|
Re: US teachers are overworked and underpaid
Posted:
Oct 10, 2012 11:49 AM
|
|
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 5:59 AM, Robert Hansen <bob@rsccore.com> wrote: > Well, there goes your raise Paul... > > http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2012-10-09#.UHVGnLQZwTE > > Florida transitioning to iPads. >
The reason that US teachers have been overworked and underpaid in comparison to teachers in other countries - especially the top performing ones Korea, Japan, and Finland - is not future technology in the classroom in the US. It is stuff like that shiny new football stadium and every other thing associated with extra-curricular school activities that one can think of. Example:
"What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120425355065601997.html
Quote: "The school, which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom."
Would you ever be prepared to see all those extra-curricular school activities that you enjoyed and your children would enjoy flushed so that the schools would then have the money to hire enough extra teachers to see their working time spent in front of a class cut almost in half and thus their working time spent not in front of a class almost doubled, even if the standards in terms of minimum requirements to become a teacher became the highest in the world?
I thought not.
Evidently, all those extra-curricular school activities like all those quite expensive school athletics programs and their quite expensive big and shiny new facilities are more important to US parents than to the parents of these other countries. To be more specific: That is, before all these US conservatives continue to dump on US public school education they perceive to be inferior to public education in these top-performing countries in question and condemn others and only others as the reason for this perceived inferiority, all these US conservatives need to look in the mirror.
And in this above article, here is something that you won't like:
Quote: "Fanny earns straight A's, and with no gifted classes she sometimes doodles in her journal while waiting for others to catch up. She often helps lagging classmates. "It's fun to have time to relax a little in the middle of class," Fanny says. Finnish educators believe they get better overall results by concentrating on weaker students rather than by pushing gifted students ahead of everyone else. The idea is that bright students can help average ones without harming their own progress."
Also, these other countries in question have already spent more money and will spend more money going further with the digital revolution in the classroom (ICT means Information and Communications Technology) than the US has or ever will - again, probably because all, those extra-curricular school activities like all those quite expensive school athletics programs are more important to US parents. (That is, before all you conservatives continue to dump on US public school education, you need to look in the mirror.) Example:
"Using ICT to make a successful education system even better" http://www.pearsonfoundation.org/oecd/korea.html
Quote:
"Government policies support education with above-average spending. After making elementary education mandatory in the 1950s, the Korean government took steps to widen educational opportunities for middle and high school students during the 1960s and 1970s, thus ensuring that more students could benefit from quality public education. In the 1990s, Korean authorities were quick to recognize the potential of ICT in education, launching a master plan to develop ICT infrastructure with one PC per teacher and Internet access in all classrooms. Subsequent strategies have set out to enhance education quality by providing open access to content and by training teachers to integrate ICT into classroom teaching.
A major objective of successive administrations has been to reduce inequalities in access to education, and ICT is seen as key to achieving that goal. In 2005, complementing services provided nationwide by Korea's Educational Broadcasting System, the government launched a Cyber Home Learning System that gives students home access to digital tutoring. In 2011, building on pilot projects launched in 2007, it announced a $2.4 billion strategy to digitize the nation's entire school curriculum by 2015.
At the core of this ambitious project, dubbed 'Smart Education', is the implementation of 'digital textbooks' -- interactive versions of traditional textbooks that can be constantly updated in real time. Digital textbooks contain a combination of textbooks, reference books, workbooks, dictionaries and multimedia content such as video clips, animations, and virtual-reality programmes that can be tailored to students' abilities and interests. Students can underline sections, take notes, reorganise pages and create hyperlinks to online material.
Taking advantage of Korea's strong digital sector, the project will involve the installation of wireless networks in all schools and the creation of a digitized education system that will run on a range of equipment including PCs, laptops, tablet PCs and smart TVs. Policy makers say it is designed to respond to 21st century education challenges by moving from uniform and standardized education to diversified, creativity-based learning.
Korean students already have extensive familiarity with digital devices for social and recreational purposes, and their aptitude for handling digital material was demonstrated by their top-ranking performance in the PISA 2009 digital reading test. By making access to new learning modes available to all, 'Smart Education' will help to bridge the education divide between families who can afford to pay for private tutoring and those that can't. Pilot tests are said to have shown measurable improvements in the performance of students from less well-off families and students in remote areas."
|
|