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?

Ah sorry, when I meant I only had 6 GCSEs, I meant I had no more than that at GCSE

(I also have A-levels, including maths now, but at school, the idea of me doing maths past 16 was more remote than me winning gold in the men's 100m)

But yeah, my GCSEs are pretty dire (3Bs 3Cs) by today's standards. In 1989 I thought they were quite alright.

However, you can do a degree without A-levels. The Open University has no entrance requirements at it's lowest levels. Which is how I may come to graduate with a degree in physics without an A-level in it.

I was horrified at the level of what i consider 'intelligence' when i started teaching. Not necessarily things like grammar, but the general ignorance of all other subjects than their own.

There was no sense of holistic knowledge. I studied Art and History, but can hold my own on Literature, Maths, Geography, Science, etc (not languages tho sadly). However, i found the other teachers to be totally clueless on any subject but their own (and even then they didn't seem that hot).

It reminded me of the episode of the Simpsons where Marge needs money and says she can teach piano - she just has to 'stay one lesson ahead of the kids'

They had no interest at all in current affairs, read the sun and often spouted such nonsense in the staff room i thought i'd stumbled into my local pub!

I was expecting a group of people who loved knowledge and had very broad interests, instead they were very insular and focused only on doing the bare minimum to teach their lessons - and don't get me started on the PE teachers! ;)

In defense of all other teachers tho - it was an appalling school in an horrendous area. They we may have just been the dregs!

Ecolady Unfortunately, I doubt many people will take you up on that. I think some people here are just enjoying a bit of a teacher-bash, and attempting (and failing!) the skills test themselves would have the potential to prove that they really don't what they're on about!

And it's not just applicable to the Sept 2012 intake. Skills test changes affect all teachers who are still completing their training in their 2nd, 3rd or even 4th years.
That includes me.

Maths homework.

Ok, MN-ers, get a pen for this and go along with me.

Draw a square.

Now I want you to draw lines across the square so it 'folds' in half. (bisect??)

(a) top left/bottom right
(b) top left bottom right
(c) straight across the horizontal middle
(d) straight across the vertical middle

yes? no?

WRONG!!!!! marked WRONG!!!!! because you can only fold a square two ways (the two ways were not specified)

This was HW on a drawn diagram - you'd think she could put her marksheet down and think 'ooh that's right and the mark sheet is incorrect'

Teachers can't be that stupid if they've worked out a way of earning well above the national average for only working 9 - 3 every day and having 13 weeks off each year...

I teach primary-teachers-to-be in a university - on both the undergraduate teaching degree route and the postgraduate route. They are almost all earnest, committed people with good interpersonal skills and a passion for what they consider teaching to be. However, three things concern me.

First, large numbers of students, particularly on the undergraduate route, lack any obvious sign of intellectual curiosity. Maybe it's only to be expected with undergraduate students, but it's very hard to persuade them to read anything and think about it, or to do any task that isn't formally assessed as they want to do the bare minimum. Students who will go the extra mile, follow up ideas because they are genuinely interested in them, or read the educational press to see what is happening in the profession they are on the way to joining are rare. I think this is shameful in people who want to inspire others to learn.

Second is their poor basic literacy and lack of knowledge of how language works. For instance, their work is typically full of run-on sentences, and very few can use apostrophes correctly. When asked to address these problems they lack any comprehension of what is wrong or how to put it right, which means that time has to be diverted into what really is remedial early secondary education - which universities really do not have the funding to undertake. I know, we are the university and we shouldn't be passing people whose capacity for producing decent written English is insufficient, but hardly anyone would graduate if we did that.

Third, a lot of students cannot cope with making mistakes or with being told they have made mistakes. They have only ever been praised in their educational lives and when I tell them they have got something wrong they crumble. The idea that learning involves making mistakes and learning from them seems entirely beyond their compass.

So in my view YANBU. We do of course have exceptions to all of the above - and in passing, some of these exceptions have diagnoses of dyslexia, and many are mature students who did poorly in school first time around. Maybe we don't need teachers to be fantastically clever (whatever that means) but I think we do need them to be intellectually curious and able to model an interest in learning, we need them to be highly literate, and we need them to be able to learn from their mistakes. The sting in the tail is that in the university where I work, entrance requirements for teaching degrees are significantly lower than for other subjects. We are simply not attracting the intellectually curious, literate and intellectually resilient students in large numbers, which as people have said on this thread, is unsurprising given the erosion of status and the continual use of teachers as whipping-boys.

What a frightening post clarinet.

I don't believe teachers have to be uber clever, but yes they do have to be fit for purpose.

I agree with the entirety of your post, clarinet.
But for years the successive governments haven't wanted teachers to be intellectually curious or even excessively literate and numerate.
Obedience and an ability to follow new scheme after new scheme without questioning or asking 'WTF?' is all that has been required. Going off piste is actively discouraged in most schools.

I am a primary school teacher. I am clever. Does that help the discussion at all?

I don't know that many teachers at the moment (the ones I've known in the past have been v bright, but left the profession) but I do know a number of highly intelligent support staff - TAs, school technicians etc.

But generally, yes teachers should have the basics of grammar, spelling, maths science etc.

Frightening indeed. I hope that's not what my tutors think of me!

Although I do take clarinet's point, there are a number of fellow students who drive me up the walls by expecting to be spoonfed information.
Go read something for yourself! Even Google it if you must, GoogleScholar is my latest friend

How is our childrens' education going to improve then, if the quality of the people teaching them is, if clarinet's post is anything to go by, getting worse?
And Government wonders why Home Education is on the increase.

All teachers have to pass a set of tests called 'QTS Skills Test' in numeracy and literacy which are attempted after GCSEs, A levels, degree and PGCE or, in other words, years or education and examinations.

".. When can I take the Skills Tests? You will only be able to take your tests in your final year of study (except those on felxible study programmes) ..."

Trainee teachers do fail these very basic tests and some have to repeat them several times!

Actually Pendeen, they're not that basic. Certainly the English test focuses a lot on grammar, and I can remember being taught absolutely none of it during my time at school. I suspect a lot of these frothing MNers would struggle with some of the questions we had to do in our QTS English test. All the grammar I remember from school is from learning German. Our teacher used to despair because she had to teach us all the English grammar we had never covered before we could tackle the German. I trained in Wales though, and the system may well be different to that in England. Plus it was 12 years ago!

And you're not allowed to repeat them any more.

Which is right and proper, imo.

isla, I'm not sure clarinet's post - though it is depressing - proves the situation is getting worse.

There were some truly awful teachers around when I was at school. Just because things aren't perfect now, doesn't mean they're getting worse.

I'd like to make an addition to the basic tests if I may?
H is pronounced 'Aitch'

I'm not so worried about whether teacher is "clever" but they should certainly be able to spell and I would far rather a teacher say that they "don't know", in answer to a question and help the child research the answer than come out with some of the crap they do at times.

Forgive me for being dense, but how is knowing about run-on sentences (what are they?!) going to help me be a better maths teacher?

clarinet, a very interesting post. I have my own theories on why young people are emerging from education with such poor skills, and they are mainly based on too much television, too much computer time and not enough actual books. The thing about not being able to accept criticism because of constant unrelenting praise throughout their educational lives also rings true, not only in teacher training, but also in employing graduates. In my business have just taken on a graduate who apparently has a 2:1. To say she is hopeless is an understatement. I imagine teacher training colleges are having the same problems with their post grads as I am having with her.

lrd Indeed there were awful teachers when I was at school too, but I think there really has been a general decline in standards of basic English and Maths through the years.
Grammar and spelling went through a period of being sidelined in order not to stifle creativity. According to clarinet, 'universities are passing students whose capacity for producing decent written English is insufficient'. How is that right?
I don't believe that has always been the case surely?

Changebags, if you're going to teach maths and maybe a bit of physics and IT in a secondary school then you don't have to care about run-on sentences - you can write like Dan Brown for all I care. But if you're going to teach in a primary school then you do need to be able to put together a literate paragraph, and not write like an eight year old.

Changebagsandgladrags - run-on sentences are two or more sentences presented as one, often they are joined by a comma instead of separated by a full stop. That last was a run-on sentence. If you have enough knowledge of sentence construction to avoid them without being able to name them, fine. If your comments on pupils' work are full of incorrect sentences then you are not helping children become literate, and if your comments on reports and letters home are similarly full of incorrect sentences then parents have every right to become concerned. I'm in Scotland where every teacher is a teacher of literacy, or so the latest curriculum reform tells us!

Ithink - yes! I wish being able to say 'I don't know' were more common.

ariel - why are books necessarily better than computers? I'd think they are different. I have a very bright mate who is almost completely blind - she cannot read books and depends on computers. You presumably don't mean that sort of thing?

(This isn't me being snarky, btw, this is me being interested in how different media might teach different skills and wondering if they really do.)

isla - you may be right. I'm not sure. I think one issue is that of course, today universities take on nearly 50% of school leavers, don't they? That is far more people than in my parents' day. I suspect this is a big part of the reason.