Posted on 09/16/2013 2:31:16 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
I changed careers in 2003.
Did a graduate certificate granting program in secondary education. (I already have a Master degree and 2 Bachelors)
The state certification exams were a joke.
My lowest score was a 91 (70 is passing) in social studies. They won’t give me the certification since I’ve never taken the classes... studied for 5 minutes.
Typical teaching year is 190 working days here in Michigan. In 2004 the AVERAGE teacher salary here was $52k with benefits packages of around $17k. Starting was $32k and after 10 years was mid-50’s. Rural area, 3.5k students.
You have to have to take 6 credits in continuing ed classes every 5 years. The ed classes were, in general, a joke.
This is more of general post to the thread and not to you Tainan
I also need to apologize for the length of this post in advance
This issue is a little more complex than either side realizes. It is also an issue that has been radicalized by both sides being less than honest at times though most of the time it is because both sides are ignorant of the problem. I have a PhD in Educational Philosophy and so this is sort of my special dead horse to flog.
Many of the problems non-educators have with teachers are in actuality with the pedagogical methods and curriculum as well as the rules and regulations that surround those two thing. There are also problems that come from parental pressure groups, for example much of the “Inclusive Education” movement which is many times highly detrimental to students is driven by parental pressure groups.
All of the curricular and pedagogical issues are, or should be of secondary importance however, because they can be fixed fairly easily if the real problem is dealt with and believe me there is enough blame to go around.
I don’t think people would mind the tax money spent on education if they saw children being educated but that will not happen until they see what the actual problem is.
The Problem with education in US public schools is an inability to separate philosophy from religion. What do I mean by this?
There are only three philosophical ways to approach any problem. You can be as were Plato, Lao Tzu and many others be a philosophical idealist who believes that truth is revealed from the top down as in Plato’s Theory of Forms.
You can be a Philosophical Realist like Aristotle, Confucius and many others who believe that truth is developed from the ground up.
Lastly you can be a Sophist who believes that the only thing that matters is words.
Before he became a Christian St. Augustine was a neo-Platonist and his theology is colored by that. Martin Luther started out as an Augustinian monk and carried a lot of Augustine’s theology into Protestantism and most protestants think in philosophically idealistic terms to this day as does the Eastern Orthodox church.
Thanks to Aquinas who integrated Aristotle into Catholic theology Roman Catholics think more like Philosophic Realist.
Notice Idealism and Realism are both arrayed against the Sophist who believe that truth is simply what you say it is. While the will snipe at each other both the idealist and the realist are united in the belief that there is real truth and that it can be known.
Whenever someone makes an argument from a philosophic idealistic perspective in a public school they are denounced as a Baptist. If the argument is made from a realist perspective in anything but hard science then the secularist are up in arms about those Damned Catholics. So there can be no useful discussion of truth in a public school classroom because truth is considered to be an inherently religious idea.
Educators, like the secularist are not able to divide the philosophy from the religions that use those ways of thinking agree and discard the idea. That means that education is left with Sophistry as the only philosophical position.
This is the real reason teachers cannot teach. It is the real reason that it is so hard to set standards. Educators are trained to believe there is no truth or that all truth claims are equal (same thing as no truth) The term for this school of thought Post Modernism or Multiculturalism and they are both synonyms for Sophistry.
Until public schools quit basing their curriculum on Sophistry no educational reform, amount of money, dedication of the teachers or motivation by students will make much difference.
Schools need to be able to have a curriculum that is not based in Sophistry to succeed.
You can disagree with this but you would be wrong.
I litigated employment and antitrust class action cases for 21 years before teaching 5th grade at a local charter school. Never have I worked so hard for so little money and appreciation. Never have I been as fulfilled or happy.
A pension in this day and time is like striking GOLD.
It is my surname. Feel free to look me up on amazon.com. I have done a number of book reviews. It was my fathers surname and his before him. I am very proud of both of these men and wear it with pride. I am also a shirt tail relative of Giovanni Verga the Sicilian author.
It would be better named as “pittance.” It’s barely enough for them. And remember ... teachers aren’t offered 401k plans.
In which state? They are all different.
Italian. I grew up around Mexicans.
As I said in my post - “here in Michigan”
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