Why your kid will grow up believing in homepathy and that radiation from heaters causes cancer

[DominiConnor]

Even the BBC, bastion of science=scary incomprehensible things + cute baby animals has begun to notice that untrained teachers aren't going to do the job well.
Wrong subject = bad teaching

'homepathy', DC? You need to get yourself back to uni for an arts degree.

I wish I had attended the school where they were continually taking pupils out of science classes for theatrical productions.

Double science every day for 2 years? I'd rather eat my own tights.

This struck me:

"if experts teach it in a fun way to able pupils as a separate subject"

WTF only able pupils? Why this elevation of physics (or any subject) as if it is so different and difficult and special that only able pupils can learn it? Just teach the bloody subject, to everyone, surely?

It's so ridiculous - at 7 and 8 kids are absorbed and excited by physics (though they don't know it's called that). By the time they get to their teens, they've been intimidated and educated out of any interest in it.

That's a good point about "able", since if you have a teacher who themselves doesn't really "get" a subject how can they spot innate ability ? You can measure attainment mechanically but how do you tell the difference between a lazy kid, and one who is struggling ?

The arty reply is of course to favour generalism. A teacher should have this skill, I'm sure, but the way you see biological systems is basically different to how you see the same thing from a physics perspective.

Also when I've taught stuff, I've leaned heavily on the fact that since I've kept within things I know well, I can understand the different ways people misunderstand concepts, and can judge when my message has got across.
Arts subjects are much lighter on concepts, some like languages hardly have any to teach at all, and since the vast bulk of poeple making decisions on education think an electron is slightly smaller than a pea, round and green, thsey get biology and PE teachers to hold classes in things they don't understand.
Look at the A level grades you need to study Biology an university, especially the maths ones. Really want them teaching your kids ?
Some of course are highly numerate, but the average Biology teacher isn't numerically inclined.d
Its like having a French graduate teaching German, in a situation where most people who do German have problems with a language whose spelling only vaguely correlates with pronunciation.

It doesn't help science teaching that there are so many careers that a science graduate can go into both science and non-science.

And most of them higher paid than teaching...

yes, all we Biology teachers are pig ignorent.

Sigh. I must remember to quit tomorrow.

I once had to put right a Chemistry teacher, who taught A level Chemistry, on rates of reaction. Pretty fundamental in Chemistry I would have thought. He was about to mark down a pupil for something entirely accurate in his coursework. It was actually rather embarassing, for him and for me. People can get into teaching with quite poor degrees, especially in shortage subjects. And it will stay that way until teaching becomes a desirable career.

Ooooh - are biologists the new arts graduates for DC do you think?

It's an engineering thing.

Also doesn't help that science education/heritage gets little decent funding . Plus it's seena s perfectly OK to denigrate science/scientists and to have no knowledge of how the world around you works.

(and I'm an arts graduate BTW )

Just seen the point about biologists - surely more important to have a good grasp of scientific theory (ow to conduct experiments, stats etc.)?

Yes, after all those years of reserch in Oxford, Edinburgh and St Andrews I obviously know fuck all about scientific method.

I'm just a fluffy little biologist.

Should get back to the kitchen really

God, it's amazing that you can get innumerate biologists. They must cheat in their exams then presumably?

Nooo Swizzler, we just wing it and make up a few t-tests.

No MB. You know fuck all about numbers, not scientific method. And electrons. Which you think are slightly smaller than a pea.

And nothing about radiation judging by the thread title, which of course is also something that is completely omitted from biology courses

Martianbishop, are you really going to say that honestly the biologists you know are as good at maths as the physicists ? Really ?

Indeed I explictly said that biology is a different perspective not an inferior one. I didn't like school biology, but outside read it for entertainment (OK, I'm a geek).

And given that I agree with Caligula about pay rates, my position is that since biologists typically don't earn as much as maths or physics grads the pay differential is smaller, and thus on average you'd expect a biology teacher to be a better biologist than a physics teacher is a physicist.
That's not flattery, you know I don't do that

But I still don't want a biologist teaching my kid physics, unless they have shown unusually high ability at both. For that matter I can't see the average physicist doing biology all that well either.

My job includes evaluating science grads, which leads to bizarre, but true statements of the form "so you've spent 4 years building models of how galaxies form ? Great, here's a bank who wants to pay you big money".
I know that some postgrad science is quite interdisciplinary, but also that at undergrad level most have problems doing the whole of their subject, much less something completely different.

I accept that at age 11 or 12 it matters very little, and I'm quite happy to do bits of DS science well apst that age on all subjects.
But I don't have the perspective of a biologist, which means I shouldn't be the only input on that area, I want someone who's cut up loads of animals to do that.

Actually, I have come across teachers who have a less than sound grasp of what I might think were pretty important concepts. Because, as I said, if you're in a shortage subject, you can get in with a pretty crappola degree. But - that is not true of biology, which is not a shortage subject.

'Look at the A level grades you need to study Biology an university, especially the maths ones. Really want them teaching your kids ? '

You should be more clear DC, I read that as you not wanting us to teach your children. You didn't specify the subject.

Clarity of writing, something the arts grads can teach us all eh?

Wow, DC, cross post, We agree on something...