Three articles on broken edreform in the USA

Below are three articles summarizing many viewpoints I believe about education in the USA.

Each is very well written and together they share the central themes that teaching is a profession and a fundamental sea change is needed in policy and in public perception for anything to get better in the USA.  Business models of "carrot and stick" dangerously oversimplify a very complex and human problem by pretending human beings are simply commodities produced by factories (schools).  These oversimplifications have no backing when experience and "data" is analysed and they come with disastrous results for our students and ultimately our nation.


http://smokingtowardnewjersey.blogspot.com/2013/05/education-is-none-of-our-business.html
"
The fundamental problem is the business paradigm itself.  It is a model that will not do for education, because it assumes a whole range of things about education that are simply untrue or unacceptable: that kids’ circumstances outside of school do not influence them in school; that test scores are accurate reflections of achievement; that competition always produces the desired outcome; that opening and closing schools is as easy or advisable as opening and closing stores; that uniformity is not only possible, but good; that money is the best motivation for workers; and on and on.

[...]

The plain fact is, no business model, no matter how distorted, works for education because education is a complex human system involving a web of interrelationships, not a thing that’s created and traded on a supply chain. Some aspects of education may indeed be measurable in limited ways, but to assume that you have a clear picture of the whole endeavor based on those measures is foolhardy in the extreme. Beyond that, education is something we as a society have deemed a right, not a commodity. Rights are non-negotiable, never to be bought and sold on the open market.
"
and

http://goodmenproject.com/education-2/hesaid-i-have-only-one-thing-to-say-to-jeff-bliss-the-kids-who-criticized-his-teacher-on-youtube/

"
I have recently been criticized for my blogs and people have argued that I am not a social worker, but a history teacher, and that, by being a nurturer first, I am doing my students a disservice in school and life. I, and my former students and my colleagues throughout the world, would overwhelmingly disagree with their argument. All teachers are social workers first because we are dealing with social beings. In a perfect world, where every student comes from a loving and supportive home and feels confident and secure, teachers wouldn’t have to be as concerned with focusing on a student’s social needs, but that’s not realistic. Even I, who had a very loving and supportive family, still needed the love and support of my kindergarten teacher to help build my confidence and security when I was at a very insecure and awkward age.

[...]

If anything, this incredible speech by this amazing young man is exactly why, as a nation, we have to allow teachers to focus more on developing and nurturing young minds instead of taking the human relationship out of the equation by forcing teachers to not care about a child as a person, but solely as a test score. In my eight years as a teacher, I have had dozens of former students contact me after graduation and not a single one of them contacted me to thank me for helping them prepare for standardized tests, but to thank me for preparing them for life and for caring about them when they were at their weakest and most insecure.
"

and

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/
"
Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.

[...]

 All teachers [in Finland] must earn a master’s degree at one of the country’s research universities. Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough; only “the best and the brightest” are accepted. As a consequence, teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering. There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals necessary to be a successful teacher.
But education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working  individually.

Lessons from high-performing school systems, including Finland, suggest that we must reconsider how we think about teaching as a profession and what is the role of the school in our society.
First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools.
Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned.
Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools.
"

Is teaching math monotonous?

There was a thread on reddit.com/r/learnmath from a math undergrad who considering becoming a teacher but is worried about 'being bored with the content'. Here it is in full: "Is Teaching Math Monotonous?"

Below is my reply.

I've been tutoring my friends in math and science since I was in elementary school. I majored in math (B.S.) in 05, got my masters in teaching math (US Grades 7-12) in 06. The year of my masters, I did a full time internship teaching at a public school, then I worked as a public school teacher until spring 08. In fall 08 I started working at JHU CTY Online as an instructor, supervisor and course developer for AP Calc & College math.

I love my content and I know my content, but teaching and tutoring is not about content alone.  In my (short, limited, singular) lifetime of experience, I've found that a significant portion of the personal & professional satisfaction associated with the career of teaching & tutoring is being a facilitator of learning.  Figuring out ways to engage your students with the content, technology, and each other is key.  Knowing that the aforementioned engagement results in some struggle, eventual realizations, a sharpening of skills, and "the lightbulb going off" is a huge reason why I'm still in my field (instead of some other field making three times as much money, say).

> I'm currently an undergrad math major planning on being a teacher. I wanted to know if you math teachers out there ever find teaching math to be a monotonous task. Doesn't it get boring to teach the same material every year? 

No.  Because teaching is not all about the content.  (see comments above).

I taught algebra and geometry as a high school teacher in public schools in the USA.  I had no time to be bored because of all the other things going on in the classroom (largely discipline issues springing from the individual family circumstances of my students as well as ambient local culture). The classroom management aspect of the job was one of the main reasons I left public education.  (Awful education policy robbing the curriculum of meaning and teaching of professionalism was the other.)

I now instruct, develop and supervise online courses in AP Calc & College level math.  The content is broader and deeper than high school algebra and geometry, but it's still "just" the first one or two years of advanced undergraduate math.  The thrill of my work is working directly with my students and finding new ways to use technology to communicate mathematics.

> After a while, you must know the answer to every question before it's even asked. How does it feel to have taught the same class (say Algebra 2) for 20 years?? I'm worried that as a teacher I would feel stagnant after a few years.

I've been teaching professionally since 06, so it's hardly been 20 years, but at this stage in my career I've already reached the point where I know the kinds of topics which will be asked about over and over again.  I am still enjoying finding new ways to visualize and articulate those concepts and seeing my students go from being unfamiliar or confused to being able to understand and solve problems about those concepts.

Teaching is not all about the content.

I care about my students and wish them all the best in their endeavors.  I take great professional satisfaction in knowing that I am helping push them to their intellectual limits and get a little farther toward their ultimate goals. Reading vector calc texts for four years might get a bit dull.  Helping my students go from not knowing the subject and writing HW sets by hand to using LaTeX and advanced graphing software to create a variety of professional PDF documents full of beautiful illustrations...  That has not yet gotten dull, for me anyway.