[lbo-talk] vox populi: standardize testing

[Alan P. Rudy]

On Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
> Alan wrote:
>  
> > As Carrol has regularly argued, I think, most teachers in most schools in most communities since the start of mandatory public education were only moderately well-versed in the material they taught and even less well prepared to teach anything well.
>  
>  
> I'm not sure about most. What about the decades long period when u.s.  
> public education relied on exploitation of women? A lot of talented  
> women were teaching school when other jobs were closed to them. And  
> they had long careers too. My fourth grade teacher taught me *and* my  
> mother.
>  
>  

  
I never said the teachers weren't talented, I didn't say they weren't successful at teaching what was required to be taught, and I didn't say I didn't appreciate their efforts and clear success - conventionally defined.  I said they were only moderately well-versed in the material they taught… perhaps I should have said that they knew what they knew very well but didn't often have much depth beyond that  Most all of my math teachers knew only one way to approach a problem, most of my history teachers knew very little history - even that of great white guys, and most of my science teachers ('cept one physics teacher who'd been a PhD at the Bell Labs) knew the science they taught only ever so slightly deeper than the textbook… all of which was immediately clear coming from my over-educated and "60s progressive liberal" family.  I was responding very specifically to what Joanna said about the need to teach teachers to be better by teaching them better/deeper.

I'll repeat, none of the general superficiality of my teachers' knowledge impinged on my schooling - except for when they were wanders or losers as well.