To expect teachers to be clever?

[CJ2010]

I was visiting a friend, who has a 12 year old DC and she was telling me how unhappy she was about the school and her DC's education, or lack of. She showed me her child's workbook that contained comments from the teacher. My friend is getting really concerned because her DC's spelling and grammar mistakes are not being picked up by the teacher. She then told me to have a read through and to take a close look at the teachers comments, I did, and they were littered with spelling errors and poor grammar.

It got me thinking. I know a couple of teachers; we all went to school together and are still mates now. One is a primary school teacher, the other secondary. Both teachers only managed to get a Grade C for Maths at GCSE. One of them also got a few Grade D's in other subjects (not English or Science). IMO, GCSE's are a basic qualification and being taught up to GCSE level only really gives a broad, general knowledge of a subject. If they are only coming out as average / or below at this level, regardless of subject, are they really qualified to educate the next generation? They are not very clever are they?

I fear, that this this average educational ability amongst techers is quite common and wide spread. My DC's have yet to start school, but it is worrying for the future. AIBU?

I wonder if we'd all pass that literacy test, though. I think we forget how much we rely on spellcheckers and so on, maybe?

Click into it. I cannot imagine any NT adult failing it tbh.

"cleverness" and an ability to connect with children and understand how to teach a specific concept accuratley, avoiding any misconceptions does not automatically go hand in hand. Some of my Oxbridge graduate friends are the worst teachers I know as they can't break it down to the key concepts. They've never struggled so they can't see where errors could arise and think creatively to avoid it. I know I teach areas where I struggled as a child better.

hopefully - will do, but I'm not NT.

The level of SPAG on this thread is not good, was what I was getting at.

I agree wholeheartedly. I am a primary school teacher. I have all As at GCSE and A A B at A level with a 2.1 in English from a RG University. We are not all stupid, in fact many of us are quite clever.

However, I know a couple of school friends who ploughed their exams and got a place on a B Ed with two Es at A level. Until they set the bar higher, this will remain the case. I'm all for this but with the pay/pensions/status being as they are, it remains a job unlikely to attract the higher calibre of graduate! My sister is a GP and my brother is a dentist-I think they have me down as an underachiever even though we are all of a similar intelligence.

Yes, I take your point there LeQ.

I think just as older students obviously can't expect to get by off 1970s maths education when they need to be computer-literate, so too younger students need to have the basics.

I guess my worry is, you're talking about 'LalaLallyHipsyDipsy skills', which ... well, I get your point, but it's important to remember not everything new is necessarily new-fangled hippy shit. Some of it's necessary or really useful.

To me, it doesn't matter whether a person can spell 'incumbent' correctly, or not .

It doesn't matter if they want to look it up by using a spellcheck (properly, not in a hit-and-miss way), or by using a dictionary, or by googling. But they must know how to do one of those things, and they must know where the pitfalls are (spellcheck may not pick up everything, and google can be wrong, and dictionaries often need updating or are incomplete).

The problem is when someone confuses 'my teacher lets me use google instead of a dictionary' with 'it doesn't matter so I won't bother to try'.

I'm not sure that's always the teacher's fault though. If I believed everything I got told this last term alone, by students claiming they were 'never taught that' or 'didn't have to do that', I would be forced to believe A Levels don't actually exist.

lequeen well said. Agree with your diagnosis. What's the cure?

Oh, sure.

I do think the 'bite sized' approach is really odd - and not nice for people who just don't think like that. I was talking to a friend whose oldest has asperger's and she was saying how it is actually quite horrible for him being in a classroom set up in the 'ideal' way. He just doesn't like all the buzz and colour and wants to sit down quietly to work things out. But he's not the only one, and has NT friends who feel the same.

(Btw, I googled after posting, which I don't recommend, and it looks like 'encumbent' is fine ... so, I learn my lesson once again .)

Btw, I don't think all teachers want to be teaching the way the government sets out. Wasn't there a story doing the rounds about Gove asking several experienced teachers/education professionals to consult on something then deliberately ignoring what they said? Ie., asking them to 'consult' purely so he could claim he'd done in, rather than because he was prepared to use their expertise?

My Latin grammar is rubbish, but partly because these days I do mostly medieval Latin and it's different. DH is a proper ancient historian and winces as 'michi' for 'mihi', and so on.

I suppose the reason to grouch at mistakes is that I can understand a busy, tired teacher making errors. It is different from someone who genuinely doesn't care, or doesn't really think the children s/he is teaching matters - but I do think that's quite unusual now whereas it used to be much more acceptable to say 'this child is just stupid, there's no point wasting energy on him, send him off for an apprenticeship at 14'.

An increasing number of new entrants to teaching are coming through the GTP and Teach First programs- these routes require a BA or BSc rather than a BEd, the school takes responsibility for much of the training in the case of GTP students, they will only take those who have a degree in an area they need. People wishing to enter teaching through Teach Forst must have a degree - I think it must be at least 2:1, maybe higher- before they can train through this route

the government is increasingly favouring training routes like these for teachers in preference to BEd/PGCE

to read this thread you would think most teachers scraped a U in A level basket weaving and are almost confident to walk and chew gum simultaneously, but that is likely to change given the increasing proportion of teachers entering the profession through these training routes

• to grouch at mistakes on here, I mean, where we're all sitting in judgment over teachers (or it feels uncomfortably like that).

yikes, I meant competent, not confident

clearly i am one of the thicko teachers

LeQ - that would be annoying!

Something I've seen done is actually to teach concentration skills - tricks, I suppose - so you teach students things like, if you have an hour to plan this piece of work, do ten minutes talking to a friend about it, ten minutes writing things down, ten minutes pacing and reading your notes, etc. etc. It suits some people really well but others would rather just sit at the desk for an hour and write steadily. It's quite personal.

My lovely, fantastic English teacher (who's still getting brilliant results with her GCSE/AS/A Level classes) used to use all these tricks quite naturally, without thinking about it, and she came across as if she knew instinctively exactly what each of us needed. But in reality she was a very well-trained teacher and it was a real skill she'd learned, not instinct at all.

In fact I think this is maybe why it's easy to underestimate teachers - if someone is good, they make it look easy.

Someone told my mum (who's a tutor, not a teacher), 'oh, it's easy for you, you always get very motivated students ... I don't.' My mum was working with someone who had begun every single lesson in tears for the first two months and believed they were too stupid to learn anything. I am not sure 'motivated' is the first word that comes to mind!

A lot depends on the school, as well. In my department, we all teach our degree subjects at GCSE and A level- all of us have v. good first degree, some of us also have MAs, and 3 of us have PhDs.

as far as i know, this is pretty much standard for staff in other departments as well.