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?

actually I might have that wonrg but he left school and didn't take any exams so he has done everything afterwards and everything will be equivelant to.

When he started to do some things at college to start him on the road, he chose Russian and won an award for the best Russian speaking student!

He is extremey clever, he can struggle with his spellings sometimes though - but never stupid enough be incorrectend anything home that might possibly be incorrect and certainly not to teach his studenty incorrectly. He is a History teacher by the way. His older brother also didn't bother withschool and now lives in France as a translator - if you heard him talk you would not know he is not French, and fully accpeted by the French community.

My DH had a report home when was about 8 saying he couldn't read, was very behind etc etc - at home he was reading The Hobbit by himself - he just couldn't be bothered with school and suspect neither could his parents

He is now a very very popular History teacher and also a very intelligent one - he can speak Russian and Welsh thrown in for good measure (he is English btw)

I would hope that some of the people that became teachers from my secondary school's year group improved with age as I wouldn't be happy if they were teaching our two. Bottom academic sets in Maths and English and GCSE grades at Ds and Es? Not quite the standard I would like to see teaching.

boggler, you are coming across as extremely ignorant and disablist.

'I was very worried to hear that a newly qualified teacher (offspring of another teacher) is dyslexic! How n earth is she supposed to help children with spelling and grammar?'

Um ... d'you know, maybe she will have learned some coping strategies and will be well-placed to pass them on to the children? I'm dyslexic and I am perfectly capable of marking essays and correcting other people's spelling and grammar- dyslexia does not necessarily mean you cannot learn this. What is much more common is for a dyslexic person to struggle in their early years, to need to check dictionaries as they work, and to proof read their own work with great care because they will make slips more easily than others when writing in a hurry.

It does not mean this teacher will be ignorant of SPAG - she is likely to be more aware than many of the difficulties her children face and how best to help them.

sorry my stupid stupid laptop re copies words and puts them where it feels like it - thought I'd checked sorry

It totally depends on the workbook - I wouldn't necessarily expect grammar and spelling to be corrected in all work as sometimes it is better to allow some errors and praise the content. For example if a child struggles with written work but is really interested in history and gets pleasure from writing about it they shouldn't be criticised for errors as it may put them off. If it's an English book / science book where key words are wrong and uncorrected then yanbu.

I once spent ages writing a journal in the style of a WW1 soldier and was very proud of it (ages 10 and I still have it). Handed it and was desperate for positive feedback. The teacher scrawled in bright red pen 'your handwriting needs to be smaller' - no praise at all, I was gutted and still remember it clearly.

though actually, his head of subject often gets things wrong - DH is often correcting him

Well, don't worry. With tuition fees as they are, only the very elite will be able to make their way to train as teachers.
Plus all teachers need at least one degree to teach,you really don't get there with crappy school exam results.
Can you give some examples of the spelling and grammer errors? I ask because I was pulled up once by some parents because I referred to 'new entrants', and was told I meant 'entrance' because they were not clear about context.

I do think there are some poor teachers out there. I'm sure that's true of any job.

The woman who taught me maths has just retired - she used to mark my sums wrong because I'd written the numbers the wrong way around, but she didn't think to tell me that it was not the adding up but the writing down that was the problem! It really stuck in my mind because she would watch me sitting counting on my fingers and not understanding why 2+2 wasn't 4 ... that sort of thing sticks in your mind. I think it was really cruel, in retrospect, because she must have known and seen what was happening.

IMO that is why you need a degree of emotional intelligence to be a good teacher.

COCKadoodledooo Fri 29-Jun-12 11:04:10
"What if the teacher's comments are badly spelled because they are dyslexic? Should people with dyslexia be banned from becoming teachers? Is that not more than a little disablist?"

If this teacher is the person in charge of teaching children to spell, then they need to do something to compensate for their disability- not just expect the children to accept having to learn wrong spellings. There are many ways of compensating for dyslexia- but they are the responsibility of the adult who takes the job.

Ds is dyspraxic and has very poor fine motor skills: is it disablist to suggest he had better not be a brain surgeon?

My father is tone deaf: would it be disablist to suggest he had better not be a musician?

I have a joint condition. I did take work as an archaeologist, but only after I had convinced myself that I would be able to compensate for my weak joints and still be able to perform the tasks expected. It would have been totally wrong of me to take the job and then say "sorry I can't actually do the work, but it would be disablist of you to expect me to".

I don't think it's about general qualifications: it is about looking at any job and say to yourself: can I actually do that? will I be letting people down? what do I need to do to make sure I am not letting people down?

And for a teacher with poor spelling, that would include always using spell-checks, dictionaries etc.

Don't all teachers have a degree though? And a teaching qualification post grad? So who cares about their GCSE's?

I failed GCSE maths. Twice. However I have 2 postgraduate degrees, teach adults and am very clever. The first has fuck all to do with the last.

I expect spelling and punctuation to be corrected in all work. When choosing a secondary school, I picked up the exercise books on display in different schools to see if it was being done or not.

I don't expect teachers to be clever, although some clearly are. I don't expect secondary school teachers to have good grades at GCSE in subjects that are totally unrelated to what they are teaching. But I do think that primary school teachers need to have a very good grasp of Maths, English and Science. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case. I know people who have been admitted on to teacher training courses recently who lack basic skills and knowledge, so they'll be in the system teaching another two generations of children. There isn't a shortage of primary school teachers; many qualified teachers are unemployed. I think we need to look at the level of qualifications required to become a primary school teacher, or we just perpetuate the cycle of people who lack basic skills passing on that lack of skills to future generations.

passmethecrisps excellent post

Can I also point out that, with the best will in the world, we all make mistakes. Look at the posts on here. Intelligent, articulate, well educated women make shocking spelling and grammatical errors every day. No one is perfect.

Teachers are over worked and could very easily, at the end of an evening spent marking jotters, make some shocking spelling errors in their comments. They are quite possibly completely exhausted.

It is also relevant that highly intelligent people rarely make good teachers as things are too easy and obvious to them. Clearly a teacher needs to have achieved a certain level but if they have struggled with an aspect it is often the case that that is the aspect that they are best at teaching. They have had to work through the "babysteps" to understanding or decoding it and can teach struggling children those steps too.

I agree that basic literacy and numeracy should be required but teachers are also not robots and make mistakes just like everyone else.

cory, I think the school ought to make reasonable adjustments too, no? I think that's the law, IIRC.

I take your basic point though, that some jobs just won't work with some disabilities. But teaching and dyslexia? Really?

Loads of teachers are dyslexic - it's a pretty common motivation IME.

I do think primary maths is often badly taught and I do think it matters a lot, btw.

To those saying 'teachers must have a degree' well yes, but a degree in what? Does the degree actually mean anything?

I suspect it would depend on the exact nature and degree of dyslexia that somebody had.

But certainly for primary school teachers, I would consider being able to spell was a genuine occupational requirement. I don't think reasonable adjustments could be made in a primary classroom by the school for a teacher who could not spell.

Yes, of course a degree actually means something. It means 3/4 years hard work. And to teach, it needs to be a teaching degree, or a postgraduate degree. Not nothing.

A degree means a whole lot more than GCSE's, obviously.

i didn't do that well at school, it was a school with a lot of children with barriers to learning, an utter misery and i was the only one in my year to progress to HE.

I am a teacher

i've regularly sent children off to russell group universities in the sciences. I assume they've learned something from me, not despite me.

YANBU to assume a teacher should know the subject s/he is teaching or that teachers comments should be well written and accurate.

YABU to assume somebody's GCSE grades indicates their capability more than a degree/post graduate qualification would.

What kmdwestyorks said.
.

caramel - could he or she not just use a dictionary? I suppose - as you say - it'd depend how much they couldn't spell. But lots of people have maybe 10-20 words they know are blind spots, and I'd imagine it would not be very hard to keep a post-it note in the dictionary for those. It'd be good for the children too, to see someone routinely checking their work.

I suspect grammar is harder than spelling.

What I find scarier is people who don't have any understanding of maths and simply teach it by rote, or by mnemonics. That makes me really angry because whereas spelling really largely is something you need to rote-learn, if a child never really understands what maths is for, they've got no basis to build on.

cory I take your point, but should a history teacher for example be picking up spelling/grammar errors over and above errors in factual information for example? I agree with the sentiment that primary teachers should be good all-rounders, because that is what they do. Secondary not so much.

Too many 'for examples'. Am tired, sorry.

I agree that teachers should be intelligent. I have a degree and a post-graduate teaching qualification. I've always read widely, believe that it's important to be well informed and I think that it's unacceptable to teachers to be regularly making basic spelling mistakes.

However, I also only got a grade C in Maths at GCSE. I made the calculated decision to take the lower papers and get the highest possible grade (C) rather than take the harder papers and risk falling flat on my face. A 1980s education had not provided me with the skills I needed.

Fast forward 20 years and I have made sure that I have upgraded my maths qualifications. I've also found that I am especially good at teaching Maths. Why? Because I know what it feels like to be utterly at sea in a world of numbers when everyone else seems to understand.

Qualifications are only part of the story . Strangely, I also have number form synaesthesia, which you'd think would help .

Maxybrown I'm a history teacher too and I have VERY poor GCSEs AND A Levels < gasp >

Actually, in today's world I would have been on the at risk register in school, and attending school and getting qualifcations were the last thing on my mind.

I have a first class degree, a post grad dip and an MA now, along with my PGCE, but atrocious GCSEs and A levels (think, lowest grades you can get) does that make me a bad teacher?