Actually, Blinking Duck, you are preaching to the choir: I usually slightly depreciate an Engllish degree to stave of the “you want some fries with that?” people.
On the other hand, by your own logic, an education degree is also a “liscense to go hunting”–I know a good number of teachers who have gone on to law school (not good law schools, by and large, but law schools . . .).
Oh crap! I forgot to mention said music major when onto law school and graduated 2 years ago. We still keep in touch via email and she is very thankful for my kick in the pants.
As for your comment on education majors as a license to go hunting, that hasn’t been my experience. Friends, students and people I know had real trouble being taken seriously for jobs. I have sat in many position placement meetings where education applicants resumes are tossed aside with the reason that it was a teaching degree and not a true academic degree. I’m not saying everyone does that but it has been my experience.
Now, teachers leaving the field are NOT ignored by industry. It is easier than many teachers think to leave the field. However, if you have a math ed major, it will be difficult to find a nice job actually using that major. What sells is that you were a teacher and lower level positions open up but it still can get you in and allow you your shot.
Now, say you just graduated from college with an education degree, tried teaching for a year and not liked it — you would have two strikes against you starting out in your job search and would have trouble being taken seriously as a college grad.
Why do education majors limit themselves so when they can get a noneducation degree and take all the ed classes? It then works as a teaching degree and an academic degree. Win-win! Why spend 4+ years getting such a narrow degree when, for a little more effort, you can have the whole package? If they don’t enjoy the classes, maybe they shouldn’t be majoring in them. If it’s because of cost, then why not spend a little more and get much more opportunity rather than spend all that time and $ getting trained for one job position (that pays poorly/no upward mobility/you may not even like). If it’s because they don’t want to put in the mental effort then maybe they shouldn’t be in college.
EEE gad, I’m preaching again. I really need to stop.
Can you see why I would have been a pain in the ass as an advisor? I was no wimpy, weenie advisor hiding on the sidelines. I was an in-your-face, kick in the behind, take no shit, a ‘you WILL do this’ kinda advisor. The ones that hated it could always switch but I had many times more advisees than anyone else 
Blink
Yeah, well, that’s what I thought, too. But alas, the prof in charge disagreed. 
:eek:
God, does it ever. I don’t claim to be most computer literate person around, but it truly amazes me how… ermm… special some of my students were. I just try to have patience. Lots and lots of patience. It’s still a minor miracle that I haven’t torn all my hair out yet.
I mean, when you have to say things like “press the enter key. That would be the key that says enter on it and has an arrow looking thing, too. It’s next to the quotation marks. No, that’s backspace, and it’s next to the equal sign. [walks over to the keyboard] See this key that says enter on it? Press that one.”
Too true!
But, for some reason, it still amazes me!
The following is a true conversation I have had:
Me: “Oh you’re a senior? What is your major?”
Student: “My major German.”
Me: “Spreken-zie Deutch?” (that’s the limit of my German, BTW)
Student: “Huh?”
Me: “Spreken-zie Deutch? That’s German for ‘Do you speak German…’”
Student: “I not speak German.”
Me: "But… you said… "
AHHHHH! RUN AWAY!!!
Sometimes I wonder how anything in this country runs!
Whoo! I’m drunk. But I just wanted to say that this thread is PRICELESS. Krebnut, you poor dear, I feel for you. You are indeed a good person for dealing with that idiot who couldn’t understand your syllabus, if s/he even bothered to read it. Somedays you just feel as if you’re beating your head against the wall.
Oh, and BlinkingDuck and MandaJO, I’m with you. I just don’t understand what in the hell is going on with the education major curriculum or some of the folks trying to major in education! You’d think folks would want to try to help out education majors a little so they will actually be EQUIPPED TO TEACH when they get in the classroom, but no. When I was an undergrad I looked at the education major, but I just couldn’t do it. They wanted us to take all these courses in child development and pedagogy and crap, but at the sacrifice of taking content courses in the actual major! How can you help teach students at any level if you don’t have a fucking clue about the big picture?! Pedagogical theory is all well and good, but nothing can beat actual experience in the trenches, and you don’t see much of that put into those nice, neat little theories in the books. How do you deal with administrations who don’t support teachers? How do you discipline students effectively if the parents aren’t disciplining their kids and supporting the teachers? Much of the pedagogy taught to education majors in no way prepares them for the realities of teaching on the secondary or elementary level. [sigh] And we folks on the college level wonder why we get students who are ill-prepared to meet our standards. Yeah, I’m generalizing, but there’s still enough mess going on in the public education system to justify my belief that the MISEDUCATION of students is a vicious cycle. There’s not much if any communication going on between college level and secondary level folks about the realities of the public education system and how it is failing students and teachers. And it’s only going to get worse if folks don’t wake up and get a clue. I swear. It’s enough to drive you to drink sometimes. 
Which is actually the most important thing I’ll have to learn how to say as a physicist!
By the way, just a hypothetical (umm… yeah, that’s it), suppose you have a histogram of scores that looks like this:
90-100: ****
80-89: ********
70-79: ***********
60-69: ***
<60: *
Being a generous fellow, you give the poor kid all by his lonesome with his oh-so-impressive 54 a D-, rationalizing it by some twisting of logic. Suppose this student then comes and complains to you that since he showed up to 9 out of 11 labs and even did the experiments for the ones he went to, he should get at LEAST a C. Suppose further that when you point out that you told him he was failing the class halfway through the semester and even show him the histogram so he knows just where he stands, he still expects a C, and goes to the prof you’re TAing for to complain. How do you get the a-hole off your back? :mad:
Prof. December tells me that two Masters of Public Health students handed in identical final projects in the form of case reports, except that the name on the top was changed. This was in a cloass of no more than 25 people. When, caught (duh!) and required to explain themselves, they brought a lawyer who spoke on their behalf: “My clients are willing to write new project reports.”
Unfortunately, these scum were not thrown out of the program. They merely got F’s for the course.
gr8guy –
Ooh, lovely, I had a student just like that last semester. (Possibly even better: he told me he didn’t think it was “fair to bring people down when they were making an effort and showing up to class.” Um, showing up to class is a minimum requirement, not a maximum…)
How is your relationship with the professor? If you think you can count on him or her to support you, I’d suggest calling the student’s bluff: encourage him to complain, but present your own case to the prof beforehand. Even if you’re not confident that the prof will go to bat for you (and you have my sympathies in that case), the student will probably back off if you talk and act as if you were.
Wow–great thread! Let’s see:
I taught in a mission school once, and was told by the administration that I couldn’t discipline a certain student for CHEATING because he was a “good Christian.” Aren’t good Christians honest? :mad:
Then there was the student (same school) who asked me out on a date. Charming, except that she was married. And in Calcutta, if a woman’s husband feels you’ve sullied her honor, he can call up the posse and pay you a little visit while you’re walking home from work. Needless to say, I was completely terrified, but all worked out well.
Oh yeah, the student who was expelled for bringing gang members and a knife to school. When confronted by the principal and notified of his expulsion, the kid said, “Sir! My mother has a weak heart and this will surely kill her!” Shoulda thought of that before, kid.
[hijack] Teachers and profs (especially those who changed careers), please check out my thread asking for advice on my own proposed career change into education. [/hijack]
Off-topic, but a good anecdote: in America, I taught English to a woman from Chad who didn’t know a word of it. A year later while visiting home, I saw her interviewed on the local news: she had founded an organization to help African immigrants get settled and learn English! [sniff] (Made up for the Dominican kids I taught who would say, “No quiero estudiar ingles contigo; tengo que hacer mi tarea de matematicas.” [I don’t want to study English with *you*; I have to do my math homework.]
BTW, just to clarify: I wouldn’t have dated the student even if she wasn’t married. I do have a few principles (and a principal who’d have killed me).
[sub]On the other hand, there was this incredible hottie in my other class…oh, never mind.[/sub]