Are there any teachers on the board?

[Adora]

Just asking. My mum's a teacher. English, religion, and occasional history. She's also admin. Anyway, this weekend I agreed to help her mark some of the exams she had to do. Oh sweet mother of fuck. They were so awful. We're talking basic "parable" shit I knew when I was 12, and these kids are 17. Consequently, I am drunk because I realised the more alcamahol I ingest, the easier it is to mark these things. And yeah, a lot of the other teachers (and teachers-in-training) I know are similar when it comes to marking.

[Petra]

She's also admin.

Your mother is livius drusus! :faint:

Anyway, this weekend I agreed to help her mark some of the exams she had to do. Oh sweet mother of fuck. They were so awful. We're talking basic "parable" shit I knew when I was 12, and these kids are 17.

All I can say is try to bear in mind that you grew up with ready and informed access to this stuff - many of these kids didn't, and so their knowledge and thinking within these topics will be less sophisticated than yours. (And, no, that's not me agreeing with your stance on everything! :D )

Consequently, I am drunk because I realised the more alcamahol I ingest, the easier it is to mark these things. And yeah, a lot of the other teachers (and teachers-in-training) I know are similar when it comes to marking.

I'm not a teacher, but it might be a good idea to either stop drinking or stop marking at this point.

[JoeP]

Quotes/examples please!

[Adora]

Oh, um, one kid mistook some Aesops fable about Crow and Fox or something for a bible parable. Most of them used first-person even though these were essay replies. And I'm not even going to start on their spelling and grammar.

All I can say is try to bear in mind that you grew up with ready and informed access to this stuff - many of these kids didn't, and so their knowledge and thinking within these topics will be less sophisticated than yours.
That's not true. The 17 year olds I went to school with who didn't have religious teachers as mothers knew what a fucking parable was for exams. This is just a really bloody dumb bunch of kids.

[godfry n. glad]

Hey, Adora...

I'm a former teacher. Trained as a secondary social studies teacher, I did five years as a substitute teacher in classrooms all over the metropolitan area in which I live. That's about eight different school districts (city and suburban) in a Pacific coast state in the U.S. As a substitute teacher (read: fresh meat), I taught all kinds of hooligans from age 12 to 19.

As a social studies teacher, I was competent in economics, history, anthropology, geography, and "social sciences". Global studies is a big requirement for 14-15 year olds in my immediate culture, and I'll tell you...even after a year of this stuff, these kids are clueless. Retention is appalling. Reasonable application is fragmentary. Composition is terrible and actual handwriting is dreadful. When I was teaching, kids were just starting to compose on computers...meaning downloading stuff that applied and turning it in as assignments (often without reading the entire thing, which is amusing when you find it out). What I have found is that there are, in an average classroom, a sizeable number of students who wander in, sit down and tune out. I had the great good luck to be able to do extended stays, actually teaching, in what are called Advance Placement classes, consisting of students who studied to take an exam at the end of the year. If they did well on the challenging exams, they could garner college credits before entering college. These were motivated kids with supportive families. That was heartening... But the average classroom is not. Advanced placement students constitute about 3-5% of any school population, and they are being increasingly cut out of opportunites due to budget constraints.

[Carnivale Ed]

I think concern over 'the youth of today' can be a bit overblown sometimes. I've got a bunch of friends who were the biggest dickheads, clowns, and morons in high school. Nightmares for the teachers, I'm sure. They're all now reasonably intelligent and successful adults. Bankers, electricians, teachers, engineers, plumbers. People learn things when they need to learn them, I think, and it's not necessarily the stuff put before them in high school. Academic proficiency is a useful skill, education is a noble goal, but neither is an absolute necessity to live a happy and meaningful life.

[Adora]

Oh, I'm not concerned over the wellbeing of the kids, I just can't believe some people actually choose to be teachers. *boggles*

[Carnivale Ed]

Oh, okay. Yes, then, they're insane.

[godfry n. glad]

Why the hell you think I've had my sig line for so long?

I gave up trying to get an insane job and took a library job.

[ChuckF]

Oh, I'm not concerned over the wellbeing of the kids, I just can't believe some people actually choose to be teachers. *boggles*
Yeah, I'm putting course descriptions online. These are English-language courses, with descriptions written in English, by native English speakers who teach these courses. In English. To foreign students. One of them just used the word inconsecutive.

[Carnivale Ed]

That's just unsensical.

[D. Scarlatti]

That's unpossible!

:ralphie:

[Sock Puppet]

One of them just used the word inconsecutive.
So? It's a perfectly cromulent word.

I knew I'd never be a teacher when my 8th grade class started discussing the US Presidents. Half of the class thought that Abraham Lincoln was the first President. Of those who knew that Washington was first, most were certain that Lincoln was second. This was not just a couple dumb kids' responses -- this was a good 90% of the class. Granted, it was just 8th grade, but still, that's fucking outrageous. This was not particularly recent, either (I'm pushing 40, hard), and from all info I've seen it has just gotten worse since.

Warning! Confirmation bias! :warning:

[BDS]

I taught “Introduction to Anthropology” when I was in Grad school at Arizona State University. My biggest claim to fame: Barry Bonds (yes, arguably the best hitter in the history of Major League Baseball) was in my class.

If I had flunked him (as he perhaps deserved), he would have been kicked off the ASU baseball team, his baseball career would have floundered, and Hank Aaron’s record would now be safe. Fortunately for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants, I never flunked anyone, if I could possibly help it.