HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
Subject: Re: Free Middle/High School Broadcasts
Organization: Quake Public Access
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 02:53:41 GMT

In article <1992Nov13.155504.23313@nhgs.vak12ed.edu> pgolden@nhgs.vak12ed.edu (Patrick S. Golden) writes:
>REACHING FOR THE STARS
>
>A free, nationwide distance-learning program designed to  
>encourage young minority and female middle and high-school  
>students to pursue careers in science and engineering

>Program Objectives:

>The series is designed to provide viewers with:

>- An awareness of the career possibilities and rewards that exist for  
>students --   particularly minorities and women -- in engineering 
>and the  sciences.

I really despise this sort of racist attitude.  Why single these people out?
The implication is that race and sex make some kind of difference in these
areas (and others...special treatment for women and minorities is expressed
everywhere in the educational world).  

--Brian
Xref: sparky misc.education:4391 sci.bio:4173 sci.chem:4723 sci.math:15230 sci.physics:19223
From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: misc.education,sci.bio,sci.chem,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
Date: 19 Nov 92 14:54:24 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department

In article <1992Nov18.232544.26531@eng.umd.edu> clin@eng.umd.edu (Charles C. Lin) writes:


>    One problem with education is that is has a fairly low stature among
>those who would like to particiapte, and that education is something that
>requires a lot of people.   Given that the "best" students choose not
>to go to education, and given that you will always need a large number
>of teachers, then you will face the problem of having teachers who
>are not as competent as one would like.

>    Now, it's hard, in general, to get teachers who are great at motivation
>like Jaime Escalante, just like it may be difficult to get high quality
>lawyers or doctors who can perform some kinds of legal cases or surgery.
>How does one teach how to teach?   The method that some subscribe to is
>that if they're bad, get rid of them.   The teachers, that is.  If we
>do that, then we're going to run out of teachers very quickly.   What
>is needed is someone or some group that can efficiently teach teachers
>and evaluate teachers on their ability to teach, and this is always
>fraught with politics.   Who is to decide who is a good teacher and who
>is not?  And so forth.

If we put in any standards about who is a good teacher, we will find we
are already out of them.  As to how to teach, how to motivate, etc., we
will have to learn how to do it, and also realize that we do not know
enough.  We have suffered from the schools of education using objective
tests to measure learning, when the important things to be learned cannot
be so measured.  We have suffered from eliminating most of the challenges
for students to apply what they learned in situation A to situation B, 
because they could not do this as well as spouting memorized details.

But we can see it a teacher knows the subject.  In some cases, we can see
if a teacher can learn the subject.  If not, how much good is the teacher
doing by teaching the subject?  Every indication I get is that most of the
present teachers could not learn what most of those they are teaching can
learn except rote.  We cannot make progress by being willing to accept the
results.  If college students cannot formulate word problems, we have to
consider that they have not been taught this at all, or taught this so
quickly that learning was essentially impossible, not that they were unable
to learn it when it was properly taught.  If not all can learn it, so be it;
nothing is gained by false certification.  
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@snap.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)
Newsgroups: misc.education
From: wkl1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Wing-Keong Loke                                               the consummate chronic prevaricator)
Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
Organization: Mississippi State University
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 09:12:16 GMT

In article <hdev.722131064@dutiag> hdev@dutiag.tudelft.nl (Hans de Vreught) writes:
>
>Good doctors make less errors than bad ones, but don't forget they all make
>errors. But hack, sometimes you need one of them, so you have to go to them.
>Even a bad one knows more of medicine than you do and any doctor can do the
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>simple stuff.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>--
>Hans de Vreught                          | John von Neumann:
>hdev@dutiba.twi.tudelft.nl               | Young man, in mathematics
>Delft University of Technology (TWI-ThI) | you don't understand things,
>The Netherlands                          | you just get used to them.

	Unfortunately, many of us would say the underlined above is
not true for bad teachers.  Many of us "ignorant" folks really can
do without a bad teacher even if we needed teching. (The smiley should
be here, but in view of the sombre nature of the topic...)

Wing

Newsgroups: misc.education
From: scollege@lascar.puc.cl (Santiago College)
Subject: Invitacion a realizar proyectos Cooperativos
Organization: Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 20:51:03 GMT

El colegio Santiago College, de Chile, esta realizando experiencias 
educativas en las que se aplican las comunicaciones, si hay algn colegio
que desee saber o interiorizarse respecto de este tema comunicarse, con
e- mail scollege@lascar.puc.cl
teacher : Raul Castro
Xref: sparky misc.education:4406 alt.discrimination:4682 soc.culture.african.american:11330 soc.women:19971
From: mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel)
Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
Followup-To: misc.education,sci.edu
Organization: Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:35:11 GMT

In article <BxwqDy.6C3@quake.sylmar.ca.us> brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us
(Brian K. Yoder) writes:
>What I know is that most of the teachers I have known are outright 
>anti-intellectual when it comes right down to their real values.  Such people
>are hardly likely to inspire (or even condone) real education.  Some kids DO
>find a good teacher or have good parents who do get them on the right track,
>but it's despite the educational system, not because of it. 

     Who hires teacher?  Is it not the school boards?  Who elects the
school boards?  Why, we do!
     In a democracy, we all share both in the glory of our national
achievements and in the ignominy of our failures.  Sure, there are
plenty of rotten teachers.  Sure, a good teacher can make a difference.
Putting all of our frustrations with the educational system on the
shoulders of the teachers is however misplacing the blame.  If the parents
cared enough to run for school board positions and vigorously supervise
the school system, if they cared enough to force their politicians at
all levels to make the regulations sensible, then we would get a good
educational system.  Bad teachers are only allowed to stay because we
don't care enough to force them out.  (Don't tell me about the unions.
They only protect the ineffective because we let them do so, not because
it's intrinsically a part of their mandates.)  Potentially good teachers are
prevented from doing their jobs properly because we let our governments
frame a lot of well-intentioned regulations without providing proper
funding for the measures required.
     In each of our homes, we have the influence to give our children
proper attitudes to learning.  Even in a bad school district, we can
make sure that our children are not harmed by careless teaching.  It is
collectively however, through the power of the ballot, that we have the
most ability to influence our children's educations.  Go ahead.  Blame
the teachers.  It's a lot easier than blaming yourself for allowing
things to go on as they have, isn't it?

				Marc R. Roussel
                                mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca
Newsgroups: misc.education,sci.astro,sci.bio,sci.chem,sci.math,sci.physics
From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
Organization: Quake Public Access
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 02:22:28 GMT

In article <1992Nov12.162137.24580@news.unige.ch> swann@divsun.unige.ch (SWANN Philip) writes:
>I have lived and/or worked in various countries and the almost universal
>lack of respect for the teaching profession continues to astonish
>me - especially when it is contrasted with the fawning subservience
>displayed to other "professionals" such as lawyers and doctors. This
>lack of respect must certainly derive in part from a subconscious guilt
>on the part of parents who are too weak-willed or lazy or busy to prepare
>their children properly for school: 

That's nonsense!  There is a much more obvious answer which is that everyone
in society has a change to spend a lot of time watching teachers close up.
What they see is that the vast majority are mediocre and a large number are
grossly incompetent.  You seem to think that teachers are on average just
as competent as doctors and lawyers, and that this is just a problem of
perception.  Do you seriously believe that?

Consider this:  Do you equally respect the skills and accomplishments of an
american businessman and a soviet enterprise administrator?  One takes 
skills and guts, the other just takes an ability to put up with nonsense
and inefficiency and keep you mouth shut when confronted with incompetent 
superiors.  I think you can see the parallels quite easily.

>it's easier to bad-mouth the teacher
>than to turn the television off. 

OK, so how do you explain the bad reputations teachers have among people 
who don't have kids in school (like myself)?  Has it occurred to you that
such bad reputations might be JUSTIFIED?  Perhaps the fact that it's next
to impossible to have a teacher fired for incompetence might have something
to do with it?

--Brian

Newsgroups: misc.education
From: dhosek@cbrown.claremont.edu
Subject: Re: School Year Round
Organization: Quixote Digital Typography
Date: 16 Nov 92 23:13:00 PDT

In article <BxuI4r.5yr@access.digex.com>, mjensen@access.digex.com (MPJensen) writes:
>>hunter@master.lds-az.loral.com (Bill Hunter) writes:

>>I am a School Board Member in Arizona.  We are currently reviewing a
>>schedule change from traditional to year Round classes... I am looking
>>for some strong arguments for and against this issue.  
 
> Keeping school buildings in continuous use will increase maintenance
> costs and utility expenditures.  A Nebraska district estimated at least a
> 25% increase (mostly from AC--hot summers!)

On the other hand, it will cost considerably less to pay a
teacher X% more than to add X% more teachers. This is the main
justification for year-round schooling in most places that do it:
by running school year round, fewer teachers can teach more
students without having over-large classes. Someone described a
model where all students were present all year. Never heard of
that. More common is 2/3 of the students are in school at any
given semester.

-dh
Newsgroups: misc.education
From: smustopo@nyx.cs.du.edu (sofjan mustopoh)
Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 04:37:19 GMT


  I'll add new perspective to this discussion about 
 education. you see i came from Indonesia where there 
 are scarely fund for school. My school operate on the 
 tuition. What i found is that it doesn't matter what 
 kind of school you have. The points is are the student 
 have the will and attitude to learn or not. 
    We never have fancy Lab, Fancy Gymn. or anything.
 But from my class 3 Come here to USA to take undergraduate
 3 to Germany. 2 to Taiwan. And it all come from a class
 of 52. and 50% go to local university. 

    Another things is that here in USA, Currently the generation
 are grown in a "Question the Authority" Culture. The Teacher
 doesn't mean a thing in school. as a teacher you can punish
 the student. else you are abusing the student 
 The student doesn't give a hoot about the teacher. I have
 a friend i met in video arcade. He doens't even care about
 detention hall. back in my days detention hall means my 
 mom going to give me hell of time.

   But of course this is only the negative side. and i admit
 there are so much cultural difference. that the method that 
 works for me are not going to work with your. and vice versa.

   But consider this. All the sharpest swords doesn't means
 a thing if the knight don't know how to swing

  Muskie
  Sofjan Mustopo
From: cyeomans@ms.uky.edu (Charles Yeomans)
Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
    <1992Nov12.162137.24580@news.unige.ch> <BxsELH.65C@quake.sylmar.ca.us>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 16:20:43 GMT
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences

In article <BxsELH.65C@quake.sylmar.ca.us> brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
>In article <1992Nov12.162137.24580@news.unige.ch> swann@divsun.unige.ch (SWANN Philip) writes:
>>I have lived and/or worked in various countries and the almost universal
>>lack of respect for the teaching profession continues to astonish
>>me - especially when it is contrasted with the fawning subservience
>>displayed to other "professionals" such as lawyers and doctors. This
>>lack of respect must certainly derive in part from a subconscious guilt
>>on the part of parents who are too weak-willed or lazy or busy to prepare
>>their children properly for school: 
>
>That's nonsense!  There is a much more obvious answer which is that everyone
>in society has a change to spend a lot of time watching teachers close up.
>What they see is that the vast majority are mediocre and a large number are
>grossly incompetent.  You seem to think that teachers are on average just
>as competent as doctors and lawyers, and that this is just a problem of
>perception.  Do you seriously believe that?
>
>
I wouldn't say that lawyers are necesarily any more competent than teachers
as a group.  Like anyone else, most lawyers find a niche and settle into
it, either due to laziness, fee-generating efficiency or because they 
work in a particularly demanding area - just like professors.

There are plenty of bad lawyers out there in the world.  Now, one might 
argue that the marketplace eliminates bad lawyers (unlike bad teachers),
but that presupposes that the average person can tell the difference
between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer.

The fact is, lawyers have the potential to make a hell of a lot more
money than teachers.  And that's why they are "respected".  Of course, 
most lawyers do not make more money than teachers - I believe the average 
salary for lawyers is around $30,000.  Perhaps if this were publicized,
people wouldn't think so much of lawyers.

Charles Yeomans
cyeomans@ms.uky.edu
yeomans@austin.onu.edu
From: elg@elgamy.uucp.taronga.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 18 Nov 92 19:08:57 CDT
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: quickest way to get a teaching certificate?
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <lgej3lINN4nv@cronkite>, by brendas@tanguray.Central.Sun.COM (Brenda Scarchilli Sun SE - Detroit):
> Anyone know how to get a teaching certificate if one already
> has a BS and MS engineering degree and short cut the cost/and time
> involved in doing this?
>
> I've been told with the above degrees it would take 2 years full time.

It would take that long in Detroit. Michigan is very hard-nosed about
teaching certificates. They require teaching certificates even for private
school teachers -- one of only three states with such a requirement (which
apparently was passed so that private schools would have one more
regulatory hurdle to jump over -- don't want them showing just how cruddy
the public schools are, after all!).

If you want to teach math in Texas (lord forbid!), it will take
approximately 5 months.

Call the personnel department of any major school district in Texas and ask
about alternative certification. If you don't know the phone #'s, your
local public library will have phone books (ask for the "fone fiche" for
Houston, for San Antonio, for Dallas, etc.).

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.taronga.com   Dodson Elementary
 (713) 664-6446                             Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"
Newsgroups: misc.education
From: murthy+@EDRC.CMU.EDU (Sesh Murthy)
Newsgroups: misc.education,misc.kids,k12.chat.teacher
Subject: Re: Parental Involvement in Reading
Date: 22 Nov 92 22:15:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.By51u0.K6A.2
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University

In article <00722044617@elgamy.uucp.taronga.com>, elg@elgamy.uucp.taronga.com (Eric Lee Green) writes:


|> attitude seems to be "It's the school's job to raise my children, I gotta
|> work for a living." In the meantime, well... so it goes.
I am facing the opposite problem.  My daughter (6yrs old and in 1st grade)
can read reasonably well and she likes to read to us.  I do not have time 
to select books for her everyday, and I would like the teacher to assign her 
two books a day to read.  The teacher agrees when I meet her but she does not 
follow through.

It is difficult to buy that many books.  Her level of reading is
constantly improving.  She will not read anything with more than one
difficult word/sentence.  But `difficult' keeps changing.  

I guess I will have to go down to the library with her and get the books
myself.

I have concluded that school is a place where my daughter socializes for
6 hours and that she learns things at home for 2 hours.  

I am not trying to force my daughter to do things she does not want to.
She is intrigued by challenges and she likes to succeed.  Who does not!
If we do not challenge her she will miss the positive reinforcement that
comes with trying something hard and then succeeding.  The problem is
to find something not so hard that she will fail but something slightly
difficult.

If she refuses to do something we just leave her alone.  Eventually she
decides that she wants to do it and gets it done.  Her current favorite
activity is reading.

Anyway I am having fun.

This summer I am thinking of putting together a small robot with her.
(Photovore It take about 30 hours assembly. So it should take us
a few weeks together, with her learning soldering etc.)   I will tell you how 
it turns out.  My other project is to teach her to read Kannada (our mother 
tongue).  My wife is planning on teaching her dance and music.   
Should be a fun summer.

Sorry for rambling on ..

Regards.
Sesh Murthy
Newsgroups: misc.education,sci.edu
From: pmmst8+@pitt.edu (Paul M Mweene)
Newsgroups: misc.education,alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american,soc.women
Subject: Re: Racist/Sexist Role Models
Date: 20 Nov 92 03:25:58 GMT
Followup-To: misc.education
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <1992Nov20.005551.15061@leland.Stanford.EDU> stefan@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stefan Michalowski) writes:
>most white people. Slavery and nazism were great evils, but they were
>in no sense "white", any more than the slaughter of the original
>inhabitants of southern Africa (long before the European settlers
>Stefan

Who were the "original" inhabitants of Southern Africa and who slaughtered them?


makala



Newsgroups: misc.education,sci.astro,sci.bio,sci.chem,sci.math,sci.physics
From: swann@divsun.unige.ch (SWANN Philip)
Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 14:34:53 GMT

In article <BxsELH.65C@quake.sylmar.ca.us>, brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:

> In article <1992Nov12.162137.24580@news.unige.ch> swann@divsun.unige.ch (SWANN Philip) writes:

> >I have lived and/or worked in various countries and the almost universal
   .... [stuff deleted]

> 
> That's nonsense!  There is a much more obvious answer which is that everyone
> in society has a change to spend a lot of time watching teachers close up.
> What they see is that the vast majority are mediocre and a large number are
> grossly incompetent.  You seem to think that teachers are on average just
> as competent as doctors and lawyers, and that this is just a problem of
> perception.  Do you seriously believe that?

On the contrary, I think that the legal and medical professions contain
about the same proportion of mediocrities and incompetents as the teaching
profession does. I also think that the majority of teachers are hard working
and at least competent (like the majority of doctors and lawyers) - they 
just get dumped on more by people like yourself because they are a soft target.

> 
> Consider this:  Do you equally respect the skills and accomplishments of an
> american businessman and a soviet enterprise administrator?  One takes 
> skills and guts, the other just takes an ability to put up with nonsense
> and inefficiency and keep you mouth shut when confronted with incompetent 
> superiors.

Having recently worked for one of the most successful American Corporations,
I can assure you that "putting up with nonsense and inefficiency" and
"keeping one's mouth shut when confronted with incompetent superiors" is
a requisite for survival in them as much as it is other totalitarian
organisations.

Newsgroups: misc.education,sci.edu
From: wkl1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Wing-Keong Loke                                               the consummate chronic prevaricator)
Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
Organization: Mississippi State University
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 08:51:56 GMT

>There is no information about who will or who will not be even a competent
>teacher which is available to anybody at the time of hiring.  Even the
>best universities cannot afford to use reasonable standards for prospective
>schoolteachers, or they will turn out almost none.  The schools of edcuation
>do an evaluation, but what are they evaluating; do not ask the fox to watch
>
	I for one, think you're right about Unis turning out little
teachers if they had good standards of teaching--not when TA's are used to
save money.

>  Even in universities,
>the hiring decisions are largely made by the individual departments.
>
>I HAVE suggested that there be the possibility of evaluations by scholars.
>The objections to this are massive.
>-- 
>Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
>Phone: (317)494-6054
>hrubin@snap.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
>{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)

	Since in Unis the people in the depts are supposed to be scholars,
why the need for outside scholars--if that's what you meant--when the
people inside should be able to make a better judgment due to their
insider knowledge of the workings of the dept concerned?

Wing

Newsgroups: misc.education,sci.astro,sci.bio,sci.chem,sci.math,sci.physics