[quote=captcha][quote=eavesdropper]
Given your interest in the situation, and your high level of mathematics literacy, perhaps you can volunteer your time to your local public school system, either providing support to overworked teachers there, or tutoring struggling students. [/quote]
Here is an idea – take some of the money spent on TSA and pay skilled and educated people to teach. If you depend on volunteers you’ll get people like Ms. DeRegnaucourt. It is not her fault, it is the system.[/quote]
Captcha, what, precisely, do you mean by “you’ll get people like Ms. DeRegnaucourt”? What leads you to believe that she is unqualified for her position? This isn’t a rhetorical question. I’m genuinely curious.
BTW, I agree with you that some reorganization of our societal priorities is in order. But chronic underfunding of education has always been a problem, and in the current political atmosphere – one in which the trashing of educated people and academic pursuits has become a popular way for many of our political office holders and citizens to feel better about themselves – I don’t anticipate that this will change.
Upping salaries and benefits will certainly attract more people to teaching, and some will have flawless academic credentials. But, in teaching elementary and secondary school students, that is only half (and not the most important) of the battle. In these grades, you have students of widely varying socioeconomic/cultural backgrounds and academic capabilities. What’s more is that these students did not choose to attend school, and don’t understand why they need to be there. For the most part, they are not, in any way, receptive to learning. Truly skilled teachers (grades 1-12) are able to find ways to reverse that. Learning CANNOT occur in the absence of curiosity. Good teachers find a way to reach their students, and expose them to the rewards of learning. They know that once a student’s curiosity is piqued, they will actively SEEK knowledge. They will want to know more, and will go after it — on their own, if they have to.
This is why early childhood education is so important: children are at their most imaginative and curious at that age, and if they do not acquire the basic building blocks of academics in the beginning, they will be totally incapable of learning anything that comes after that. Yet, there is no area of education that is more underfunded than that of early childhood.
For whatever reason, Ms. DeRegnaucourt was one of these: the kids that fall through the cracks and are permitted to graduate, despite being functionally illiterate. Fortunately, when exposed to an instructor who took a genuine interest in the students she was teaching, Ms. DeRegnaucourt was able to see that this could represent the difference between a student leading a life of accomplishment and self-confidence, as opposed to setting off on a path of frustration and failure. This inspired her to try to make a difference in the lives of other young students.
As for “topology, predicate calculus or at least Euclidean geometry”, I saw nothing in the article that enabled me to determine that these were not included in the curriculum, or were not areas of interest or skill for Ms. DeRegnaucourt (I have my own opinions on that topic, but they are just that). Likewise, I have no evidence that she is incapable of enthusiastic discussion of the Newton vs. Leibniz controversy or Fermat’s last theorem.
What I DID get from the article is that she uses her education, experience, and her love of mathematics to excite curiosity in her young, at-risk students. And, in my book, that is what constitutes “skill” in teaching. It doesn’t matter in the least if a teacher is excited by the subject matter he/she is charged with teaching. It only matters if he/she can get their students excited about it.
