Slashdot Mirror
UK Computing Teachers Concerned That Pupils Know More Than Them
mikejuk (1801200) writes A survey of UK schools carried out by Microsoft and Computing at School reveals some worrying statistics that are probably more widely applicable. The survey revealed that (68%) of primary and secondary teachers are concerned that their pupils have a better understanding of computing than they do. Moreover, the pupils reinforced this finding with 47% claiming that their teachers need more training. Again to push the point home, 41% of pupils admitted to regularly helping their teachers with technology. This isn't all due to the teachers being new at the task — 76% had taught computing before the new curriculum was introduced. It seems that switching from an approach that emphasised computer literacy to one that actually wants students to do more difficult things is the reason for the problem.
I was in a "Data Processing" class in high school in 1983-84. In the class, we learned a little COBOL, and some Applesoft BASIC, as well as some generic input/output theory type stuff. One of the assignments was writing a program in Applesoft BASIC. Everyone else drew pictures on the screen or had it just print stuff in response to a carriage return. I wrote something I called "Nuclear Devastation". It was a cityscape in nice high-res 40x40 15 color graphics. It wasn't overly detailed but you got the idea. On the bottom line, it printed: "Press any key to nuke this city!". You'd press a key, the screen would flash twice, a mushroom cloud would grow in the same delicious graphics and then you'd be presented with the destroyed cityscape. On the bottom line it asked "Do you want to nuke this city again?".
I was given an F and made to erase the program.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Quite to the contrary. Our teaching schools in the US are the degree mills for the B school dropouts. Simply put, those who can do math realize that teaching is a bad financial career choice. However, this is tolerated by the parents who think that schools are free babysitting and don't value education. There are many great teachers, but few of them can defeat years of shitty parenting on a large scale. Therefore, it really doesn't matter that the plurality of teachers are marginally competent, both in their fields of study and as educators. We set low, low standards as a society, and our teachers meet them. And, we shouldn't blame them; we hire the boards that tolerate it.
Ya, me too. I had an assignment where I used arrays in solving the problem. I guess the class didnt cover arrays yet, and so I failed the assignment. The teacher has one solution that she was expecting to see, and when it wasnt that, I failed. So, I was somehow supposed to guess what they wanted to see for a solution in that class based on what was taught to that point. Granted, I wasnt really following the "lectures" at all. I'm pretty sure the teacher was basically 1 week ahead of the students, learning it herself.
I'm pretty sure I knew math, science and sometimes English better than my teachers through high school. Experienced teachers know how to deal with students like us - how would this be any different?
The real difference is you thought you knew math, science and sometimes English, but when it really came down to it, masters-level mathematics could be whipped out to gently remind you, or perhaps break down some English sentence structure to show your actual understanding vs. what you think you know.
Experienced teachers know the difference between knowledge and wisdom. The difference today is you don't have students going home spending another 4 - 6 hours every day tinkering with math or English like you might with computing.
Um, don't know about you but I quite well did know math and science far better than many of my teachers. I don't think you know the difference between knowledge and wisdom, either.
I first pointed out an error in a text book in 3rd grade and explained it to my teacher who was quite impressed (yes, I was correct and the book wasn't). I wasn't wiser than her by a long shot. But I was a little smarter in one area.
My 6th grade math and science teacher hated me because I had to point out the errors that she made on her exams. One of my favs was when she insisted that a geiger counter detects "visible light". She was copying the tests out of the back of the book and rearranging the answers. Since she had little actual knowledge of the subject she didn't know or care. She refused to look at the page in the book that clearly contradicted her answer. I finally got her to fix the answer by pointing out that I don't need a fancy detector to detect something that's visible. She generally missed one or two answers on her math tests and the occasional science test, too. She would then humiliate herself by not simply listening when I would politely point out the problem.
The record, though, was set in an 8th grade electronics class that I took. The teacher there managed to miss 14 on his first test. Not his strongest subject. To be fair, he was a gym teacher that was forced to teach a subject of which he had no real knowledge. He also taught drafting, and actually marked one of my drawings as incorrect because I had studiously drawn correctly a partially hidden line. He said it was "wrong" because there was no need to actually make it so exact.
I was well ahead of most of my math teachers past 7th grade or so. I remember one particularly humiliating experience that my 8th grade math teacher had. I was thinking about squares one evening and was thinking about how if you knew a certain square you could easily calculate forward or back one square. For instance, 25 squared is 625 so to get 24 squared I subtract 25 and then 24 from 625 giving 576. The reason that works is easy: when you subtract 25 you end up with 24 x 25, subtracting 24 then leaves you with 24 x 24. One of my examples was 50 squared at 2500, meaning the squares on each side are 2401 and 2601.
The next day in math class my teacher was pissed at something I did so he decided to humiliate me in front of class. He looked at me in front of everybody and said "if you're so smart tell me what 49 squared is." Yes, this happened. I didn't miss a beat and said "two thousand four hundred and one". He actually didn't know the answer so he looked at a kid in the front row with a calculator and said "check it". The kid said "he's right". My teacher would have crawled into a hole had one been handy. He never pulled that stunt again.
I could go on and on, but, yes, at an early age I was advanced in *knowledge* beyond many of my teachers. I did spend hours reading mundane crap - I think I had read through all science books in the school libraries and city library by 9th grade or so. I also had a teacher with a masters level education who was just brilliant and taught physics and science and such.
Do you have ESP?
In the area I live, we have something referred to as "tenure" for unionized public elementary and high school teachers.
What this roughly means is that once a teacher is past their probationary period (something around two years I think), they can only be let go for gross misconduct (like showing up drunk too often and swearing at their students in a drunken slur) and only after a lengthy and costly hearing process (during which they collect their pay but are assigned duties that don't put them in contact with students or simply do not come to work).
During probation, they can be fired for incompetence, but once they make tenure that's extremely difficult.
Teachers can still be laid off if staffing needs decline - but then seniority rules. The most recently hired is the first laid off. I think this is within classification - if a decline in students results in the need for one less Science teacher, I think the least senior Science teacher goes even though there is a less senior Art teacher at the same school/district.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
You make money based on how much money you make for someone else, or how hard your position is to fill. But we won't spend money just because something is important; like teachers or quality infrastructure or mitigating climate change or whatever.
- if it's "important", then you'll be able to make money by doing it. If it's not important, you won't. AFAIC if something is actually important there is money to be made in it because there is a voluntary transaction somewhere there.
If something is not important to me I don't want to have my money stolen from me so your idea of 'important' can be realised while I have a barrel of a gun pointed at my head by the government. So no, if your country priorities are out of whack that is not the reason for it.
You can't handle the truth.
Historically, "he" is the gender-neutral pronoun. Gender itself comes from Latin, and in all romance languages, the masculine is used for gender-neutral or gender-ambigious contexts. It was a hard and fast rule in English until some idiots decided it wasn't PC enough and started railing on people who follow it, but at the same time provide no suitable alternative.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."