I got this link from John Piazza. It describes the hubris that we find at the college level. It talks about “elite professionals” whose intelligence so vastly outshines the rest of us (4%ers) that we need to listen to them and try to do what they do if we are to save our schools. As John says, it really is outrageous.
Ben,
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/who-should-teach-our-children/?src=rechp
You must read this article, it’s freakin’ outrageous. The gist of this article seems to be: College teachers are good teachers because are smart and can communicate with others. High school and middle school teachers are not smart, even if they have communication skills, and this is a major problem with pre college education. If we bring more teachers into the profession with “high intellectual ability,” the ones who are applying for grad school and want to be professors, we can improve our schools. Intelligent people can easily learn the (non intellectual and therefore inferior) skills required to teach children. Here’s a quote:
“So why not make use of all this talent to develop an elite class of professionals — like those who teach in our colleges — and give them primary responsibility for K-12 education? One objection is that teaching children and teenagers requires a set of social/emotional abilities — to empathize, to nurture, to discipline — that have little connection with the intellectual qualities of the “best” college students. But there is no reason to think that people who are smart, articulate and enthusiastic about ideas are in general less likely to have these non-intellectual abilities. The idea is to choose those who have both high intellectual ability and the qualities needed to work successfully with children at a given grade level. Moreover, it’s important that teachers be — as they now often are not — credible authority figures, a status readily supported by the justified self-confidence and prestige of an elite professional.”
John