How should I know? When reporting, shouldn’t you answer the question instead of ask it?

Preparing to be a teacher should be through on-the-job training with a competent teacher supervising the work of the trainee.

chemman on November 23, 2009 at 3:18 PM

This is a fantasy. Wish it really happened that way.
But you are assuming there are enough competent teachers out there to do this.
Teachy school prepares you for-JACK.
Most of it’s crap-but there is some value in a few of them.
It also depends upon the college you go to-I think Dickinson State at Dickinson ND has a really good teacher’s program. It didn’t seem liberally bent when I went through it.
Thank God I had a REAL scientific education before I got my teaching certification.
I can’t imagine trying to teach science by getting just ‘education’-type oriented science classes.

Keep up the fight.

chemman on November 23, 2009 at 3:15 PM

I’m trying, but after only 8 yrs, I’m getting pretty sick of the whining.

Then there were the parents who were CONVINCED that their little precious was brilliant and should have been making A’s in their class and it was all my fault that their darlings were failing. :PPPP

Kirin on November 23, 2009 at 6:28 PM

A good reason to make parents take the tests along with their little darlings!

You evil man woman!

LincolntheHun on November 23, 2009 at 2:46 PM

FIFY
I have been called worse!

Higher education is a joke and is worth only the extra money it can bring you but hardly worth the hoops you have to jump through to attain a sheepskin.

Holger on November 24, 2009 at 10:03 AM

Afraid you’ve only got the first part right.

Yes, it has pretty much become a joke. But without it, your chances of landing any job really worth having are almost zip.

A college degree has become the new HS diploma – the bare minimum to be considered for a position that isn’t minimum wage-slavery. That, and a new resurgence of spouting the right buzzwords, answering canned questions the ‘right’ way, oh and let’s not forget plenty of shoe-licking.

To top it all off the crumbling economy is making even all of the above pay off less and less. Young people are giving up on work and on their nation.

Looks like Minnesota has set itself up for some lawsuits. There is something like 1 lawyer to every 200 people in this country some kind of ratio like that anyway. Imagine a Lawyer going after any deep pockets they sniff out. And making a reputation for themselves. How stupid are the people to set themselves up for lawsuits?

Dr Evil on November 24, 2009 at 10:46 AM

I’m sure the ACLU will be all over it. *snort*

I worked in schools for a while, and they are almost like prisons in being training complexes for bad behavior and bad attitudes, and are so regulated that actual teaching time is continually reduced.

It’s not really the teachers’ fault, lots of teachers love kids and would like to really teach.

Education of your kid is too important to trust to ideologues.

The initiative is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers’ lack of “cultural competence” contributes to the poor academic performance of the state’s minority students.

All minorities? Or just **certain** minorities?

In fact – the Vietnamese population that came to the Gulf States after the Vietnam war have now become some of the most successful people on the Gulf Coast. In Louisiana, scholastic scores for Vietnamese students are far above averages for even whites.

Sooo … I ask again …

Is it ALL minorities? Or just **certain** ones – you know, the ones that are always blaming their issues on “the system” – are we really talking about THOSE minorities???

Hmmmm?

By a pretty good margin, those with the lowest SAT scores, go into education.

And it shows.

MarkTheGreat on November 24, 2009 at 9:46 AM

Art History and Phys Ed majors laugh at these clowns.

True story: A friend of mine once subbed at a local high-school. When he got to class, he found a note from the regular teacher asking him to “phinish” chapter 7.