>From: Leo Casey <leoecasey at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: LBO-Talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Mathematics Education, Teacher Preparation and Racial Stereotypes
>-- Part II
>Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2000 16:55:11 -0800 (PST)
>
>She argues that elementary school teachers, who are
>not required to have any background in mathematics as
>a college level subject, are singularly unprepared to
>teach Mathematics. But the lack of a subject matter
>background is true not only with respect to
>Mathematics, but also with respect to Science, to
>Social Studies, and to English, so it can not explain
>the differences among subjects. Moreover, the
>requirements for elementary school teachers with
>respect to subject matter background do not vary
>greatly from nation to nation, so it does not explain
>that important differential among nations. Finally, I
>am not at all convinced that elementary school
>teachers need to have that thorough a subject matter
>background in specific disciplines, because their
>primary task is not to teach subject matter, but to
>provide students with basic literacy, numeracy and
>social skills. They need to understand early childhood
>pedagogy and psychology, especially how young people
>acquire -- and the problems they may have in acquiring
>-- those basic skills. It is an altogether different
>matter for high school teachers, who do need to have a
>much deeper and more thorough grounding in subject
>matter.
Mr Casey, My guess is that poorer students get stuck from the elementary level on with teachers who are woefully ignorant and fearful of mathematics--basic numeracy may in fact be a real problem. I am guessing that this is a serious liability since often no parent can pick up the slack. I may be wrong. Yours, Jan
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