How can we Keep Our Teachers Updated?

Keefesis asks: "Many high school level teachers, especially in the Science fields, seem to have a hard time keeping up with new information in their fields. Even after the advances have been made, they continue to teach out-of-date or simply incorrect information." It all boils down to how much money our schools are budgeted. It seems that education is always short shifted in our governmental budgets, but we continue to expect them to function with continuallty diminishing resources. Why does this happen? Is this something we can fix in a resonable amount of time? (More) (Updated)

Keefesis continues: "The information is out there, readily available, yet it seems that teachers are rarely notified of new information. Case in point: My high school chemistry teacher still teaches us that there are only 109 elements; while element 118 was discovered almost 6 months ago. Even the planners that the school gave us list up to element 114 (every teacher uses the professor version of the same planner as a gradebook.) What does it take for our high school teachers to stay up-to-date?"

Update: 11/25 02:24 by C :After perusing some of the discussion, a lot of you feel that the system itself, not the funding, is at fault. How can we fix the system? Do we need better teachers? Better administrators? Or is this something that we just can't do without tearing the whole thing down and starting over?

Comments

remember Feynman?

[rde]

In one of his excellent books (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, I think), Richard Feynman railed against the selection processes for schoolbooks; on the selection panel he was on (can't remember where), he was the only one to actually read the books that were submitted for approval.
First and foremost, what's needed is to ensure that the teachers are using the right books. Volunteers would seem to be the ideal way of doing this, but there's the significant danger that this would result in -- amongst others -- the creationists filling as many selection panels as possible.

Okay, I don't have a solution. But I do know that the percentage of teachers that goes outside the designated books is very low. So the books have to be the best.

Re:remember Feynman?

[MikeBabcock]

I enjoyed your hidden agenda slam against creationists. They of course would say that you have to be careful of the textbooks that claim that any theory is proven unless it actually is. Just because the average humanist scientist believes in evolution doesn't mean it should be taught as fact, but rather as a plausible theory.

Part of the problem with education these days is the filling of any agenda, rather than focussing on good education; teaching kids to think. We have focussed for years on making people learn well, rather than making them think well. The average person in college can do research if they have to, but they can't process it into new and useful information.

Thinking is valuable ... but its a danger to the establishment.

....
Oh no, a creationist who is anti-establishment?

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

The problem is bigger than just IT

[RNG]

Hmm, this seems to be a problem in more areas than just IT. For example, when I was in college (admittedly more than 10 years ago), I was memorizing my way though advanced Calculus and Statistics, both of which were pretty much meaningless to me.

However, there were other areas of (applied) Math that would have been of great interest to me but weren't tought at the time: I'm thinking of stuff like cellular automata which back then were brand new and very exciting. As a software guy, this stuff was real and mad sense right away, but it was too new to have real classes on it.

I guess as our body of knowledge expands ever faster, we'll all have difficulties keeping up. I should also note that we seem to live in a complex age that defies simple solutions. It seems that this leads us into a life which is rich in knowledge and poor in wisdom ... I'm not sure if the past was better, but I think it was simpler ...

Maybe they should...

[Malto]

...spend more money on actually doing the educational things instead of just going for the other things that are non academic. Here is an example; my school put in a new basket ball court last year and it costed something of 500k. Now couldn't they have spent that kind of money to update their sciences and math departments. Also to maybe get a nicer computer education system. That is one of the major things that I have against my school, they do not teach any courses about computers except on how to use M$ Excel and Word. The only thing close to programming is a web mastering class where they teach you how to use an M$ Frontpage to create web pages. Couldn't they just teach the html code itself? It is rediculously simple.

Well, back to the outdating of the sciences in schools. Even if they did have money they would probarbly spend more of it on things like sports equipment or for a really big grant add another building, but still teach the old and outdated material. Another example, my school is adding a 15 million (I think) dollar building right now. I see no problem with the old one, the roof used to leak but they fixed that before I got there.

It's not the money, its they way they spend it.

Malto

Maths and speed reading...

[Hobbex]

I remember hearing one of the most drastic proposals on this subject in a Usenet discussion a long while back, that schools ought to revert to teaching only maths, for analytical thinking, and speed reading, so people can teach themselves.

Most people just start screaming about elitism at the notion of this (certain people seem to believe that very concept of freedom is elitist because it hurts the stupid people), but I really think that it is fitting for the information age. School should no longer, in fact, it can no longer, teach students information. The information is readily available elsewhere, and more plentiful and dynamic than in any school to boot.

What students need to learn in school is no longer information: but how to gather, handle, and learn from the information they will be presented with continuely for the rest of their lifes.

Think about your own schooling: how much of what you learned has really been helpful to you later? I know that for me, it was extermely little. In my own subject I realized I could have learned everything I did from grade 1-12 by adding one more term at college rate study. And as for the other subjects, I have either forgot most of it, or realized from own my experience that what I thought I knew about them is probably as infinitesimal.

What I did bring with me from school, and that I am thankful for, is that it introduced me to the subject of my passion, that it taught me to think, and that I learned how to learn effiently. I think I would have been more happy weight had been devoted to these thing than trying to force me to read subjects like history and social studies which I never cared less about.

-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

Re:Maths and speed reading...

[Stonehand]

I'd have to argue that history is an important part of a curiculuum for teaching *thought*. Why?

Mathematics is fundamentally artificial. In addition, it's rule-based. Are you familiar with the Searle's "Chinese Box" argument? The logical conclusion of it is that rule-based symbol processing is perhaps not the best measurement of cognition...

On the other hand, history has one redeeming feature: in many aspects, there are few clear-cut answers. Asking for an essay on, say, the reasons behind the First Crusade should result in a detailed analysis of not just the superficial reasons, but also the socio-economic status of medieval Europe; the dangers of having idle troops on one's soil; and sporadic neighbor-neighbor conflicts that can be averted if they happen to work "together" against a common enemy -- not to mention the prospects for looting and pillaging on the way.

*THAT* requires analytical thought, not just rule application.

This is a biased view, but It's mine, anyway...

[trims]

OK, I get rather pissed off when people generally blame teachers for the sorry state of affairs in US Education. Both my parents are teachers, and a large number of their friends are, so, while I am considerably biased here, I also have a very big insight on what goes on in a teacher's life, and how this affects the schooling of the typical student.

1. While there are many exceptions, teachers in general are not the "I failed at everything else, why don't I become a teacher" type of person. The job simply gets rid of people who have that sort of attitude. Granted, most are not the "super-inspirational, my students mean absolutely everything to me" type, but, most are the "I'm doing an important job and take it seriously" type. Virtually every teacher I've met cares about what he/she is doing, though they can't always get really involved with every student they have. I mean, a typical HS teacher has maybe 150 students each year; you want them to adopt each one as a new family member?
2. Teachers do have "in-service" days throughout the year (I remember Mom & Dad had about 3-4), where they do get professional training. Alot of this (that is, most of it) centers around teaching - that is, learning about things in the teaching field, NOT specific in-subject knowledge.
3. Many, if not most, school districts require their teachers to take several credit-hours worth of in-subject coursework every 5 years or so. What that usually works out to be is 2 university-style classes every 5 years or so. This is a good thing, and probably would immensely help the problem of staying current. The biggest loophole here is what courses are allowed to satisfy the requirement - many places it's virtually any coursework. This needs to be better defined and promoted.
4. The pay sucks, even considering the raises made in the late 80s and early 90s. Teachers get even less than most other public servants, so expecting them to go out of their way to advance themselves altruistically is completel selfish on our (the public's) part.
5. As one poster suggested, they could keep themselves current by simply 'surfing the 'Net each night. OK, fine. My parents got up at 6am to get ready for work. They usually got home by about 4:30pm. And they usually did about 2 hours of homework (lesson planning/grading/project work) each night. I'm sorry, but expecting a person to do work OUTSIDE OF THEIR EMPLOYED HOURS simply to do their job is not only unfair, that's the definition of exploitation. In essence, you want them to work for free; everyone gets mad that the business owner who works his ex-cons for 10 hours, but only pays them for 8. How is this any different?
6. Textbooks and materials are a problem. It's quite expensive to replace them to keep up with the rate of knowledge expansion. And providing extra materials can be a royal pain. And, let's face it here, is the fact that your Chemistry book only lists 108 elements (instead of the now-118) really important? Schools are in place to teach fundamental knowledge. Yes, some of it changes, but the vast majority is very stable. I agree that it's important to update the History books that make no mention of anything later than Truman, or the Biology material that stops right after Watson & Crick discover DNA. But really, most of the material produced in the last 20 years is completely solid. It's not wrong, it's just not complete as it could be.
7. And finally, a word about those wonderful "summer vacations". People, the 3-month "I don't do anything" vacation of teachers is a complete myth. Firstly, most schools are now ending in mid-June, and starting again in late-August. So, your 12 weeks is really 10 (and more likely 8) weeks. Second, teachers have meetings and multi-day seminars in the summer. Not every week, but definately once every month. And, alot of teachers use the summer months to do their required "update" coursework (see above). After all, doing it during the school year is really tough. And, most teachers I know go in to school at least several times over vacation to do things that they simply didn't have time to while the kids were there (inventory, setup of new equipment, sorting, etc). So, that nice lazy 12 weeks (or, 60 business days) is really a much shorter, and frequently interrupted period of perhaps about 30 business days.

In the long term, if you want to keep teachers updated, you have to pay for it in increased school taxes. What a better teacher? How about this: Every 4 years, a teacher spends a semester where they teach a half-day, and spend the other half day taking unversity classwork AT THE PUBLIC EXPENSE. PAY for 2 or 3-day seminars where the teachers get TOP-NOTCH instructors from relevant fields to come lecture them on advances in their field of instruction. And, even better, have the School Boards LISTEN TO THE TEACHERS when they tell them what works, and what doesn't. Having school boards (and for that matter, state legislatures) dictate exactly what should/should not be taught in the classroom is STUPID. They don't deal with the kids. They don't have professional degrees in the subject. They don't really get it. What other profession has complete outsiders dictate how they work to them, and yet expects them to do a good job? "Oh, excuse me, Mr. Engineer, but we can't have you design/build that bridge without direction from our committee - oh, and did we tell you that our committe consists of a minister, a librarian, a policeman, two shopkeepers, and a streetsweeper? They're be alot of help, and they're really concerned..."

-Erik, who usualy doesn't get this pissed off...

Common misconception of what "theories" are.

[ToastyKen]

I enjoyed your hidden agenda slam against creationists. They of course would say that you have to be careful of the textbooks that claim that any theory is proven unless it actually is. Just because the average humanist scientist believes in evolution doesn't mean it should be taught as fact, but rather as a plausible theory.

I agree, sort of.. No good science textbook should be teaching evolution as fact any more than it teaches anything as fact. You have the common misconception that scientists believe evolution to be fact. They don't. Scientists do not believe ANYTHING to be fact.

In science, a "theory" is merely a hypothesis which has been backed up by a lot of evidence. In science, EVERYTHING is potentially wrong, since we know our observation techniques are imperfect. Newton's laws of motion (at low speeds), Maxwell's equations, evolution, these are all "theories" in science, yet we use apply them every day.

We could potentially find out that Newton's laws of motion are wrong (and we did.. though only at high speeds), or that our cherished laws of electromagnetism are wrong, and that the computer you're using now is really being run by something we don't understand at all.. It's JUST NOT DAMN LIKELY. Similarly, evolution is a "theory" because we must always be open to the possibility of our observations and logic being faulty, but it has been so well supported that it's just not damn likely that evolution is completely wrong.

In short, if you want science books to teach only "facts", then you'll start seeing some really empty science books with nothing but blank pages.
Science books must therefore teach scientific "theories", which are hypotheses which have been supported greatly by evidence. Among these theories is the theory of evolution.

And of course, I must plug The Talk.Origins Archive, which has lists of this and other common misconceptions about evolution.