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[Sheb]

Actually, in place like Singapore, only the upper third of students are allowed to become teacher.
It's true that in a lot of place (And Belgium is no exeption), wanting to become a teacher mark you as weird. A former GF wanted to become one, and my dad's reaction was "It's a pity, she's smart, bu she lacks ambition...".

We really need to make teacher one of the coolest job around.

[Lagslayer]

It's a shame that anything interesting worth actually teaching tends to carry some sort of political charge. Certainly can't have that now, can we! Stories have to take some sort of perspective, which is bad because some people might be offended by that perspective. Boring memorization, as a result, has become the norm. Dates, people, events, and numbers mean nothing without perspective, and have absolutely no engagement (unless you breathe accounting or something).

[Criptfeind]

We really need to make teacher one of the coolest job around.

I think this is important, but how would one do it? It can be hard to just change cultural values like that.

and have absolutely no engagement (unless you breathe accounting or something).

This one made me laugh a bit.

[MonkeyHead]

All of these suggestions would cost billions, and have only a moderate impact at best. They are admirable goals, but impractical. These ideas have been batted around for years by politicians and educationalists, and the same stumbling blocks keep being hit upon.

Expand classrooms and hire more janitors/IT people/other support people.

Cost would be a limiting factor, as would how many people it is actually realistic to emply in a given geograhical area. You would have a hard time arguing to a taxpayer that they needed to pay more so a better janitorial service could be provided to a local school.

Institute teaching training programs...

There are already plenty of good teacher training programmes that produce skilled (if inexperienced) teachers - more than can reasonably be emplyed with current budgets. The problem is getting them experience so they become effectve teachers as opposed to just ones with the raw skills.

insure best preforming students have the worst teachers ('cus they would do good anyway) and the worst get the best

That has been shown to at best cause a difference of 1/20th of a grade per pupil.

Wait until a sufficently qualified work force is generated

If in the UK teachers were all required to have a Masters degree (or equivalent), it has been shown that it would "probably" rasie attainment by 1 GCSE grade in 30 (thirty) years - this sort of change happens slowly.

Increase teacher pay to draw smarter people into the profession

Intelligence is not the sole factor in teacher quality - they need personality, humour, humanity, work ethic... and people do things for reasons other than money. More pay would possibly drag people into the profesison you wouldnt want in a classroom. Also, cost. Adding 10% to a teachers pay packet would cost millions.

encourage teachers to go back to work (that may include pension cuts, so they stay in longer). Raise retirment age (something that I should have put in the list o' demands) so that good teachers can stay in the profession for longer

You ever seen a 68 year old trying to work with a class of teenagers? I have, and its not pretty. Older teachers need to be used to train younger ones with the energy and enthusiasm to teach kids.

The trouble is that as everyone has been a school pupil they feel they know how education works. Sorry to say it but most people dont.

[Mr. Palau]

We really need to make teacher one of the coolest job around.

This, and what GlyphGryph said.

I can't think of many ways to do it besides raising pay for teachers. Also on the subject of teacher of quality, yeah teacher's should only be selected from like the top 4th of the class, and bachelors degres (that's the one where you get two extra years right? sorry, i haven't gone to college yet) if they aren't required nation-wide already. I think that after raising teacher pay, putting up a bunch of pro-teacher propoganda videos might work.

Also I was just watching Joseph Stiglitz (hope I spelled that right) on TV describing how today's economic troubles are caused largly be the destructio of a middle class capable of absorbing the products produced by the investor class, the class that heads the economy in any capitilistic country. The second thought that popped into my head (after we need to tax them) was "Wow our rich people really aren't creative. If I was rich and I had enough money that I could no longer think of ways ot consume it, what with me already having a yacht with a giant TV and super computer installed, I would spend all of the time I wasn't spending playing Fallout: New Vegas on the giant TV-super computer thinking of ways to spend all of my money. Seriously, how can you not think of ways to spend money?".

All of these suggestions would cost billions, and have only a moderate impact at best. They are admirable goals, but impractical. These ideas have been batted around for years by politicians and educationalists, and the same stumbling blocks keep being hit upon.

Expand classrooms and hire more janitors/IT people/other support people.

Cost would be a limiting factor, as would how many people it is actually realistic to emply in a given geograhical area. You would have a hard time arguing to a taxpayer that they needed to pay more so a better janitorial service could be provided to a local school.

Institute teaching training programs...

There are already plenty of good teacher training programmes that produce skilled (if inexperienced) teachers - more than can reasonably be emplyed with current budgets. The problem is getting them experience so they become effectve teachers as opposed to just ones with the raw skills.

insure best preforming students have the worst teachers ('cus they would do good anyway) and the worst get the best

That has been shown to at best cause a difference of 1/20th of a grade per pupil.

Wait until a sufficently qualified work force is generated

If in the UK teachers were all required to have a Masters degree (or equivalent), it has been shown that it would "probably" rasie attainment by 1 GCSE grade in 30 (thirty) years - this sort of change happens slowly.

Increase teacher pay to draw smarter people into the profession

Intelligence is not the sole factor in teacher quality - they need personality, humour, humanity, work ethic... and people do things for reasons other than money. More pay would possibly drag people into the profesison you wouldnt want in a classroom. Also, cost. Adding 10% to a teachers pay packet would cost millions.

encourage teachers to go back to work (that may include pension cuts, so they stay in longer). Raise retirment age (something that I should have put in the list o' demands) so that good teachers can stay in the profession for longer

You ever seen a 68 year old trying to work with a class of teenagers? I have, and its not pretty. Older teachers need to be used to train younger ones with the energy and enthusiasm to teach kids.

The trouble is that as everyone has been a school pupil they feel they know how education works. Sorry to say it but most people dont.

Since appearently you are using a british grading metric, can you kindly convert the grade improvemnts into basic A-F as I have no idea what a GCSE is, nor how big of an improvment one is.

[MonkeyHead]

GCSE: General Certificate of Secondary Education. All 16 yr olds sit GCSE examinations in from 9 to 12 subjects. Grades go from F to A* (with puiols put into bands representing 10% of a cohort, so the top 10% get A*, the next 10% get A...). Top performing pupils get A and A* in 9 to 12 subjects. Schools are assessed on what portion of pupils get at least 5 C or above GCSE's including Maths, Science and English. The top performing schools get 75% and upwards through this watermark. Below 40% would be alarming. So, a one grade improvement in one subject is not a massive deal.

[Aklyon]

That really doesn't explain much to me. But your acronym sounds almost the same as the GED, except instead of a "YOu do not have a high school diploma, you need to obtain this as a substitute', its 'You of the 16 years. Take these tests. Its somewhat important.'

[Mrhappyface]

The thing is, many European countries and especially the Nordic ones are relatively homogeneous and hold similar cultural values and emphasis on education. The white protestant culture, the hispanic catholic culture, the confucianist asian culture, etc. all have varying views on such. Our entire CULTURE has to be united when it comes to education for something like Finland's system to work.

[MonkeyHead]

Maybe true, but when compared to less affluent countries, the value of an education has less weight in richer nations.

[GlyphGryph]

I can't imagine requiring all teachers to get Master's degrees would do anything but lower the quality... :/
I mean it's not like they're going into research positions, I think we'd be better off expanding our currently rather low quality teaching apprenticeships.

[Leafsnail]

That really doesn't explain much to me. But your acronym sounds almost the same as the GED, except instead of a "YOu do not have a high school diploma, you need to obtain this as a substitute', its 'You of the 16 years. Take these tests. Its somewhat important.'

My understanding is they're pretty important for people who don't go on to sixth form college (high school).  If they're the only qualifications you're trying to get work with it helps if they're good (particularly in maths and English).

They can also be important in terms of you getting into (some) sixth form colleges and (a few) universities.

Nevertheless, since you probably have about 9 of them improving the grade of one of them by 1 isn't likely to help you much.

[MonkeyHead]

That really doesn't explain much to me. But your acronym sounds almost the same as the GED, except instead of a "YOu do not have a high school diploma, you need to obtain this as a substitute', its 'You of the 16 years. Take these tests. Its somewhat important.'

My understanding is they're pretty important for people who don't go on to sixth form college (high school).  If they're the only qualifications you're trying to get work with it helps if they're good (particularly in maths and English).

They can also be important in terms of you getting into (some) sixth form colleges and (a few) universities.

Nevertheless, since you probably have about 9 of them improving the grade of one of them by 1 isn't likely to help you much.

Sounds about right. After GCSE's it is compulsory to stay in education or training until 18. For most this means A-Levels (Advanced levels, usually 3 to 5 subjects done over 2 years as a gateway to University) or Vocational courses designed to lead into specific careers (Childcare, plumbing etc.). They are the basic baseline judgement as to someones core education. 1 grade in 1 subject is not a big deal.

I can't imagine requiring all teachers to get Master's degrees would do anything but lower the quality... :/
I mean it's not like they're going into research positions, I think we'd be better off expanding our currently rather low quality teaching apprenticeships.

Here in the UK the main way of becoming a teacher is via a 12 month postgrad course designed to be completed after a Batchelors degree. Of that 12 months, 8 of them are spent in a classroom teaching. Its pretty intense and people either get good fast or get cut. What is the point of sitting in a lecture theatre "learning" how to teach? Raising the bar to getting a Masters would cut off a signifigant portion of people that could make good educators.

[GlyphGryph]

I can't imagine requiring all teachers to get Master's degrees would do anything but lower the quality... :/
I mean it's not like they're going into research positions, I think we'd be better off expanding our currently rather low quality teaching apprenticeships.

Here in the UK the main way of becoming a teacher is via a 12 month postgrad course designed to be completed after a Batchelors degree. Of that 12 months, 8 of them are spent in a classroom teaching. Its pretty intense and people either get good fast or get cut. What is the point of sitting in a lecture theatre "learning" how to teach? Raising the bar to getting a Masters would cut off a signifigant portion of people that could make good educators.
[/quote]
I concur, this would be my experience - but I'm not sure to what extent the numbers actually back this up. How DOES the Finnish system, for example, do this?

[MonkeyHead]

The Finnish system has a minimum requirement of a Masters degree, but a lot of thse Masters degrees are actually in Education, which has a natural progression into teaching (pretty much how it works over here for anyone with a B.Ed or M.Ed. There are also requirements of a 35 week placement in subject knowledge and in teaching methods, no different to how it works in the rest of the EU, save for the Masters requirement. Thanks to its good reputation, there is a positive feedback loop going on in Finland - a good sector attracts good people.

[alway]

The thing is, many European countries and especially the Nordic ones are relatively homogeneous and hold similar cultural values and emphasis on education. The white protestant culture, the hispanic catholic culture, the confucianist asian culture, etc. all have varying views on such. Our entire CULTURE has to be united when it comes to education for something like Finland's system to work.

This relates a good deal back to the potential role of NASA. Back in the 60s, every kid and their dog wanted to be an astronaut or scientist; but with our current lack of projects TO GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE, why would they want to study math or science when all those do is make an I-phone with a slightly bigger screen?

Those things are hard and boorrrrrinnnnggg, I wanna be the next American Idol!

If NASA's budget were its original 5% of the federal budget instead of its current 0.48%, you can damn well bet kids would be paying attention in science class.