I agree that how to teach is probably more important that what you teach. Seriously any college kid should be able to know the material that is learned in K-12 education. Can they effectively teach it is a different question?
The problem in my eyes is the public school district does a really bad job at utilizing resources. For example let’s talk about the all-star mensa teacher that does it for the love of the job. At a high school level maybe 150 kids can be exposed to that teacher per semester under the current system. Thousands of other kids are not exposed to that star performer and a couple thousand more are exposed to the bottom 10% performers.
So now we have this star teacher that is likely teaching kids that could learn the material from any average teacher getting the advantage of learning it from one of the best. How do you get that star teacher into more classrooms. Why aren’t school district adopting and using technology to make that happen. If you could accomplish that successfully, you could give the star teacher a big raise and replace a bunch of the ineffectively classroom teachers. If I could prove massive increases in student performance by going down this path it would be rejected unfortunately.
That’s the fundamental issue. Public education and especially the representing unions isn’t about how to do public education better it’s about how to protect teachers and administrator jobs.
Fortunately we are finally seeing some investment in a better way of teaching content, i.e. the Khan Adamedy’s of the world. It’s likely inevitable that eventually better teaching technologies will make it into the classroom and replace the average classroom teacher but it’s not going to happen peacefully. You’ll have lower costs aides managing the classroom, with content coming from star content providers. Those aides might get paid petty well and they’ll have to do less work (grading and lesson planing will be centralized). There will be challenges and obstacles to overcome. Some kids might do worse in a system like this but I think it’s eventually coming.[/quote]
The reason most good teachers are good is not because they have a better lecture. It’s because they know how to engage the students in the lessons and how to pique the students’ natural curiosity when it comes to learning. IMHO, this cannot be done through a screen (and my kids follow an online curriculum for much of their work…but I can acknowledge the faults, too).
There is nothing like an engaging debate or discussion in person. Nothing like a hands-on project. Electronic learning is good for certain things, but I highly doubt it will ever be able to replace a live teacher in a classroom.
Also, you’re underestimating how important classroom management is, especially if students are going to be working on their own. An aide will not be able to deal with all of the questions and situations that will arise in the classroom, especially if students are left to their own devices.
