Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers

Scene: Social Studies Education doctoral-level class. Class was supposed to meet 2.5 hrs a day twice a week for eight weeks (total contact hours 40 hrs). Textbook was "Scandinavian Welfare States", but let's not even touch that. This story has other places to go. First day, professor puts students into four groups (group work is really really big in education schools) to work on a presentation about the book. Class will meet for 1 hr a week on alternate weeks so that each group can make its presentation. Total contact hours: 4! Sidebar -- Total contact hours involving the actual professor: 0!! Total work to be graded: one paper turned in by each group. Exams: none. Additional reading: none. Keep in mind this is a DOCTORAL course. Final grade distribution: 12 A's!! (I wasn't actually in this class; I just had occasion to observe it while working in an ed lab one summer.)

Character: Adjunct Professor of Educational Statistics. Person taught doctoral-level ed stat course that all Ed.D. and Ph.D. candidates in school were required to take. Reason this person was an adjunct and not a regular full-time faculty member: did not have doctorate. Why not? Because after three attempts, had been unable to pass the College of Arts & Sciences statistical methods for social scientists course that was required to get your Ed.D. Keep in mind this person taught statistics!

Scene: Math Education doctoral-level class: Grade based on two assignments: (1) Undergo a personal health improvement program and quantify the results (2) Predict the population of the US in 2030. Final grade distribution: 10 A's!! Side note: Nobody's report for the second assignment (except mine) actually used statistically valid arguments for extrapolating the population.

Scene: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! Required watching (during class time, at that) in my undergraduate methods of teaching math course (required to get certified as a math teacher). Other assignments in that class: Watch Stand and Deliver, writing instructions on how to get from one spot on campus to another (to see if you could write clear instructions), writing a poem about how we felt about mathematics.

Scene: Outside Geometry Class while waiting to speak with my thesis advisor, Character: A math-ed major who wanted to be a high school math teacher. Actual live quote from said student while explaining that she did not like geometry class: "When am I ever going to need this?" Well, I'm not sure, but maybe WHEN YOU HAVE TO TEACH IT?!?!?!?!

Scene: Undergraduate methods of teaching high school class. Professor (not a bad one at all, and positively brilliant by education school standards) gave us a list of 40 essays which would be related to (but not identical to) our final exam, which would consist of 10 essays. Students *demanded* that he narrow the list to only twenty essays and reproduce ten of them EXACTLY on the final; threw a serious hissy-fit when professor refused.

Scene: Undergraduate educational psychology class. First day of class after professor's lecture. We were assigned to work on a set of essays in class (as group work, of course). First essay presented a classroom case study and asked something along the lines of "compare and contrast what theory A and theory B have to say about this situation and how each one might be applied to the situation" (I thought it was a pretty good question - certainly one of the best I have ever seen in any education class - this was the same prof from the previous class.) Student in group proceeds to open up book, copy out verbatim the textbook's explanation of theory A (in abstract, not applying it to the situation in the question at all) and then theory B. period. end of essay. Refused to listen to my objections that we had not answered the question. Thankfully, professor exempted me from having to work in groups after that. Which was a good thing, since I received the only A in the class.

Scene: Introduction to Education class. Before midterm and final exams, professor handed out "review list" of 100 items. Exam had exactly these items (written in exactly the same way, the order was even identical) as either T-F questions or fill-in-the-blank questions.

Scene: Doctoral-level curriculum course. Entire grade based on final exam. Questions provided ahead of time. You could bring your pre-written answers into the exam room. Only requirement was that you had to copy them into the professor-provided blue-book in the exam time alloted.

Constructivism: For those of you who have not heard me rant about "constructivism," you can think of it as the new "New Math." It starts from the premise that knowledge is not taught by the teacher, but rather "constructed" in the mind of the learner. It then takes reasonable-sounding statement and through the most bizarre arguments I have ever seen, arrives at conclusions such as:
* first graders should be given calculators with which to learn arithmetic (news flash: they don't learn it - DUH!)
* high schools should not teach algebra-geometry-precalc-calculus, instead focusing on statistics
* students should do all work on a computer starting in middle school