Why are amateur educators more effective than professionals?

Great Debates
41

No. It didn’t. Instead, you posed a very different and almost blindingly inane question.

Note the difference:

december asks “Why are amateur teachers more effective [at teaching] than professional teachers.” This is a moronic query which assumes facts not in evidence.

RickJay asks “Why do home-schooled kids perform better in some areas than public-schooled kids?” This question assumes nothing about relative skills of teachers or students, and is the appropriate one to ask, if prefaced by verification of that performance.

I agree with wring and Kimstu. Go ask Mrs. Professor december what the difference is.

42

xenophon41, you have quoted the title (rather than the OP), which I admit could have been better constructed. In retrospect, it might have said something like, “Why are these amateur teachers more successful [at teaching] than professional teachers?”

However, the OP asked, “What’s wrong with this picture?” – an open ended questioned which invited posters’ opinions.

I apologize for a title that looked like it was criticizing classroom teachers. I meant to question the entire system.

This was one of the things I hoped to get to. The difficulty of the “crowd control” is related to the withdrawal of authority from teachers and even from principals. In my day, it was easier to suspend or expel a student, so students followed the rules. (Anyhow, those who remained in school followed the rules.)

This is a good point. Still, with all the zillions of dollars of money that has been spent on educational research, they ought to have found a way to arrange school so that it copes with students’ psychological needs. IMHO almost of the research has been toward novel approaches, because that’s how one justifies funding. Whether the approaches were actually useful seems not to be a criterion. And, I have seen novel programs introduced, when they clearly hampered education – particularly in some of the new math approaches.

A person who is teaching his/her your own kids will stop using a method that isn’t working. Unfortunately, teachers are sometimes requred to use methods that simply don’t work.

BurglarGenie, I very much appreciate input from someone actually invovled in home schooling.

43

I agree that December’s comparison is pretty much meaningless. He’s trying to establish a correlation between two very different situations, based on a small sample. It doesn’t make sense.

However, I -think- December is trying, in a roundabout way, to ask more fundamental questions about public education. The first of which being the qualification of teachers.

The comparison between an ‘amateur lawyer’ and a ‘professional’ is not really apt, because lawyers get a lot more training than teachers do, and it’s specialized material that most people don’t learn. Teachers, on the other hand, get minimal training *in teaching, over and above the training the average college grad in any field gets.

At my university, education was considered the ‘bonehead’ faculty that students went into if they were flunking out of science or whatever other field of study they were in. A degree in education would include the same core ‘breadth’ requirements as the other undergrad faculties, plus maybe 10 or 15 semester courses in the theory of education and such. That’s not exactly Ph.D level work, especially if those courses are easy (they are).

Then there’s the overall quality of scholarship in education, which in my opinion is really poor. There seem to be theories that are the flavor of the week that come and go like crazy. Even during my own grade school career we went through two or three different ‘paradigms’ of education. One year all of our interior walls were ripped out because it was decided that the ‘open classroom’ was the way to go, with mixed grades. Two years later, all the walls went back in. There was the move away from phonics, and back again, and away again, and back again…

Educational studies are often poorly conducted, highly politicized, and adopted by teachers who don’t understand the difference between preliminary results and hard data.

So those 15 ‘education’ courses may in fact have simply taught the various flavors of the week. I don’t see a lot of evidence that those courses result in markedly better teachers. In fact, here in Alberta many of our older teachers don’t even have college degrees - they have two-year teaching diplomas from junior colleges. In two years, you basically just got the practical information on how to conduct tests, run a classroom, etc. Not a lot of heavy theory. And yet, those teachers did just as good a job (or better) than the more highly trained teachers of today.

The real question worth debating here is whether or not our current educational and training structure for teachers is the right one. There’s another good question, which is that many teacher’s organizations are calling for higher levels of education (i.e. Master’s degrees) for teachers. Is that a good idea? Is there any evidence of a correlation between the amount and type of post-secondary education and the quality of the teacher?

Going by my own experience, the personality of the teacher was far, far more important than any amount of education that teacher may have had. I’ve had horrible teachers with masters degrees, and great teachers with no post-secondary education at all.

One of the obvious changes you *could make would be more of an apprentice/journeyman type of training. Teachers could take a two-year program, then apprentice as teaching aids or supervised substitutes or whatever. While they are doing that, they could write exams based on the particular subjects they want to teach, and could certified to teach individual subjects as they meet requirements. During this period the ones lacking the right temperament could be eliminated before they get the kind of pseudo-tenure that many teachers have which makes it impossible to fire them.

Would a system like this work better? Are there ANY innovations that can be made to improve public schools?

44

Oh, so the ‘real’ question from the OP is “what’s wrong with this picture” (the ‘picture’ in question being that a home schooled student won a competition).

the correct answer to that is: "nothing’.

Next question?
Is there anything that we can postulate from that event regarding home schooling and public education?

The correct answer to that is “nope”.

Neither seems to be a debate.

Where I get exasperated w/you december is that you have strong opinions, but don’t seem to be able to support why you have them. Debates w/you always seem to end up this way. Once you have an opinion, you don’t seem to let opposing data disuade you, or even as here, the lack of supporting data. That brings it past ‘informed opinion’ territory and smack dab in the middle of fanacism.

45

“Opposing data”? What opposing data are you talking about, wring? The OP had one piece of data. evilhanz added some more. All of the data pointed in the direction of supported my thesis. I acknowlede that the degree of support may have been weak or negligible. However, there has been* no* opposing data at all.

It’s not fanatical to ignore something that doesn’t exist.

46

will try again.

I said ‘or as in this thread, little/no supporting evidence’.

You, Kimstu and I have gone round and round on this. It has become quite tiresome. There are major differences between home schooled (or private schooled) children and public schools. these differences include (but are not limited to)

** Ability to select only certain students

** Very limited class sizes.

** Ability to alter class curriculum to more closely adhere to the individual students interests (little Bobby doesn’t like to read but does like basketball, voila, his reading text is a book about basketball)

** Parents with the financial and other resources available to have their childrens’ education be a time/$$ factor in the household, and parents who’ve attained higher education themselves.

** and for home schooling, the ability to tailor the hours to suit the student - not getting the math? spend 10 hours a day on it til you do. Don’t work well in the am? start ‘school’ at noon.

MOst of these are simply not availble to the public school system at all (the abililty to select students for example), would involve prohibitively high public spending increases (class sizes, modification of curriculum and school times), or are simply things not able to be mandated (parental involvement, bakcground and resources).

It is most likely that these factors and not the ‘home schooling’ or private schooling per se, account for the differences in testing scores etc. I believe Kimstu has posted data relentlessly to suggest things like lower class sizes ** all by itself** often correlates to higher test scores (that is, comparing public school kids in larger classes to public school kids in smaller classes for example).

And yet, you come, yet again with your ‘shucks, golly gee whizzers, these folks seem to be able to educate their young, why can’t the public schools?’.

There is none so blind as he who refuses to see.

47

But wring, I’ve put my kids in both private schools and government schools, and the private schools ALL had larger class sizes than the government schools. In fact, here in Kali, class size is down to around 20 kids per classroom, much less than the 30 per classroom I experienced when I attended school.

48

Yes, but it’s much easier to handle a class of 30 students when you can pick and choose who those students are. A class of 30 above average students wouldn’t be that hard; a class of 15 students with learning disabilities may be far too much.

Public schools have the whole range, and thus need smaller classes.

Dr. J

49

and Barking Spider we all know that your personal experience is undoubtably the truth for all classifications, that this one piece of data, because it’s what you personally experienced, is, in fact the truth all across the boards.

IN fact on David Letterman the other night he had the young woman who was valedictorian of her class (she was the only student) her entire school had about 30 kids, and it was public, so obviously public schools are even smaller than home schooling.

Sigh

IOW, BS one or two examples to the contrary doesn’t mean that the ‘generality’ isn’t true. Now, if you find statistical references from objective sources that demonstrate that generally public schools have smaller classes than private schools, then you’d have a point.

50

I believe classes are smaller today than they were in the 1950’s, yet we got a better education then, according to SAT results.

It’s perfectly fair to question the evidence for the superiority of home schooling. However, there is even less evidence that small class size is particularly key in educational quality.

I challenge those on the other side to find studies evaluating the importance of class size.

51

Sure, december, right after you finally support your OP, we’ll get into tangents.

52

From US dept. of Education Myths/realities about class size

your turn. and, let’s actually put them up this time, december.

53

I had written:

Your cites refer to studies, which (they say) show that smaller class size has some value. In other words, smaller classes aren’t entirely worthless.

BTW note that your cite came from advocates who were eager to support smaller classes. In business, sports, TV programming, or other competitive areas, researchers would look at the successes and try to copy what made them successful. But, these education advocates are focused on proving the value of smaller classes, rather than on finding out how to better educate students. It’s research like this which helps keep educational techniques in the dark ages.

I had questioned the degree of value of smaller classes, and whether other factors are more significant than class size. Your cites do not address these points. This puts the ball back over to your side of the net, wring.

54

Still waiting for any evidence from you.

My site was ‘the US department of Education’. Please demonstrate how you find that is an ‘advocate’ blah blah blah. coming from some one who continues to post op ed pieces as **his ** documentation just sent my ‘irony meter’ into overdrive. You’ll be getting the bill.

55

A. Cite?

B. Even if correct, are you sure you’re comparing statistical populations correctly? Be aware of the larger percentage of students taking the SAT today, due to the larger percentage of high school students who even have college as an option, as well as the changes in the test itself in the last half-century (IOW, since you last thought about it, apparently). I really can’t believe it’s necessary to point out such things to someone who claims to use statistics for a living.

wring, you’re wasting keystrokes. Your opponent here is automatically claiming that any cite that contradicts his preconceived answer must be biased, while any that agree with him must be factual. That’s a definition of prejudice, and it cannot be fought with reason.

56

:confused: Evidence of what?

Quoting a letter of mine that was published in the New York Times in 1998

My letter was about bi-lingual education. But, the general point applies more widely. The DOE considers its role to be doing studies, giving money to other researchers, writing papers, going to conferences, implementing new programs.

But, nobody in the DOE is evaluated ono the basis of overall student achievement. So, that’s not their job.

Elvis, my memory is that the drop in SAT scores was more than what could be accounted for by the increase in number of test-takers.

57

Homeschooler here. Had my kid in school for the last year. What I do at home is totally different to the process of teaching a class, the very thought of teaching a classroom makes me want to weep. I’m homeschooling to address specific issues which would be very difficult to address in a classroom. Once those are fixed, he’s back at school so damned fast, your head will spin.

So what’s the point here? We should all homeschool our kids? Homeschoolers should teach in the classroom? Small is better? Homeschooling techniques should be examined for their applicability in the classroom? Advanced classes in comparing apples with oranges?

What?

58

I think the argument is that if all kids were educated by a personal tutor who was personally and emotionally invested in the outcome, who didn’t have to worry about any other kids, who could spend 24/7 training the kid if needs be, who had a free hand to adapt and flex the education as appropriate, who was backed up by parents who believed 100% in the importance of education…

well, that those kids would do better than in the current state schooling system.

Not too controversial really, when you put it like that.

I think that Sam’s question is far more interesting. How come despite thousands or millions of man-hours researching the theory of education, we don’t seem to be able to come up with anything better than that which we’ve been using for countless years? How come “flavour-of-the-month” educational practices emerge, get tried half-assed and then abandoned?

I think that there is a point buried somewhere in the OP - it’s not that amateur educators are “better” (see opening paragraph on that question), it’s more the lack of imagination in the professional schooling process that leads to so much failure that makes one wonder why different techniques can’t be found.

pan

59

Yes, that’s where I was hoping to go. I invite discussion on how schools might be improved.

Earlier, I pointed out that the last 50 years have seen advances in efficiency and effectiveness in so many areas, while American education seems to be getting worse. Here are some more examples reelvant to education and training.

Methods of training people to run marathons have been developed, where thousands now run them. Methods of teaching good form in tennis have also improved. I continue to believe that education is somehow not finding improvements that could be available.

60

december: Earlier, I pointed out that the last 50 years have seen advances in efficiency and effectiveness in so many areas, while American education seems to be getting worse.

An awfully broad statement. (And while technology has indeed improved immeasurably, the practices of service providers have in many cases become less effective and convenient: when was the last time you got a house call from a doctor, for example?) The tasks of American education today are far different in many respects from what they were 50 years ago:

  • A much higher percentage of students now finish high school. In earlier times, many more of the students who didn’t like or do well in school simply left it.

  • Children with various sorts of disabilities are now expected to be either “mainstreamed” into regular classes or provided with special education so they can learn as much as is possible for them. I think this is a very good development, but it is also a heavy burden for school systems in terms of expense and logistics.

  • Legally mandated racial integration now somewhat mitigates racially disproportionate expenditures on schools. People who fondly remember the educational standards of fifty years ago should perhaps talk to a black contemporary who went to segregated schools and see what the other side of the coin looks like.

  • Curricula are now expected to prepare a much higher proportion of students for college. How many high schools routinely taught calculus fifty years ago?

  • There are now many more professions other than teaching widely available to women, so it is harder (and more expensive) to attract qualified candidates to teaching.

So I think you’re still comparing apples and oranges in the assertion that schools have got worse over the last half-century. All you really seem to be saying is that fifty years ago, you personally got a better education than many students whom you read or hear about are getting today. That doesn’t tell us anything useful about the broader issue of what can and should be done to improve today’s schools—especially when we take into account the “Good Old Days” factor that leads almost all of us, as we age, to complain that things aren’t as good as they used to be.

Moving on to kabbes’s more constructive topic: *…the lack of imagination in the professional schooling process that leads to so much failure that makes one wonder why different techniques can’t be found. *

Most of this, I think, is due to the eternal and universal quest for a single, simple solution to a complex, multifaceted problem. Look at all the other perpetual social questions for which we keep coming up with different, ultimately imperfect answers:

How shall we allocate society’s resources to the members of society? Command economies? Mercantilism? Keynesian capitalism? Supply-side economics? Strong centralized governments? Devolution to state and local governments? Welfare capitalism? Mixed economies?

How shall we create personal relationships that provide emotional and sexual fulfillment as well as happy and stable families? Polygamy? Patriarchy? Religious laws governing marriage? Different rules for civil and religious marriage? Make divorce easier? Make divorce harder? “The Rules”? Mandatory premarital counseling? Tax incentives for marriage? for parenthood? Same-sex marriage?

How shall we regulate the work of our subordinates? Slavery? With corporal punishment or without? Indentured apprenticeship? With corporal punishment or without? Industrial paternalism? “Scientific management”? Motivational seminars? “The seven habits of highly effective people”? “The leadership secrets of Attila the Hun”? “Hot desking”? Seniority hierarchy? No hierarchy at all?

Like the question “How shall we train our children to be competent, happy, productive adults?”, these questions are simple to ask and damn near impossible to answer. The effective solutions will always be very different for different people, but society will always keep experimenting with new fads and the latest hot theories to come up with the one magic way that works satisfactorily for everybody.