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Well, slackers always convince themselves that hard work is a waste of time
You seem to think that I am advocating for dumb, hardworking teachers in lieu of smart slackers. I'm not. I am advocating for smart, hardworking teachers. Because that is what you would get if teachers were paid like lawyers.
This is a complete red herring. As I just said, I am not advocating for or against teaching degrees. I am arguing against encouraging slackers to become teachers.
Finally, I note that you did not answer my question.
Well I am mostly advocating against teaching degrees -- strike the 'slacker' comment from the preceeding conversation if you like; it was mostly playful rhetoric anyways. Maybe you will get hardworking history grads who's other option is baristadom.
I thought it was fairly clear that my answer was 'mu'?
Neither of those teaching methods are bad per se -- it mostly depends on the teacher's knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject.
My AP Western Civ teacher was no dummy, and not lazy -- I think he taught his other history classes in a Bob-ish way. (although I doubt he ever had 150 essays to grade, and I'm absolutely positive that he didn't spend 6*40 hour weeks per year on that.) But as AP History is (mostly? I forget) a scantron test, he taught us how to get fives on that first and foremost. He also had an amazing depth of knowledge on European history, and was happy to go down whatever rabbitholes in class time. The test/assignment balance was irrelevant to whether he was a good teacher or not -- as was his teaching degree.
I had no idea of the state of American education. I'm not intimately familiar with how Irish education in the classroom is today, but at least we have not yet moved to scantron tests. Not yet. Some of them are used for job assessments in some areas (I did one for a civil service application) but those are more "weeding out the vast pool of applicants to get a list to further trim down to call for interview".
Scantron test for the advanced subject where you don't learn the deeper level of the subject sounds a nightmare. At least when I did Honours subjects for our national exams, it really was 'learn at a deeper level'.
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I understood your answer to be re students en masse, as opposed to re your own child,
I didn't ask whether one was bad per se; I asked which is better. And, since we are only talking about the effect of slackerness, we can hold all other factors constant, including knowledge and enthusiasm.
Then we disagree -- the whole point of taking AP classes is getting the credit for your college application. If a teacher doesn't enable that, he is doing a bad job.
The point of that story is that the two are not mutually exclusive -- pretty much everything I know about non-Canadian history is because of that guy; he was an excellent teacher, and capable of teaching both ways. Neither way was 'better'.
And I don't know why you think that I think I'm talking about my own child exclusively -- AFAICT almost all of the kids are pretty bad at math (and writing essays) these days.
Holy Mother of God. I don't know what to say. Every time I think I'm sufficiently cynical about the world, I get reminded I am much too idealistic still.
This is not education, this is churning out extruded product. And the point of college application is not learning anything (after all, you can always look it up on Google when you're in the job), it's to get the piece of paper so you can apply for the job.
I'm an idiot, and I know I'm an idiot, and I never had a chance of going to college anyway. But I am so glad I never got sucked into this meat-grinder process where you don't do Honours classes for the sake of learning, you do them to grind out points for your application. We do have the points race over here, but there still remains the faint chance of actually learning something in school, not simply "bobble these sections to get all fives on the mechanised test".
AP is not honours -- it's explicitly 'advanced placement' for college credits. Lots of people (like me) will just take some tests with no instruction whatsoever to get the credits. If you are taking AP courses to learn stuff, you are wasting your time.
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I understand that that is what some people think, but they are wrong. The point of taking AP classes is to learn more, both more content and more skills. For example, when I taught AP World History, I could have spent the last month before the test doing test review. Instead, I required students to research and write a term paper. I am very, very, skeptical that my students would have been better served by doing the former. Similarly, I did not spend class time on "how to game a multiple choice test", despite the fact that doing so would enhance AP test scores. I also required students to do a lot of writing, especially document-based questions, which required students to use evidence to support an argument, and also to identify and suggest ways to address weaknesses, lacunae, and potential biases in their evidence. I did that even though it meant that topic coverage had to be reduced. Again, I am skeptical that my students interests were not best served thereby.
I don't. I mean the exact opposite: I asked which teacher you would chose for your own child, but your response was re which teacher might be best for the mass of students.
Not sure the state of things in the US of A, but at my high school there were advanced history classes that did not provide extra university entrance credit -- these were within the regular timetable, and if you were really interested in history that is what you would take. The AP classes were taken outside of school hours, and were for people who wanted more flexibility in their university timetable. Like I say, I learned a lot about history in mine -- but it was kind of a bonus. I wrote the English and Calc exams with no instruction whatsoever -- was I missing the point?
The answer is 'mu' either way - it depends on the teacher, not the assignment style.
In the USA, AP classes are normally offered as part of the regular curriculum. A class offered outside of school for the express purpose getting students college credit through passing AP courses is different; it is obviously going to emphasize getting college credit through passing AP courses.
I don't fucking care -- I would take the teacher with deep knowledge and passion for the subject (my AP Western Civ guy) 10 times out of ten even if he's giving scantrons. If he's masochistic and wants to spend six full working weeks of his year grading papers, that would also be fine.
But a B.Ed (or whatever they call it in the US these days) in no way selects for people with deep knowledge and passion for particular subjects -- those people exist, and some of them would be willing to teach as a fallback (like me!) -- putting barriers in front of that is an antipattern. (and fairly new I think? there have been a lot of teachers in my family over the years, and if I'm not wrong of the ones that started pre-1950 or so around 20% of them had any kind of education degree. My grandpa has been dead fifteen years and I still run into people at the store who want to gush about how he was the best teacher they ever had -- he was a working chemist during the war and more or less walked into 'high school science teacher' in his hometown in the early fifties)
Dude, again, I am asking about what you would prefer, ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL. Yes, I understand that you think a teacher with deep knowledge and passion would be more effective than one without. So do I. But that isn't the question; the question is about a lazy teacher with deep knowledge and passion, versus a non-lazy teacher with deep knowledge and passion.
Again, that is not what we are talking about. No one has argued in favor of requiring an education degree, or passing a credential program, or whatever. As a reminder, the OP said we need smarter teachers in order to improve education. I said, to attract smarter teachers, we need to pay more. You suggested that that would not be necessary, because smart slackers could be attracted to teaching by making it easy to become a teacher. I then responded that slackers would not make effective teachers, and that my strategy, which would attract smart non-slackers, is therefore superior. That is what we are talking about, and I still don't see anyplace where you explain why a smart slacker would be as good a teacher as a smart nonslacker.
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In the private sector lawyers are frequently paid on their performance / success.
In the public sector, the median doesn't look too different from public education.
https://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/median/1/desc/MSPrivate
No, the vast, vast, vast majority of lawyers are paid a salary. Some can earn bonuses, but that is not where the median salary number is coming from. Besides, why does that matter: A smart hardworking lawyer can make 250k, whether that be salary or bonuses. A smart, hardworking teacher can't.
What lawyers earn in the public sector is irrelevant. The point is that smart people can earn much more in jobs other than education. Also, as noted in my reply to your other comment, the upside of lawyer salaries in the public sector is much higher than for teachers. See the linked database.
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