grade scores.
----
You neo-con-men know where to strike: you do NOTHING to remedy or even alleviate the problems we have amply documented in what used to be television news and newspapers and other investigative reporting. Instead you pick the best of the public schools -- THE TEACHERS -- and attack them. Your methods are dishonest. They appeal to the infantile resentment harbored by you and many parents toward those teachers, in your youth, who stood you on your ear -- who didn't have to take your crap in the classroom. You love to inflate self-agrandizing anecdotes of how you made fools out of your teachers. You do this within earshot of your kids, you idiots. Then Jr. and Princess show up in my classroom with a heart that is full of your hitlerian venom against teachers , you biggot.
You could be pushing for more teacher empowerment over the classroom behavior of these punks who will surely revert to their natural " nice kid " nature if they are no longer fed hog-tied teacher meat on a daily basis.
You could be pushing for less million-dollar-per-person-killed warfare and robber baron fascism in our government.
You could be pushing for better, decent wages for these parents so that they can have the time or life style to raise Punk and Punkette into children instead of smirking rats.
You could spare a few million of the BILLIONS stolen by your fascist corporations, so we could have enough schools and a traditional calendar instead of a four-track spinning circus.
You could try something other than broad-brushed threats against the teachers , directed by the very corrupt administrations who have swept these problems under the rug to ferment and explode; corrupt administrations headed by your own politico puppeteers.
But nnnnooooooo !!!
What you do is pick out the only people left in the lives of these students ( punks included ) who actually spend more time with them than any of you neo-con-men, pundits, hypocrites, or even parents. You strike at the most well-intentioned people in the schools; the ones who actually get their feet wet. And you find their most vulnerable places; their most inflamed antagonists; their most threatening situations, and you pump it for all it's worth.
No, most folks will NOT find "better places to land". They will simply be screwed the way you want them to be. Since the problem is systemic and nation-wide, they will probably "land" in another toilet.
And your "bad teachers" will begin to revolve from school to school just like the OT punks and the criminally liable Principals are rotated.
Your "bad teacher" approach is a larval form of your WH chimp's "war on terror" : you will unjustly ruin the lives of countless blameless persons and accomplish NOTHING that you promise. It is simplistic
s-t-u-p-i-d-i-t-y
and you do not fool anyone with it.
The "choice" of school you pretend to support is actually nothing more than a ploy to empty the Black and Latino schools of teachers .
Your kids' private school will run like hell, to the nearest court, when those vouchers are attached to FEDERAL PROVISIONS that punks can no longer be flushed away. .... MAKE MY DAY ... I DARE YOU , VOUCHER MAN
And if you intend to let the private schools continue to flush their punks out, THEN WHY NOT GIVE THE SAME RIGHT TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO BEGIN WITH ??????
I'll give you a hint, voucher man : BECAUSE YOU KNOW DAMN WELL THAT THERE MUST BE A PLACE TO PUT THE CHILDREN OF YOUR FASCIST CORPORATION'S WORKERS --- ASK THE COPS WHAT THEY THINK OF MILLIONS OF PUNKS OUT OF THE SCHOOLS AND IN THE STREETS ALL DAY LONG, ALL YEAR 'ROUND .
Once you destroy the public schools, you will conveniently establish corporate, fascist, work camps and indoctrination centers to train those whom you consider beasts of burden to better serve you.
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"I think that most "good" professionals of any field prefers accountability."
***************************
Yeah, O'Reilly --- "accountability" when it screws the Black and Latino schools. But you call it "playing the blame game" when your criminal WH chimp screws up in historic proportions.
--- go screw yourself Vinny, and take your manipulative language with you.
I hope this has clarified any confusion you might have had.
I'm sorry I don't have time to read throught this whole thread. But, I'm going to make a few observations. I taught HS for 25 years. SOme of the things I saw.
A principal drove 2 teachers out of a high school for living together while not married.
A year later his wife committed suicide. 2 years later he was living but not married to one of the secretaries.
What is a "bad teacher" is very subjective. I used to ask the kids about other teachers. I found over the years that almost every teacher including myself had kids who thought we were the worst teacher in the world and should be fired immediatley. As soon as I publicly said "so and so is a bad teacher" some kid would stand up and defend that teacher, and tell me of something that teacher had done that changed their lives. This bad teacher crap totally ignores all the information on learning styles. No teacher is good for every student, but in my experience, every teacher is good for some students. What you often see when you see charges of bad teachers is a bad match. A teacher who is very skilled with gifted students, teaching a special ed type class.
Now Steve Jobs is not a teacher. Steve Jobs has not worked in the Educational system, in fact if memory serves me well, he's not even a college grad. He isn't qualified to teach in a school, nor is there any evidence to support the idea that he would be a good teacher, or even a competenet one.
Yet he feels the need to tell us what's wrong with the education system.
I hate to say it, but parrents like Steve Jobs are egocnetric nightmares for the education system. Because they want the best education for their kid, but the school has to educate every kid not just theirs. I went throught the frustration of having one struggle with the system myself. But think about it. There are over 40 identified learning styles and teaching styles. Your child has a one in 40 chance of having a teacher he's really in sinc with. That has nothing to do with good or bad teaching. That is a teachers reality.
Claiming you can change the system by firing bad teachers is just crap. No one can do the job. Where I am the average teacher, after 5 years of University works for less than 5 years. They burn out. You assholes out there talking about how easy thois job is, I can tell you right now, you are not good enough. You can't be a teacher, you haven't go what it takes, and your pathetic opinions count for nothing.
Now you can try and improve the education system by punishing teachers, but I'll tell you right now, it won't improve your education system. There are only so many people, who have the education, the ability to communicate, the patience, the calmness under fire, the ability to withstand the misguided attacks from administration and parents, and even students, that it takes to be a teacher. As a former trademen, I can say without a question fo a doubt, I could have made more money working in my trade. And with a lot less stress.
I worked my 25 years in the education system and got out, I won't work another day as a teacher. There is nothing in the education system, that would make up for the lack of repsect, the constant harrassment, the endless deadlines, the hours of class preperation. There is no amount of money tha can make up for that. There is no amount of time off in the summer that can make up for that.
What America wants is not teachers but babysitters. What America wants is not teachers but robots that deliever curriculum. Get your Apple computers to do that. With all of this talk of not being able to get rid of bad teachers, I got rid of two, as a department head. If a teacher is really bad, no union can save him. When a union can save him is when he is being targeted by a principal who just doesn't appreciate his or her style. All Steve Jobs has done here, has been to allow people who hate educatiion and educators to vent. His contribution to any meaningful discussion of the education system is negative. He should stick to being a drop out who sells computers.
I'm sorry I don't have time to read throught this whole thread. But, I'm going to make a few observations. I taught HS for 25 years. SOme of the things I saw.
A principal drove 2 teachers out of a high school for living together while not married.
A year later his wife committed suicide. 2 years later he was living but not married to one of the secretaries.
What is a "bad teacher" is very subjective. I used to ask the kids about other teachers. I found over the years that almost every teacher including myself had kids who thought we were the worst teacher in the world and should be fired immediatley. As soon as I publicly said "so and so is a bad teacher" some kid would stand up and defend that teacher, and tell me of something that teacher had done that changed their lives. This bad teacher crap totally ignores all the information on learning styles. No teacher is good for every student, but in my experience, every teacher is good for some students. What you often see when you see charges of bad teachers is a bad match. A teacher who is very skilled with gifted students, teaching a special ed type class.
Now Steve Jobs is not a teacher. Steve Jobs has not worked in the Educational system, in fact if memory serves me well, he's not even a college grad. He isn't qualified to teach in a school, nor is there any evidence to support the idea that he would be a good teacher, or even a competenet one.
Yet he feels the need to tell us what's wrong with the education system.
I hate to say it, but parrents like Steve Jobs are egocnetric nightmares for the education system. Because they want the best education for their kid, but the school has to educate every kid not just theirs. I went throught the frustration of having one struggle with the system myself. But think about it. There are over 40 identified learning styles and teaching styles. Your child has a one in 40 chance of having a teacher he's really in sinc with. That has nothing to do with good or bad teaching. That is a teachers reality.
Claiming you can change the system by firing bad teachers is just crap. No one can do the job. Where I am the average teacher, after 5 years of University works for less than 5 years. They burn out. You assholes out there talking about how easy thois job is, I can tell you right now, you are not good enough. You can't be a teacher, you haven't go what it takes, and your pathetic opinions count for nothing.
Now you can try and improve the education system by punishing teachers, but I'll tell you right now, it won't improve your education system. There are only so many people, who have the education, the ability to communicate, the patience, the calmness under fire, the ability to withstand the misguided attacks from administration and parents, and even students, that it takes to be a teacher. As a former trademen, I can say without a question fo a doubt, I could have made more money working in my trade. And with a lot less stress.
I worked my 25 years in the education system and got out, I won't work another day as a teacher. There is nothing in the education system, that would make up for the lack of repsect, the constant harrassment, the endless deadlines, the hours of class preperation. There is no amount of money tha can make up for that. There is no amount of time off in the summer that can make up for that.
What America wants is not teachers but babysitters. What America wants is not teachers but robots that deliever curriculum. Get your Apple computers to do that. With all of this talk of not being able to get rid of bad teachers, I got rid of two, as a department head. If a teacher is really bad, no union can save him. When a union can save him is when he is being targeted by a principal who just doesn't appreciate his or her style. All Steve Jobs has done here, has been to allow people who hate educatiion and educators to vent. His contribution to any meaningful discussion of the education system is negative. He should stick to being a drop out who sells computers.
*******************************
Good to hear a sane voice in the din of neo-con , public education saboteurs.
Steve Jobs would not last a week at my school site.
Re-read my comments on the experience of Barney Oliver with the Palo Alto School Board whence he resigned in anger, disgust, and frustration. And this from a recipient of the Presidential Science Medal.
Very complex set of reasons you set forth with a lot of justifications for why things are as they are. The point is simple, you either are able to teach (know the barriers to study) or you aren't. You need not be a teacher to observe an outpoint in the educational system. The problem with the current educational system can be narrowed down to one main point, and this point is: lack of study technology. I believe this is what Steve Jobs was getting at.
That there are "40 identified learning styles" as you state just proves how clueless the educational system is about it. Human minds differ from one to another only in content, the "mechanics" of the mind work the same from one to the other. I'll give you an example, if you try to teach someone who has a misunderstood word on a subject he will never get it. How many words do you think your students have misunderstood? You can't teach someone over a misunderstood word. Has the educational system figured this out yet? No.
Good to hear a sane voice in the din of neo-con , public education saboteurs.
Steve Jobs would not last a week at my school site.
Re-read my comments on the experience of Barney Oliver with the Palo Alto School Board whence he resigned in anger, disgust, and frustration. And this from a recipient of the Presidential Science Medal.
That's right. You know, there's a private -- er, charter -- school in South Central LA, which recently was planning student events for Black History Month. The older children wrote a presentation about the tragic case of Emmet Till, a young black man who was killed at the beginning of the civil rights movement for whistling at a white woman. The principals didn't like it, and refused to put it on at the assembly. True, there were going to be younger children there. But the authorities just didn't want this to happen. The children wrote a letter, and two teachers signed their names too. They were promptly fired. Now, I don't know about the fine details of this case, and that's what's usually dispositive, but my instinct is that the passion of the class that wrote the presentation, and the teachers who guided them and stood by them, is really what's precious in education. And there was no protection for them.
Teacher don't need to be paid more. Do you realize how much money most teachers make, even those just starting out? Most make 40k starting out and then get up close to 100k when they retire or even sooner than that. And the fact that you get to work only 9 MONTHS OF THE YEAR? Wonderful if you ask me. No need to pay them anymore than what they get.
What country are you talking about - Norway? Or maybe you think this article is about University professors?
The average public school teacher in america has a starting wage of around 34,000 dollars, and the top end, after about 30 years experience can get up to 55-60,000. That's not that great, if you think of how much training they have. It's not a high school diploma and then a couple year college course, or anything, so they should be starting with a higher wage than a pipe-fitter or car salesman...
University professors with PhDs maybe start in the 40,000 range and get up to 100-120,000 depending on workload and if they're publishing/researching at a high level.
Also, most grade schools run until early to mid-June, then the teachers keep working at end of year reports and administrative meetings for at least a week. The teachers go back to work one or two weeks before the school starts up again, so that puts them at 10 months work per year. They're usually working outside of school hours grading, have to frequently take courses in the evenings mandated by the school board ("professional development"), and most of all - they're dealing with 30 or more 6-14 year-olds every day! A lot of the time these kids come from bad family situations, and you're somehow implying that teachers don't deserve what they get?
As far as Jobs' comments go, they're to be expected given Apple's outsourcing to non-unionized Chinese and Koreans and Indians, that he can pay next to nothing to make our precious iPods. I'm sure there are also performance standards that Apple sets in China so they fire the old ladies that can't churn out 100 iPods a day any more... Do we want this "business model" in our classrooms? You can bet it wouldn't be the "bad teachers" being canned, it would be the longest-tenured teachers who make more money that they would fire so they could save some cash. Jobs seems to be known for being a real cut-throat asshole when it comes to business, which is great for shareholders, and his comments seem to support this.
Truth be told , many american teachers could not last in Asian schools from places like Japan , Singapore , Philippines , India and Malaysia. It has nothing to do with educational theories , it has nothing to do with culture and it definitely has nothing to do with funding . Everything boils down to this , are the teachers knowledgeable about their subjects and are they able to impart their knowledge to their students . Asian parents as well as students dislike teachers who cannot teach and while parents are hard on their children in regards to their study habits , they also have very high expectations in regards to their children's teachers especially in the top level schools in a lot of Asian countries . If they found out that you spend more time indoctrinating instead of teaching , the school principal will hand the teacher to them personally so he or she can explain his/herself to them before the principal fires him or her personally. Private ( a common sight ) and Science Public Schools in the Philippines tend to advertise the schools' academic reputation to attract parents and their children as well as teachers to teach those children. If the school has a poor academic reputation , the government will either "encourage them to improve" or close them down themselves, that is the reason why many private schools and their alumni tend to be very strict in hiring teachers and have a reasonably high standards .
Superbass
You just answered your question on why SJ had the iPods and computers made in Asian countries,unions. In case you have not notice , the american car industry is dying thanks to the unions ( coupled with bad management) and the airline industry , well, you can see the results. Big labor is a hindrance and that is the reason why companies tend outsource their manufacturing there than have them made over here.
"Truth be told , many american teachers could not last in Asian schools from places like Japan , Singapore , Philippines , India and Malaysia. It has nothing to do with educational theories ,
it has nothing to do with culture and it definitely has nothing to do with funding . "
*************************** IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH ALL OF THESE.
"Everything boils down to this ,"
*************** SORRY , NO BOILING DOWN ALLOWED -- YOU GOTTA MAKE SENSE AND YOU GOTTA GIVE EVIDENCE.
" are the teachers knowledgeable about their subjects "
***************** THE VAST MAJORITY ARE GREATLY OVER-QUALIFIED
"and are they able to impart their knowledge to their students ."
*********** YOU MAKE IT SOUND LIKE PUTTING TERIAKY ON A CODFISH ---- The kid has to C-O-O-P-E-R-A-T-E ---- get it ??????? So the rest of the society MUST GET THE KID TO COOPERATE instead of what you do.
Here, try this one :
RAISE YOUR CHILD INSTEAD OF LOWERING HIS TEACHER ----- there, a bumper sticker that even a neo-con-man could grasp.
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"parents are hard on their children in regards to their study habits ,"
*********** BINGO !!!!!!!
" they also have very high expectations in regards to their children's teachers especially in the top level schools in a lot of Asian countries . "
******** What about the other "levels" ? Why do you leave that out. My friends in Japan and Singapore tell me they have trashy neighborhoods there too and, guess what --- those kids don't learn and the teachers quit. When they get hired at the better schools, guess what ---- they are "great teachers" as if by magic *******************
"If they found out that you spend more time indoctrinating instead of teaching ,"
***** Oh, what's this ? Do I smell a little fear that a bit of non-corporatist, non-fascist, non-biggoted, info might get in the ear of the unwashed masses ? Washington never told a lie? The Constitution is based on the KJ bible ?
Lincoln was a christian ? The U.S. was not involved in the Bay of Pigs Invasion ? The Gulf of Tonkin attack happened ? Iraq attacked the World Trade Center ? Iraq had WMD's ? Spain blew up the Maine in Habana harbor ? Our nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was necessary to defeat Japan ? Cigarrettes are good for you ? Nixon was not a crook ? Clinton did not boink Monica ? Our nation's founders were christians ? Dubbiah didn't know about the levees and Katrina ? Dubbiah et al could never imagine that airliners might be used as weapons ? We won the Viet Nam war ? the Korean war ? the war on Iraq ? Afghanistan ? Iran ? Syria ? Puert Rico ? .... ooops getting ahead of myself there
...
Let's see, just which rancid, greasy, treasonous, insulting, unmanly, unwomanly, manipulative, ridiculous LOAD OF CRAP is it that we OUGHT to "indoctrinate" our students with ?
Should I not mention the invention of the Indo-Arabic numbering system and the work of Al-kwarizmi since we are bombing there now ?
If MacDonalds sets up trough at Jefferson High and donates book covers with their ads on them and a few trinkets --- should the biology teacher skip the lesson on junk food ?
If the chimp occupying the White House craps on the Constitution of The United States of America ----- should we rush past the lesson on separation of powers , checks and balances, and the admonitions in the Federalist Papers ?
------pleeasssssee !
If my kid's teachers kissed corporate ass like that, I would hand them their ass on a paper plate... personally , of course.
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"the school principal will hand the teacher to them personally so he or she can explain his/herself to them before the principal fires him or her personally."
******** FUNNY, you don't go into what "indoctrination" means so we can see if there is anything that needs "explaining" or if the parents would not fire the principal instead.
Say!, how about telling the kids about the Japanese perpetrated torture, vivisection, rape, etc. of prisoners in WWII ? Batan ? The Japanese Nuclear Bomb research ? The bio-toxic weapons ? IS THAT WHAT YOU MEAN "indoctrination" --- well we spell it
T_R_U_T_H and the sin is called :
TELLING THE POOR SONOFABITCH WHAT HE NEEDS TO KNOW.
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"Superbass
You just answered your question on why SJ had the iPods and computers made in Asian countries,unions. In case you have not notice , the american car industry is dying thanks to the unions ( coupled with bad management) and the airline industry , well, you can see the results. Big labor is a hindrance and that is the reason why companies tend outsource their manufacturing there than have them made over here."
*********** Great!, *****************
Let's race the corpo-fascist, cigar-sucking, fat, white-collar criminals' slaves abroad for the bottom of that pay scale.
Maybe we can make do with 50 cents an hour here too !!! What do you say fellas ????
We are being encouraged to become a third-world banana republic right here at home. You won't have to travel to see abject corporate-feeding poverty ! Why we could have it here at home too if we would only be patriotic enough to refrain from strangling the arrogant bastards with their own intestines Just go quietly into the lower-pay race to the bottom.
Money ? Sorry we are out . Good news is, it wasn't worth a penny anyway
What ? We are spending a million dollars or more for each Iraqi soldier or innocent we snuff? Why mention this ? Why do you hate America ? What Halliburton thieves? Who's absconding to Saudi Arabia ? Which billions ?
Does a billion dollar stack really reach 112 miles up ? Does one trillion dollars really stack half-way up to the moon ?
Well, remember : don't indoctrinate the children. We have corporations for that.
You are evidently not holding up your end of the social contract.
*****************
Why do you say that ? If you read the post, it is clear that all of my students who want to learn are doing well in their standardized tests, treat me with affection and respect, and may well work at Apple Inc. someday.
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Arguably without a PhD you aren't a researcher anyway.
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Lots of NASA people ( my best friend included ) have masters degrees, publish papers, read them at conferences, etc. Many have been responsible for the great stuff you see from "out there" -- as Kirk says.
We graduated from the same department. My degree and GPR is higher than his. But I like teaching ( college and Middle School ) --- he doesn't ( money sucks, too much demeaning treatment, not enough prestiege ) . After 20 years of going separate ways professionally, I could never walk right into his shoes. They do have a good number of incompetents whom I could easily better -- but not with a teacher's background. I think what you mean is that to get a grant you need a Ph.D. as head signer : this is true. My research was world-class multi-variate statistics as it related to signal processing in a high-noise environment. I did theory, programing, floor sweeping, WEIBEL wine guzzling, group conferencing between Ames Research Center and JPL here in LA County, all-nighters with the main-frames Earth, Mars, etc. ; I defended our trailer from a vicious rock attack from the pre-school terrorist station next door, .... I did it all and was called back twice by my superiors and given a great recommendation letter by Barney. ARGUABLY NOT A RESEARCHER ? Don't argue, you will lose. Maybe no longer a researcher --- which was my point : get into a public school teaching career, and lose all of your other hobbies.
************
Not particularly MY argument given that I don't have a PhD but honestly most Masters programs are not what I would consider rigorous or challenging anyway.
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Maybe yours wasn't.
But my degree is very close to a Ph.D. because an M.S. requires a lot more than an M.A. and our University was very demanding of it's M.A. and M.S. degrees. In fact, we had to go to the Mathematics department to find profs who could understand my oral examination and ask good questions. Also, I have done research and I have co-authored papers ( just not as much as if I had not gone into teaching ).
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Age discrimination and over-specialization is not specific to teachers anyway.
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No, no, ..... it keeps teachers from being hired in industry... where incoming age does matter ... get it ?
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No one has denigrated you. Your "protection" is not to allow bad teachers to continue to draw salary regardless of performance but to provide the ability to teach unpopular topics without undue interference.
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That is not my only protection and if you give it a second of thought you will see that it can not be. Else, anytime a principal disliked a teacher's politics, the teacher would be accused of some other infraction and summarily dismissed. So, there must be DUE PROCESS for any dismissal and that , for better or for worse, means CONTRACT, UNION, COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, STRIKES, etc.
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In any case, teacher tenure only started appearing in the 1920s and only became widespread by WWII its hard to insist that it's a fundamental requirement of the profession.
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And why ? Because teachers were not allowed to date, were required to tithe 10 % or more of their salaries to the church, were almost all single women abused by the male rooster in the main office, etc. What is new about any of this Vinny ? What are you -- an anti-labor fascist ?
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Obviously your skills as a researcher has deteriorated or you could do better than undocumented assertion...
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Jeeezzz, I've told you tons about what I base my statements on .... you call it "name dropping".
---skills have --- not skills has.
Which assertion is that ? Maybe it was just a suspicion or an opinion ---- could've been true -- never know.
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I live in arguably the best school district in Maryland. And yet we still have to worry about which school our kids will end up in.
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OOooohhhh !!! Not Maryland !!! You must be a bundle of nerves !!!
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In comparison to a system like Belgium its a no brainer...their system is superior to ours with their general, technical, professional, artistic and vocational tracks. That they couple that with financial accountability in the form of "vouchers" makes it more difficult to determine which factor is more important but who cares? Adopt both.
Your assumption is that with vouchers no new schools would appear. This appears to be incorrect. Also, wouldn't it be nice if private school teachers could be paid as much as their public school counterparts?
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What on Earth ? Why would new schools not simply deteriorate academically with the same lack of support now given to the schools we have ? Do you think all the old, bad teachers and bad students and bad parents are going to go to the moon ? When those kids I have who behave like punks go to your nice voucher school, they will crap all over your school - you will need to triple the custodial staff; you will have false fire alarm claxons splitting your ears several times per day; you will get cussed out on the phone by the parent; your administrators will be overwhelmed and will begin playing politics and placing beaurocratic blocks in front of you as you try to deal with the misbehavior; your good students' grades will plummet; ....... AAAhhhhh wait ... I think I know what you want :
How about if those parents who are the poorest or are undocumented CAN'T take the vouchers because of distance, not a large enough voucher, or fear of detection & deportation ????? AAhhh, Then you could skim the cream of the crop out of my classes; leave me with a totally failing score -- you will make your accusation true --- I won't be able to respond that I DO carry my weight in the social contract: simply because you now have my only cooperative students and have created a cesspool for me to work in --- right ? A separate but equal system -- no ?
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Oddly, you seem to share the same feelings about kids that some cops have on non-cops. They are perps...or in your case ill-mannered, indolent, violent, repugnant little thugs.
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Cops, yes-they work here too. Do you ?
I feel that way advisedly : some of them are. It is more than just a feeling. It is a fact of life. You need to come visit : we take substitutes year-round.
The kids who have not yet put on the punk are quite lovable, generous, honest, smart, and cute.
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Oddly, none of the teachers in my family has described kids quite like that.
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Nothing odd there, you are clearly not one to soil your shoes in a school like the ones with the lowest scores and, not by coincidence, the greatest need for help. You prefer to dole out patrician attitude and ignorance while I defend good behavior and stomp on bad behavior. But truly Vinny, no one can ever disabuse you of your vaporous notions about kids, teachers, etc. on a forum. Why don't you come on down to South Central with us and help us out. I would love to emulate whatever it is that you have on the shelf if it will make everything alright. Are you coming soon ? I'll fix you a plate .... tic...toc....tic...toc...tic...toc .... Vinny ? Are you there ? ... Happy Meal coupon ? ........ where are you ? OK, I'll tell you how to get into the teachers' rest room... now come on ! that's valuable info !! ....... I'll tell you how to turn off the fire claxon ... and the space heater ....
We need you here.
There are just too many facts you need to feed into your head.
Come on ...........
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At least he doesn't try to name drop in an internet forum or make fun of your internet handle with childish variations like "chuckman", "chucky" and "chuckster".
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There are worse sins : screwing teachers out of their bread and butter by way of misrepresentations, platitudes, affectations of professionalism, and the like, in reality, when you do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help. I spend all of my working days , most of my vacation time, and most of my evenings trying everything I can to get the PUNKS to turn back into KIDS like those in my honors classes.
Name dropping my ass. You want particulars don't you ?
I thought you just accused me of poor research -- not enough substance. I think you just feel a little flattened by the fact that I have had excellent experiences from which to form my opinions. You can't answer the Barney Oliver passage nor any of the other supporting facts I bothered to give you, so you try to reduce all of it to "name dropping". Do you not agree that the experience of a superbly competitive , world renown researcher like Dr. Oliver is VERY relevant here ? While he could easily get away with your patrician attitude and SJ's coarse attack on the teachers who have supported his business for so long, Dr. Oliver had the rectitude to be fair and recognize that if he, as a member of the Board of Palo Alto's School District, could not get past the wall of BS that keeps the status quo intact, then how could a teacher possibly do so? And besides, Aristotle, Gandhi, Jesus, Gertrude Stein, Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Amelia Earhart, and God Herself all think you are full of crap and I am wonderful.
So just give it up , Vinny. I win, you lose. Sign here,
Why do you ask ? Would that be a put down ? I thought you liked kids ? I'd love to be 12
Vinny, don't come to a war of wits unarmed.
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Yes, do you really think that diatribe convinced anyone that you are either a) a good teacher or b) that tenure is a good idea if opposing views are met with such childish vehemence by self-proclaimed "good" teachers?
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Yes.
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Yes, you are exactly like that teacher screaming into the camera...
Gooddog, are you actually saying something worthwhile, or is this all randomly-generated gibberish?
Is anyone else spending the time to actually read Gooddog's posts, or are they just taking up (lots of) space?
Moderators? Why isn't he banned?
No, no, no ...it is all hand crafted just for you Greg.
Now, you must be one of those neo-con-man cowards who always seek to shut people up. Interesting how much they praise competition until they can't handle it. Then it's "Oh, Daddy, make him go away , boo-hoo". " Don't let him talk , Daddy, I can't handle it ..."
You don't need me banned son. You need to strap on a pair and answer my arguments.
How about we ban cowards who resort to censorship so easily ?
How about , if you don't like my posts, you skip over them and
exchange idiot fantasies with your fellow neo-con-men only?
It's so much easier when you all agree with eachother isn't it ?
Sorry to be so disgusted with your responses, but maybe I'm a little older than you and I miss the kind of people who walked on their hind legs and had some sense of civic duty and justice.
BTW, did you have anything AT ALL by way of a response , or do you only jump in to do your pissant number ?
Moderators, please don't ban this Gregthing idiot from the forum --- we must set an example for immoral little wimps --- I can handle anything he can try by way of manipulative language, cheap little snipes, feigned ignorance etc. I want to take on these fascist little rats who infest the internet with their neo-con-man talking points against anything that makes life better for those whom they consider inferior.
Here, Geregthing , you can use some of my space to say something :
Right here boy :_____________________________________
I actually think I agree with him. Or at least, I think I might agree with what I think he might be saying.
Now you're thinking, Midwinter!
I am pretty tired after work. I am struggling to pile on as much real-life information, both cognitive and affective, as I can to flesh out the vision that so many people have about various kinds of teachers. You must be horrified at the result of my writing efforts. You have my apology. However, I doubt that so many users here are half as dense as they pretend to be. I suspect they have read my posts and know damn well what they say. But they can't quite deal with a reality that suggests injustice exists. They then pretend to be confused and shocked. I suspect infestation by tapeworms , brain weavels, or neo-con-man larvae. But it could be that they dissemble only because they are nervous. Were I a Steinbeck, I might convey it all in a one-page chapter. But, I'm just tired and busy. BTW Barney Oliver's vanity license plate was "ENGLISH". He kept a huge dictionary, on wheels, in his dining room, and loved the language more than anything else. I think you might appreciate this about a tech super star.
I have taught college and loved it as you love uni. I have experienced the respect I got then and what little I get in the public schools now. They are both called "teaching" but the difference is huge. I was making only $25K in 1987. But I didn't mind one bit. I had been very agressively recruited as an affirmative action hire -- without my knowledge. By going against the usual buddy hiring at the department, the admin angered the dept. and then threw me to those lions. It was a four and one half year law suit. My teaching was investigated by PI's to the extreme. I bested the dept. at every turn. My students were up in arms. Long-time friendships were ended over the injustice : by people who barely knew me ( some people still have values ). Bottom line: six figures -- they didn't go to trial. But I would have prefered the 30 years of happy labor and respect to the crap I hear in the AM TALK NAZI bands and elsewhere -- especially since I work three times as hard with this age group and have sacrificed so much to earn job security that is well deserved.
It is now blatantly obvious why our schools are in trouble.
Yeah, I think it must be the brain rot that results after years of inarticulate, single-shot exchanges in the blogs. It reduces the human mind to an idiotic, binary reflex. The ganglion says "You're so right" or the ganglion says "Shut up!" . Then it goes dormant until the next talking point is detected. Maybe this forum should be replaced with a simpler poll with a little thumbs-up icon and a little severed tongue icon.
Now, you must be one of those neo-con-man cowards who always seek to shut people up.
My desires to shut you up stem less from wanting to force nonsensical ideals on Middle Eastern countries and everything to do with the fact that you're completely obnoxious, unreadable, and you violate several posting guidelines.
Comments
No I mean its seems to be a lot more work. Getting or not getting grants seems to also determine how well you do on your tenure track.
...
I guess what I'm saying is that when someone hands you a check for $25K-$250K for a research grant they expect more than from a $2500 grant. I don't know what you publish but it would seem less rigorous than publishing for a journal involving human subjects. Something we do for HCI research papers.
I don't know that we're really arguing about much except for these two points, which strike me as little more than discipline bias, which happens all the time and is in many ways perfectly understandable. Folks tend to think about some of the disciplines in the humanities as lacking rigor or not as research fields, which is to be expected when the undergraduate education in those subjects often has so little to do with the actual work the faculty do. And debating it is as pointless as debating whether Geddy Lee is a better bassist than Faulkner was a writer. We'd also get bogged down trying to define "rigor," which is really what your position hinges on. But again, that's for another discussion.
As for the relative value of grants. Perhaps. It could just be that some disciplines aren't as expensive as others and we confuse expense with merit.
Done. I simply took a wild guess...you may wish to remove any location info you put on this site. The url you provide pretty much took me right there...
Fair enough. It never was an issue before now. But yeah. I need to change that.
I don't know that we're really arguing about much except for these two points, which strike me as little more than discipline bias, which happens all the time and is in many ways perfectly understandable.
I don't think we are arguing about anything other than perspectives. Grass is always greener and all that. Perhaps the only thing we disagree on is whether a $45K for 9 months work is good or bad.
It's what a GS-9 makes in 12 months...not that a GS-9 typically has a PhD. Working grade for PhD is a GS-12 and that's in the mid 60's (56K-73K). Pro-rated for the 3 months and you're about par.
So for K-12 teachers if you're making in the mid-40's you're doing almost as well as a PhD scientist in the USG (USDA, FDA, NASA, etc).
Vinea
****************** BULL CRAP :
Definition of "bad teacher" : a teacher with tenure who can afford to
speak plainly and isn't intimidated into sacrificing her personal after-school and weekend time to put on endless dog & pony shows and implement countless, bullshit , psycho-babble reform programs that Principals love to use for bullshit public relations that hide real management problems. A "bad teacher" is also one who is paid more and can help get rid of a moronic , arrogant Principal who pressures the faculty into inflating grades so as to evade publicity. This is why state-scored , standardized testing was invented : to learn the truth about grades that we all know damn well but do not dare to expose when you go about "empowering a principal to remove bad teachers " . A "bad teacher" is VERY often indistinguishable from a "great teacher" when she is given a reasonably cooperative class.
I guess you just don't read posts Vinny, you just unload your FOX NEWS - style talking points in cheap snipes. Clearly you evolved from a sample of intestinal flora left on Bill O'Reilly's chair after Olbermann was done with him. This fantasy you have about "good" and "bad" is the same load of crap that our whitehouse chimp excretes when he refers to the "evil-doers".
Here's a news flash for you Vinny, your "bad teacher" jargon has no referent.
And you can't dismiss me with "just like bad bossess in all careers ". In other careers, the employee has control over her work. A drill instructor has means of kicking a punk private's ass by, say, P.T. 'ing him until he pukes his guts out. A doctor can either restrain ( straps ) a convulsive or derranged patient, or she can refuse to treat him. A Steve Jobs can fire a punk employee ; a private school can expell - permanently - a punk student ------ PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS CAN NOT !!!!! Can you get that through your thick layer of ignorance and neo-con-man brain pan residue ?????
If I could have that kind of control over Princess and Jr's little sociopathic tendencies, then much more learning could take place.
And when the punk behavior is mostly absent ( in "honors" classes ), learning DOES take place and scores are good.
The problem with public schools are SYSTEMIC , DEEP-ROOTED, CAUSED and DEFENDED by people like you.
You ruin a teacher by removing the hard-won protections that unions have gotten for us and the students . EVERY DAY, while you sit in your spaceship of the imagination doling out simplistic crap to screw the public schools, I suspend, out of my classroom, as many as three or four punks who simply will not stop heckling and harassing me long enough for me to get a word in edgewise. These are "O.T." ( "Opportunity Transfer" ) punks who have been kicked out of one school after another but must be rotated to the next school. In fact, for every punk we OT out of our school, after he or she has ruined countless lessons, our school must RECEIVE another OT punk from a neighboring school. This insures a constant and overwhelming supply of young idiots to unload their attack on the teacher's patience, ability to teach, furniture, walls, floors, computers, fire alarms, and even attacks on the teacher's person. This right to suspend punks out of my classroom is my only tool. It is a UNION protection, a LAW that even the Principal seldom challenges. But, the punk comes back the next day ( or the next hour in a "block-schedule" school ) to pick up where he left off. For the short respite while they are gone, you can actually see learning taking place in my regular classroom. But it can not last long enough to affect overall grade scores.
----
You neo-con-men know where to strike: you do NOTHING to remedy or even alleviate the problems we have amply documented in what used to be television news and newspapers and other investigative reporting. Instead you pick the best of the public schools -- THE TEACHERS -- and attack them. Your methods are dishonest. They appeal to the infantile resentment harbored by you and many parents toward those teachers, in your youth, who stood you on your ear -- who didn't have to take your crap in the classroom. You love to inflate self-agrandizing anecdotes of how you made fools out of your teachers. You do this within earshot of your kids, you idiots. Then Jr. and Princess show up in my classroom with a heart that is full of your hitlerian venom against teachers , you biggot.
You could be pushing for more teacher empowerment over the classroom behavior of these punks who will surely revert to their natural " nice kid " nature if they are no longer fed hog-tied teacher meat on a daily basis.
You could be pushing for less million-dollar-per-person-killed warfare and robber baron fascism in our government.
You could be pushing for better, decent wages for these parents so that they can have the time or life style to raise Punk and Punkette into children instead of smirking rats.
You could spare a few million of the BILLIONS stolen by your fascist corporations, so we could have enough schools and a traditional calendar instead of a four-track spinning circus.
You could try something other than broad-brushed threats against the teachers , directed by the very corrupt administrations who have swept these problems under the rug to ferment and explode; corrupt administrations headed by your own politico puppeteers.
But nnnnooooooo !!!
What you do is pick out the only people left in the lives of these students ( punks included ) who actually spend more time with them than any of you neo-con-men, pundits, hypocrites, or even parents. You strike at the most well-intentioned people in the schools; the ones who actually get their feet wet. And you find their most vulnerable places; their most inflamed antagonists; their most threatening situations, and you pump it for all it's worth.
No, most folks will NOT find "better places to land". They will simply be screwed the way you want them to be. Since the problem is systemic and nation-wide, they will probably "land" in another toilet.
And your "bad teachers" will begin to revolve from school to school just like the OT punks and the criminally liable Principals are rotated.
Your "bad teacher" approach is a larval form of your WH chimp's "war on terror" : you will unjustly ruin the lives of countless blameless persons and accomplish NOTHING that you promise. It is simplistic
s-t-u-p-i-d-i-t-y
and you do not fool anyone with it.
The "choice" of school you pretend to support is actually nothing more than a ploy to empty the Black and Latino schools of teachers .
Your kids' private school will run like hell, to the nearest court, when those vouchers are attached to FEDERAL PROVISIONS that punks can no longer be flushed away. .... MAKE MY DAY ... I DARE YOU , VOUCHER MAN
And if you intend to let the private schools continue to flush their punks out, THEN WHY NOT GIVE THE SAME RIGHT TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO BEGIN WITH ??????
I'll give you a hint, voucher man : BECAUSE YOU KNOW DAMN WELL THAT THERE MUST BE A PLACE TO PUT THE CHILDREN OF YOUR FASCIST CORPORATION'S WORKERS --- ASK THE COPS WHAT THEY THINK OF MILLIONS OF PUNKS OUT OF THE SCHOOLS AND IN THE STREETS ALL DAY LONG, ALL YEAR 'ROUND .
Once you destroy the public schools, you will conveniently establish corporate, fascist, work camps and indoctrination centers to train those whom you consider beasts of burden to better serve you.
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"I think that most "good" professionals of any field prefers accountability."
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Yeah, O'Reilly --- "accountability" when it screws the Black and Latino schools. But you call it "playing the blame game" when your criminal WH chimp screws up in historic proportions.
--- go screw yourself Vinny, and take your manipulative language with you.
I hope this has clarified any confusion you might have had.
Did I answer your question , young man ?
A principal drove 2 teachers out of a high school for living together while not married.
A year later his wife committed suicide. 2 years later he was living but not married to one of the secretaries.
What is a "bad teacher" is very subjective. I used to ask the kids about other teachers. I found over the years that almost every teacher including myself had kids who thought we were the worst teacher in the world and should be fired immediatley. As soon as I publicly said "so and so is a bad teacher" some kid would stand up and defend that teacher, and tell me of something that teacher had done that changed their lives. This bad teacher crap totally ignores all the information on learning styles. No teacher is good for every student, but in my experience, every teacher is good for some students. What you often see when you see charges of bad teachers is a bad match. A teacher who is very skilled with gifted students, teaching a special ed type class.
Now Steve Jobs is not a teacher. Steve Jobs has not worked in the Educational system, in fact if memory serves me well, he's not even a college grad. He isn't qualified to teach in a school, nor is there any evidence to support the idea that he would be a good teacher, or even a competenet one.
Yet he feels the need to tell us what's wrong with the education system.
I hate to say it, but parrents like Steve Jobs are egocnetric nightmares for the education system. Because they want the best education for their kid, but the school has to educate every kid not just theirs. I went throught the frustration of having one struggle with the system myself. But think about it. There are over 40 identified learning styles and teaching styles. Your child has a one in 40 chance of having a teacher he's really in sinc with. That has nothing to do with good or bad teaching. That is a teachers reality.
Claiming you can change the system by firing bad teachers is just crap. No one can do the job. Where I am the average teacher, after 5 years of University works for less than 5 years. They burn out. You assholes out there talking about how easy thois job is, I can tell you right now, you are not good enough. You can't be a teacher, you haven't go what it takes, and your pathetic opinions count for nothing.
Now you can try and improve the education system by punishing teachers, but I'll tell you right now, it won't improve your education system. There are only so many people, who have the education, the ability to communicate, the patience, the calmness under fire, the ability to withstand the misguided attacks from administration and parents, and even students, that it takes to be a teacher. As a former trademen, I can say without a question fo a doubt, I could have made more money working in my trade. And with a lot less stress.
I worked my 25 years in the education system and got out, I won't work another day as a teacher. There is nothing in the education system, that would make up for the lack of repsect, the constant harrassment, the endless deadlines, the hours of class preperation. There is no amount of money tha can make up for that. There is no amount of time off in the summer that can make up for that.
What America wants is not teachers but babysitters. What America wants is not teachers but robots that deliever curriculum. Get your Apple computers to do that. With all of this talk of not being able to get rid of bad teachers, I got rid of two, as a department head. If a teacher is really bad, no union can save him. When a union can save him is when he is being targeted by a principal who just doesn't appreciate his or her style. All Steve Jobs has done here, has been to allow people who hate educatiion and educators to vent. His contribution to any meaningful discussion of the education system is negative. He should stick to being a drop out who sells computers.
I'm sorry I don't have time to read throught this whole thread. But, I'm going to make a few observations. I taught HS for 25 years. SOme of the things I saw.
A principal drove 2 teachers out of a high school for living together while not married.
A year later his wife committed suicide. 2 years later he was living but not married to one of the secretaries.
What is a "bad teacher" is very subjective. I used to ask the kids about other teachers. I found over the years that almost every teacher including myself had kids who thought we were the worst teacher in the world and should be fired immediatley. As soon as I publicly said "so and so is a bad teacher" some kid would stand up and defend that teacher, and tell me of something that teacher had done that changed their lives. This bad teacher crap totally ignores all the information on learning styles. No teacher is good for every student, but in my experience, every teacher is good for some students. What you often see when you see charges of bad teachers is a bad match. A teacher who is very skilled with gifted students, teaching a special ed type class.
Now Steve Jobs is not a teacher. Steve Jobs has not worked in the Educational system, in fact if memory serves me well, he's not even a college grad. He isn't qualified to teach in a school, nor is there any evidence to support the idea that he would be a good teacher, or even a competenet one.
Yet he feels the need to tell us what's wrong with the education system.
I hate to say it, but parrents like Steve Jobs are egocnetric nightmares for the education system. Because they want the best education for their kid, but the school has to educate every kid not just theirs. I went throught the frustration of having one struggle with the system myself. But think about it. There are over 40 identified learning styles and teaching styles. Your child has a one in 40 chance of having a teacher he's really in sinc with. That has nothing to do with good or bad teaching. That is a teachers reality.
Claiming you can change the system by firing bad teachers is just crap. No one can do the job. Where I am the average teacher, after 5 years of University works for less than 5 years. They burn out. You assholes out there talking about how easy thois job is, I can tell you right now, you are not good enough. You can't be a teacher, you haven't go what it takes, and your pathetic opinions count for nothing.
Now you can try and improve the education system by punishing teachers, but I'll tell you right now, it won't improve your education system. There are only so many people, who have the education, the ability to communicate, the patience, the calmness under fire, the ability to withstand the misguided attacks from administration and parents, and even students, that it takes to be a teacher. As a former trademen, I can say without a question fo a doubt, I could have made more money working in my trade. And with a lot less stress.
I worked my 25 years in the education system and got out, I won't work another day as a teacher. There is nothing in the education system, that would make up for the lack of repsect, the constant harrassment, the endless deadlines, the hours of class preperation. There is no amount of money tha can make up for that. There is no amount of time off in the summer that can make up for that.
What America wants is not teachers but babysitters. What America wants is not teachers but robots that deliever curriculum. Get your Apple computers to do that. With all of this talk of not being able to get rid of bad teachers, I got rid of two, as a department head. If a teacher is really bad, no union can save him. When a union can save him is when he is being targeted by a principal who just doesn't appreciate his or her style. All Steve Jobs has done here, has been to allow people who hate educatiion and educators to vent. His contribution to any meaningful discussion of the education system is negative. He should stick to being a drop out who sells computers.
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Good to hear a sane voice in the din of neo-con , public education saboteurs.
Steve Jobs would not last a week at my school site.
Re-read my comments on the experience of Barney Oliver with the Palo Alto School Board whence he resigned in anger, disgust, and frustration. And this from a recipient of the Presidential Science Medal.
That there are "40 identified learning styles" as you state just proves how clueless the educational system is about it. Human minds differ from one to another only in content, the "mechanics" of the mind work the same from one to the other. I'll give you an example, if you try to teach someone who has a misunderstood word on a subject he will never get it. How many words do you think your students have misunderstood? You can't teach someone over a misunderstood word. Has the educational system figured this out yet? No.
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Good to hear a sane voice in the din of neo-con , public education saboteurs.
Steve Jobs would not last a week at my school site.
Re-read my comments on the experience of Barney Oliver with the Palo Alto School Board whence he resigned in anger, disgust, and frustration. And this from a recipient of the Presidential Science Medal.
That's right. You know, there's a private -- er, charter -- school in South Central LA, which recently was planning student events for Black History Month. The older children wrote a presentation about the tragic case of Emmet Till, a young black man who was killed at the beginning of the civil rights movement for whistling at a white woman. The principals didn't like it, and refused to put it on at the assembly. True, there were going to be younger children there. But the authorities just didn't want this to happen. The children wrote a letter, and two teachers signed their names too. They were promptly fired. Now, I don't know about the fine details of this case, and that's what's usually dispositive, but my instinct is that the passion of the class that wrote the presentation, and the teachers who guided them and stood by them, is really what's precious in education. And there was no protection for them.
Teacher don't need to be paid more. Do you realize how much money most teachers make, even those just starting out? Most make 40k starting out and then get up close to 100k when they retire or even sooner than that. And the fact that you get to work only 9 MONTHS OF THE YEAR? Wonderful if you ask me. No need to pay them anymore than what they get.
What country are you talking about - Norway? Or maybe you think this article is about University professors?
The average public school teacher in america has a starting wage of around 34,000 dollars, and the top end, after about 30 years experience can get up to 55-60,000. That's not that great, if you think of how much training they have. It's not a high school diploma and then a couple year college course, or anything, so they should be starting with a higher wage than a pipe-fitter or car salesman...
University professors with PhDs maybe start in the 40,000 range and get up to 100-120,000 depending on workload and if they're publishing/researching at a high level.
Also, most grade schools run until early to mid-June, then the teachers keep working at end of year reports and administrative meetings for at least a week. The teachers go back to work one or two weeks before the school starts up again, so that puts them at 10 months work per year. They're usually working outside of school hours grading, have to frequently take courses in the evenings mandated by the school board ("professional development"), and most of all - they're dealing with 30 or more 6-14 year-olds every day! A lot of the time these kids come from bad family situations, and you're somehow implying that teachers don't deserve what they get?
As far as Jobs' comments go, they're to be expected given Apple's outsourcing to non-unionized Chinese and Koreans and Indians, that he can pay next to nothing to make our precious iPods. I'm sure there are also performance standards that Apple sets in China so they fire the old ladies that can't churn out 100 iPods a day any more... Do we want this "business model" in our classrooms? You can bet it wouldn't be the "bad teachers" being canned, it would be the longest-tenured teachers who make more money that they would fire so they could save some cash. Jobs seems to be known for being a real cut-throat asshole when it comes to business, which is great for shareholders, and his comments seem to support this.
Superbass
You just answered your question on why SJ had the iPods and computers made in Asian countries,unions. In case you have not notice , the american car industry is dying thanks to the unions ( coupled with bad management) and the airline industry , well, you can see the results. Big labor is a hindrance and that is the reason why companies tend outsource their manufacturing there than have them made over here.
"Truth be told , many american teachers could not last in Asian schools from places like Japan , Singapore , Philippines , India and Malaysia. It has nothing to do with educational theories ,
it has nothing to do with culture and it definitely has nothing to do with funding . "
*************************** IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH ALL OF THESE.
"Everything boils down to this ,"
*************** SORRY , NO BOILING DOWN ALLOWED -- YOU GOTTA MAKE SENSE AND YOU GOTTA GIVE EVIDENCE.
" are the teachers knowledgeable about their subjects "
***************** THE VAST MAJORITY ARE GREATLY OVER-QUALIFIED
"and are they able to impart their knowledge to their students ."
*********** YOU MAKE IT SOUND LIKE PUTTING TERIAKY ON A CODFISH ---- The kid has to C-O-O-P-E-R-A-T-E ---- get it ??????? So the rest of the society MUST GET THE KID TO COOPERATE instead of what you do.
Here, try this one :
RAISE YOUR CHILD INSTEAD OF LOWERING HIS TEACHER ----- there, a bumper sticker that even a neo-con-man could grasp.
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"parents are hard on their children in regards to their study habits ,"
*********** BINGO !!!!!!!
" they also have very high expectations in regards to their children's teachers especially in the top level schools in a lot of Asian countries . "
******** What about the other "levels" ? Why do you leave that out. My friends in Japan and Singapore tell me they have trashy neighborhoods there too and, guess what --- those kids don't learn and the teachers quit. When they get hired at the better schools, guess what ---- they are "great teachers" as if by magic
"If they found out that you spend more time indoctrinating instead of teaching ,"
***** Oh, what's this ? Do I smell a little fear that a bit of non-corporatist, non-fascist, non-biggoted, info might get in the ear of the unwashed masses ? Washington never told a lie? The Constitution is based on the KJ bible ?
Lincoln was a christian ? The U.S. was not involved in the Bay of Pigs Invasion ? The Gulf of Tonkin attack happened ? Iraq attacked the World Trade Center ? Iraq had WMD's ? Spain blew up the Maine in Habana harbor ? Our nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was necessary to defeat Japan ? Cigarrettes are good for you ? Nixon was not a crook ? Clinton did not boink Monica ? Our nation's founders were christians ? Dubbiah didn't know about the levees and Katrina ? Dubbiah et al could never imagine that airliners might be used as weapons ? We won the Viet Nam war ? the Korean war ? the war on Iraq ? Afghanistan ? Iran ? Syria ? Puert Rico ? .... ooops getting ahead of myself there
...
Let's see, just which rancid, greasy, treasonous, insulting, unmanly, unwomanly, manipulative, ridiculous LOAD OF CRAP is it that we OUGHT to "indoctrinate" our students with ?
Should I not mention the invention of the Indo-Arabic numbering system and the work of Al-kwarizmi since we are bombing there now ?
If MacDonalds sets up trough at Jefferson High and donates book covers with their ads on them and a few trinkets --- should the biology teacher skip the lesson on junk food ?
If the chimp occupying the White House craps on the Constitution of The United States of America ----- should we rush past the lesson on separation of powers , checks and balances, and the admonitions in the Federalist Papers ?
------pleeasssssee !
If my kid's teachers kissed corporate ass like that, I would hand them their ass on a paper plate... personally , of course.
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"the school principal will hand the teacher to them personally so he or she can explain his/herself to them before the principal fires him or her personally."
******** FUNNY, you don't go into what "indoctrination" means so we can see if there is anything that needs "explaining" or if the parents would not fire the principal instead.
Say!, how about telling the kids about the Japanese perpetrated torture, vivisection, rape, etc. of prisoners in WWII ? Batan ? The Japanese Nuclear Bomb research ? The bio-toxic weapons ? IS THAT WHAT YOU MEAN "indoctrination" --- well we spell it
T_R_U_T_H and the sin is called :
TELLING THE POOR SONOFABITCH WHAT HE NEEDS TO KNOW.
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"Superbass
You just answered your question on why SJ had the iPods and computers made in Asian countries,unions. In case you have not notice , the american car industry is dying thanks to the unions ( coupled with bad management) and the airline industry , well, you can see the results. Big labor is a hindrance and that is the reason why companies tend outsource their manufacturing there than have them made over here."
*********** Great!, *****************
Let's race the corpo-fascist, cigar-sucking, fat, white-collar criminals' slaves abroad for the bottom of that pay scale.
Maybe we can make do with 50 cents an hour here too !!! What do you say fellas ????
We are being encouraged to become a third-world banana republic right here at home. You won't have to travel to see abject corporate-feeding poverty ! Why we could have it here at home too if we would only be patriotic enough to refrain from strangling the arrogant bastards with their own intestines
Money ? Sorry we are out . Good news is, it wasn't worth a penny anyway
What ? We are spending a million dollars or more for each Iraqi soldier or innocent we snuff? Why mention this ? Why do you hate America ? What Halliburton thieves? Who's absconding to Saudi Arabia ? Which billions ?
Does a billion dollar stack really reach 112 miles up ? Does one trillion dollars really stack half-way up to the moon ?
Well, remember : don't indoctrinate the children. We have corporations for that.
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Why do you say that ? If you read the post, it is clear that all of my students who want to learn are doing well in their standardized tests, treat me with affection and respect, and may well work at Apple Inc. someday.
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Arguably without a PhD you aren't a researcher anyway.
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Lots of NASA people ( my best friend included ) have masters degrees, publish papers, read them at conferences, etc. Many have been responsible for the great stuff you see from "out there" -- as Kirk says.
We graduated from the same department. My degree and GPR is higher than his. But I like teaching ( college and Middle School ) --- he doesn't ( money sucks, too much demeaning treatment, not enough prestiege ) . After 20 years of going separate ways professionally, I could never walk right into his shoes. They do have a good number of incompetents whom I could easily better -- but not with a teacher's background. I think what you mean is that to get a grant you need a Ph.D. as head signer : this is true. My research was world-class multi-variate statistics as it related to signal processing in a high-noise environment. I did theory, programing, floor sweeping, WEIBEL wine guzzling, group conferencing between Ames Research Center and JPL here in LA County, all-nighters with the main-frames Earth, Mars, etc. ; I defended our trailer from a vicious rock attack from the pre-school terrorist station next door, .... I did it all and was called back twice by my superiors and given a great recommendation letter by Barney. ARGUABLY NOT A RESEARCHER ? Don't argue, you will lose. Maybe no longer a researcher --- which was my point : get into a public school teaching career, and lose all of your other hobbies.
************
Not particularly MY argument given that I don't have a PhD but honestly most Masters programs are not what I would consider rigorous or challenging anyway.
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Maybe yours wasn't.
But my degree is very close to a Ph.D. because an M.S. requires a lot more than an M.A. and our University was very demanding of it's M.A. and M.S. degrees. In fact, we had to go to the Mathematics department to find profs who could understand my oral examination and ask good questions. Also, I have done research and I have co-authored papers ( just not as much as if I had not gone into teaching ).
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Age discrimination and over-specialization is not specific to teachers anyway.
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No, no, ..... it keeps teachers from being hired in industry... where incoming age does matter ... get it ?
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No one has denigrated you. Your "protection" is not to allow bad teachers to continue to draw salary regardless of performance but to provide the ability to teach unpopular topics without undue interference.
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That is not my only protection and if you give it a second of thought you will see that it can not be. Else, anytime a principal disliked a teacher's politics, the teacher would be accused of some other infraction and summarily dismissed. So, there must be DUE PROCESS for any dismissal and that , for better or for worse, means CONTRACT, UNION, COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, STRIKES, etc.
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In any case, teacher tenure only started appearing in the 1920s and only became widespread by WWII its hard to insist that it's a fundamental requirement of the profession.
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And why ? Because teachers were not allowed to date, were required to tithe 10 % or more of their salaries to the church, were almost all single women abused by the male rooster in the main office, etc. What is new about any of this Vinny ? What are you -- an anti-labor fascist ?
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Obviously your skills as a researcher has deteriorated or you could do better than undocumented assertion...
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Jeeezzz, I've told you tons about what I base my statements on .... you call it "name dropping".
---skills have --- not skills has.
Which assertion is that ? Maybe it was just a suspicion or an opinion ---- could've been true -- never know.
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I live in arguably the best school district in Maryland. And yet we still have to worry about which school our kids will end up in.
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OOooohhhh !!! Not Maryland !!! You must be a bundle of nerves !!!
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In comparison to a system like Belgium its a no brainer...their system is superior to ours with their general, technical, professional, artistic and vocational tracks. That they couple that with financial accountability in the form of "vouchers" makes it more difficult to determine which factor is more important but who cares? Adopt both.
Your assumption is that with vouchers no new schools would appear. This appears to be incorrect. Also, wouldn't it be nice if private school teachers could be paid as much as their public school counterparts?
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What on Earth ? Why would new schools not simply deteriorate academically with the same lack of support now given to the schools we have ? Do you think all the old, bad teachers and bad students and bad parents are going to go to the moon ? When those kids I have who behave like punks go to your nice voucher school, they will crap all over your school - you will need to triple the custodial staff; you will have false fire alarm claxons splitting your ears several times per day; you will get cussed out on the phone by the parent; your administrators will be overwhelmed and will begin playing politics and placing beaurocratic blocks in front of you as you try to deal with the misbehavior; your good students' grades will plummet; ....... AAAhhhhh wait ... I think I know what you want :
How about if those parents who are the poorest or are undocumented CAN'T take the vouchers because of distance, not a large enough voucher, or fear of detection & deportation ????? AAhhh, Then you could skim the cream of the crop out of my classes; leave me with a totally failing score -- you will make your accusation true --- I won't be able to respond that I DO carry my weight in the social contract: simply because you now have my only cooperative students and have created a cesspool for me to work in --- right ? A separate but equal system -- no ?
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Oddly, you seem to share the same feelings about kids that some cops have on non-cops. They are perps...or in your case ill-mannered, indolent, violent, repugnant little thugs.
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Cops, yes-they work here too. Do you ?
I feel that way advisedly : some of them are. It is more than just a feeling. It is a fact of life. You need to come visit : we take substitutes year-round.
The kids who have not yet put on the punk are quite lovable, generous, honest, smart, and cute.
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Oddly, none of the teachers in my family has described kids quite like that.
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Nothing odd there, you are clearly not one to soil your shoes in a school like the ones with the lowest scores and, not by coincidence, the greatest need for help. You prefer to dole out patrician attitude and ignorance while I defend good behavior and stomp on bad behavior. But truly Vinny, no one can ever disabuse you of your vaporous notions about kids, teachers, etc. on a forum. Why don't you come on down to South Central with us and help us out. I would love to emulate whatever it is that you have on the shelf if it will make everything alright. Are you coming soon ? I'll fix you a plate .... tic...toc....tic...toc...tic...toc .... Vinny ? Are you there ? ... Happy Meal coupon ? ........ where are you ? OK, I'll tell you how to get into the teachers' rest room... now come on ! that's valuable info !! ....... I'll tell you how to turn off the fire claxon ... and the space heater ....
We need you here.
There are just too many facts you need to feed into your head.
Come on ...........
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At least he doesn't try to name drop in an internet forum or make fun of your internet handle with childish variations like "chuckman", "chucky" and "chuckster".
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There are worse sins : screwing teachers out of their bread and butter by way of misrepresentations, platitudes, affectations of professionalism, and the like, in reality, when you do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help. I spend all of my working days , most of my vacation time, and most of my evenings trying everything I can to get the PUNKS to turn back into KIDS like those in my honors classes.
Name dropping my ass. You want particulars don't you ?
I thought you just accused me of poor research -- not enough substance. I think you just feel a little flattened by the fact that I have had excellent experiences from which to form my opinions. You can't answer the Barney Oliver passage nor any of the other supporting facts I bothered to give you, so you try to reduce all of it to "name dropping". Do you not agree that the experience of a superbly competitive , world renown researcher like Dr. Oliver is VERY relevant here ? While he could easily get away with your patrician attitude and SJ's coarse attack on the teachers who have supported his business for so long, Dr. Oliver had the rectitude to be fair and recognize that if he, as a member of the Board of Palo Alto's School District, could not get past the wall of BS that keeps the status quo intact, then how could a teacher possibly do so? And besides, Aristotle, Gandhi, Jesus, Gertrude Stein, Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Amelia Earhart, and God Herself all think you are full of crap and I am wonderful.
So just give it up , Vinny. I win, you lose. Sign here,
________________________________ ____ / ____ / _____
signature of patrician loser date
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What are you? 12?
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Why do you ask ? Would that be a put down ? I thought you liked kids ? I'd love to be 12
Vinny, don't come to a war of wits unarmed.
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Yes, do you really think that diatribe convinced anyone that you are either a) a good teacher or b) that tenure is a good idea if opposing views are met with such childish vehemence by self-proclaimed "good" teachers?
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Yes.
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Yes, you are exactly like that teacher screaming into the camera...
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Didn't see it.
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Is anyone else spending the time to actually read Gooddog's posts, or are they just taking up (lots of) space?
Moderators? Why isn't he banned?
Gooddog, are you actually saying something worthwhile, or is this all randomly-generated gibberish?
Is anyone else spending the time to actually read Gooddog's posts, or are they just taking up (lots of) space?
Moderators? Why isn't he banned?
I actually think I agree with him. Or at least, I think I might agree with what I think he might be saying.
Gooddog, are you actually saying something worthwhile, or is this all randomly-generated gibberish?
Is anyone else spending the time to actually read Gooddog's posts, or are they just taking up (lots of) space?
Moderators? Why isn't he banned?
No, no, no ...it is all hand crafted just for you Greg.
Now, you must be one of those neo-con-man cowards who always seek to shut people up. Interesting how much they praise competition until they can't handle it. Then it's "Oh, Daddy, make him go away , boo-hoo". " Don't let him talk , Daddy, I can't handle it ..."
You don't need me banned son. You need to strap on a pair and answer my arguments.
How about we ban cowards who resort to censorship so easily ?
How about , if you don't like my posts, you skip over them and
exchange idiot fantasies with your fellow neo-con-men only?
It's so much easier when you all agree with eachother isn't it ?
Sorry to be so disgusted with your responses, but maybe I'm a little older than you and I miss the kind of people who walked on their hind legs and had some sense of civic duty and justice.
BTW, did you have anything AT ALL by way of a response , or do you only jump in to do your pissant number ?
Moderators, please don't ban this Gregthing idiot from the forum --- we must set an example for immoral little wimps --- I can handle anything he can try by way of manipulative language, cheap little snipes, feigned ignorance etc. I want to take on these fascist little rats who infest the internet with their neo-con-man talking points against anything that makes life better for those whom they consider inferior.
Here, Geregthing , you can use some of my space to say something :
Right here boy :_____________________________________
__________________________________________________ ___
__________________________________________________ __
I actually think I agree with him. Or at least, I think I might agree with what I think he might be saying.
Now you're thinking, Midwinter!
I am pretty tired after work. I am struggling to pile on as much real-life information, both cognitive and affective, as I can to flesh out the vision that so many people have about various kinds of teachers. You must be horrified at the result of my writing efforts. You have my apology. However, I doubt that so many users here are half as dense as they pretend to be. I suspect they have read my posts and know damn well what they say. But they can't quite deal with a reality that suggests injustice exists. They then pretend to be confused and shocked. I suspect infestation by tapeworms , brain weavels, or neo-con-man larvae. But it could be that they dissemble only because they are nervous. Were I a Steinbeck, I might convey it all in a one-page chapter. But, I'm just tired and busy. BTW Barney Oliver's vanity license plate was "ENGLISH". He kept a huge dictionary, on wheels, in his dining room, and loved the language more than anything else. I think you might appreciate this about a tech super star.
I have taught college and loved it as you love uni. I have experienced the respect I got then and what little I get in the public schools now. They are both called "teaching" but the difference is huge. I was making only $25K in 1987. But I didn't mind one bit. I had been very agressively recruited as an affirmative action hire -- without my knowledge. By going against the usual buddy hiring at the department, the admin angered the dept. and then threw me to those lions. It was a four and one half year law suit. My teaching was investigated by PI's to the extreme. I bested the dept. at every turn. My students were up in arms. Long-time friendships were ended over the injustice : by people who barely knew me ( some people still have values ). Bottom line: six figures -- they didn't go to trial. But I would have prefered the 30 years of happy labor and respect to the crap I hear in the AM TALK NAZI bands and elsewhere -- especially since I work three times as hard with this age group and have sacrificed so much to earn job security that is well deserved.
It is now blatantly obvious why our schools are in trouble.
My favorite part? "Last edited by gooddog : Today at 02:22 AM."
It is now blatantly obvious why our schools are in trouble.
Yeah, I think it must be the brain rot that results after years of inarticulate, single-shot exchanges in the blogs. It reduces the human mind to an idiotic, binary reflex. The ganglion says "You're so right" or the ganglion says "Shut up!" . Then it goes dormant until the next talking point is detected. Maybe this forum should be replaced with a simpler poll with a little thumbs-up icon and a little severed tongue icon.
My favorite part? "Last edited by gooddog : Today at 02:22 AM."
Grading papers.... you know ... work.
Sure it's your favorite part?
Now, you must be one of those neo-con-man cowards who always seek to shut people up.
My desires to shut you up stem less from wanting to force nonsensical ideals on Middle Eastern countries and everything to do with the fact that you're completely obnoxious, unreadable, and you violate several posting guidelines.