The Trouble With Tenure – NYTimes.com.
I believe this is just another fix that misses the fundamental problem. I tried to point that out in this comment.
I am a former professor. I taught for 25 years, at both an elite school, Wash. U. in St. Louis, and, before that, at a regional state school. I have a seen a lot.
Though there are bad teachers, I have no doubt that there are many more teachers who themselves received an bad college education. This is especially true in my field of math. How can we ever expect to get good teachers until we fix the college corruption probem?
It is not easy to understand, or believe, just how unscrupulous colleges have become, and how much that dumbs down high school education – by dumbing down undergraduate education. So, I have a blog for those stories (inside-higher-ed), but, for a start, here is a little of what goes on and its connection with high school education.
“Elite” university gets “national need” grant to encourage Americans to get math phd’s. Unscrupulous professor grants degrees to unqualified candidates. (See details on my blog.) Unqualified candidate, who can’t even do challenging calculus problems, goes on to teach at regional school. That person’s undergrads don’t learn (no fault of theirs) but become teachers.
It gets worse. I have direct, documented, experience with administrators asking me to teach at a “cookbook” level at Wash. U. . Even elite students don’t always get what they need.
Let’s not penalize these teachers. Test them on content, then based on their scores, penalze the colleges that falsely claim to give them the tools they need to teach.
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