Keeping the Talent Happy

Can I just say, amen. In all seriousness, I agree with your post Mary. I’m not in management, though, and I think you thoughtfully remind us that the culture of teacher blaming is counterintuitive. And, Diane’s pieces are great reads about this anti-intellectual timeline and the beginning of the blaming of teachers in the US.

I was speechless when my sister, who is a Grade 8 teacher, showed me her huge binder that she has to “teach.” She is teaching for a test. We’ve all heard this before, but I will rinse and repeat here. Teaching for the test has been slowly killing the life out of some of our best and brightest teachers and students.

Those of us in higher ed see what happens. We end up with students who are ill prepared for writing and critical inquiry and the cycle continues.

“Teachers cannot do their best work in an environment where they are not respected” – true indeed. But as applied to higher ed, this article says absolutely nothing new – we have seen dozens of article in CHE in recent years pointing out the failure of the entire higher ed system to respect and reward good teaching (as compared with good grant writing, e.g.). The consequence is that undergrad students see lots of poor teachers, but they don’t see the hidden reason for it (most undergrads are completely disconnected from the research functions of the university, much less the publish-or-perish processes), and quite reasonably blame the teachers. What we need, and this article doesn’t offer, is ideas on how to solve this, and presenting one “teacher of the year” award per school just won’t do it.

I cannot agree with you more. Many of the Graduate students in education of science still have trouble to do the basic arithmetic: they mess up the priority order of multiply, divide, plus, and minus. I’m not even trying Trigonometric yet.
To teach college science, one needs at least a MA in corresponding discipline. I don’t see how that’s going to happen at all.

I am surprised the respondents blame the institutions. I think Mary Churchill’s article makes clear that for things to change, the general culture of the United States must change. This is much, much more than any college – or even all academic colleges — can do.

After World War 2, the country in general was swept up with the feeling that improvement of one’s self could lead to better things. Today, we now have an extremely large segment of the population who disbelieves this, and whose disbelief is reinforced by many leaders, not to mention media and culture in general.

I don’t really see a solution, other than an increasing split in the US population between those who believe in education and those that don’t. Perhaps future culture wars might change this.