These days you only major in education if you can't hack a real college subject but you want a nice secure government job when you graduate.
I would like a nice secure government job - is that supposed to be a criticism of a group of people's character? I don't think it makes sense to say that education isn't a 'real college subject.' It's offensive, for one thing, and it's not true.
Now I've had a lot of people tell me that smart people are stuck up and judgmental because smart people believe that they are better then average people. Do you think it's a worthy ambition to be respectful of all people? I find that I can learn something valuable from everyone I meet, independent of overall intellectual ability.
Can others perceive the difference between these 2 statements?
High school graduates who say they intend to major in education score in the bottom third compared to 36 other intended majors, according to the SAT data released last week. Nationally, intended education majors finished 25th in reading, 27th in math and a combined 57 points below the national average in both.
and
These days you only major in education if you can't hack a real college subject but you want a nice secure government job when you graduate.
To my eyes - the first is a building block for an interesting discussion and the second is rude. But I've been told that I'm 'too sensitive' enough times that I'm trying to take that into account.
I can think of plenty of jobs that aren't a good match for individuals based on their intellect, but are a good match for their temperament, or other important factors. I think teaching at the elementary school level is a great job for a gifted individual with a good temperament for it, because the more intellectual strength a person has, the more they can bring to their work. And because lots of us care a lot more about 'are we doing palpable good in the world' than 'do we relate intellectually to our co-workers?' or 'are we working the job that makes the most possible money we could?'
I'm pretty sure that if the majority of people in a US state had IQ of 130, then that geographic area would create ways to insure that their teachers were also of a similar average IQ and to insure that those teachers were respected and paid commensurate with the value the citizens place on their children being educated by people with that level of intelligence.
This isn't the case, and we have what we have. I read a friend's graduate level education book, and it was really hard to read - not because it was challenging, or because I didn't have the background, but because it was written from a very specialized theoretical point of view that I highly doubt has much to do with reality. One can make a subject difficult to understand without adding value. In biology, the best understood concepts were the easiest to learn.(after effort) In other areas the teachers spoke on and on and I'd be all muddled up. Classmates with similar blank looks. When I asked them about it after class, the teacher'd say, 'we don't really understand how that part works yet.'
We used words like 'elegant' for the first situation and 'lots of heat but very little light' for the second.
I'd love to think that people who had 90th percentile empathy and self awareness, 90th percentile charisma, 90th percentile social skills and 90th percentile intellectual vitality could design and execute an education system that would meet the needs of all learners and get the most out of whatever students bring to each classroom. I'd prefer an actual scientific experiment (with 1000s of subjects, not 10s)that rated teachers on various personality traits and had reliable ways of measuring and developing the ones that matter most to education. Then we could measure which ones created the most point gain in the most students on a test like MAP over the year.
((shrugs and more shrugs))
Grinity
