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March 11, 2004

Teachers - SCSU Scholars points

Teachers - SCSU Scholars points us to a wonderful piece by Michael Tinker on why standards may not be as important as the teachers who teach the material.

To which I reply "Alleluiah".

Tinker says:

So the so-called "greatest generation" didn't do well on standardized history tests? Hmmm. I was thinking about my own history career before college. I went to a really good high school in Chattanooga, TN and had:

*7th grade - American History - junior school football coach
*9th grade - "government" - not bad, though the teacher was reputedly a charity hire; he was certainly odd, without being crazy enough to be vivid or fun
*10th grade - European history - the chainsmoking registrar, the only class he taught. Misery. I read the textbook to pass the time, and when I finished that started snaffling books off his shelf. Guess that's why I did well on the AP.
*11th grade - American history from a man who was a historian. Bob Bailey, r.i.p, was a fine teacher and a fine historian. If he did anything outside the classroom for the school (and it was the kind of place where every teacher did something) I don't remember it. We were his priority. Little as I have grown up to enjoy the kind of historian who wears costumes which reflect his favorite period this man could make us think that history was interesting and that writing the history term paper was a mild imposition.

I have no problem believing that most people learned little from their history teachers, given how little I, who seemed to be destined for the subject, learned from 3 out of 4 in high school.

Was your experience different?

Oh, good lord, no.
  • Seventh grade History and eighth grade Geography were both taught by the Girls Basketball coach. He was a real guy, which served its own purpose - most of my male classmates had never had a male teacher, and they certainly needed one. He really didn't know much about history beyond what was in the textbook, and certainly had no idea how to make it compelling to students who weren't already fascinated by it.
  • Seventh grade English was taught by a girl's Track coach. I think English had been her minor (she'd majored in Phy Ed), and only because she liked books.
  • Eighth grade English teacher - a guy who'd gotten back from Vietnam a few years earlier, and was visibly bored teaching junior high English - he left the profession a few years later to open an electronics shop.
  • Ninth grade civics was taught by a guy who was quite visibly punching the clock 'til retirement. He'd been in WWII, and rumor had it that he'd been the only survivor of a platoon that had been ambushed in Italy. Occasionally, when a car backfired or a malicious student popped a paper bag behind him, he'd still flatten himself on the floor, automatically. Knew very little about the subject.
  • Ninth grade English; a pleasant woman who was very clearly bored with teaching, after about two years in the field. I think she left teaching to be a housewife a few years later. I loved the literature semester, and got straight "A"s. The grammar part? Well, this was the third time I'd had it in three years, to say nothing
  • Tenth grade social studies ("Africa", "Ancient Rome" and "Western Civ") were team-taught by two people - a confirmed bachelor who quite visibly hated teenagers, and a woman we'll return to shortly.
  • Tenth grade English was another team project; Literature was taught by an older fella who seemed to wish he was teaching college; he was visibly fascinated by his material, but was completely unable to convey that fascination to anyone, including me. I got straight "B"s. The Grammar teacher was a grossly-overweight recently-divorced woman who, in hindsight, resembled the demon spawn of Roseanne Barr and Al Franken. On this, my fourth or sixth pass through the rules of Grammar, I was so bored I ended up spending most of the semester dreaming about surfing and designing the army I'd have when I founded my own country. I got C's and D's, and she told me I had no aptitude in English.
  • The varsity football coach taught eleventh grade history. He wasn't the typical football coach - a genial, agreeable guy, really - and he freely admitted I knew more about history than he did. "Talk is cheap", you say - but he also let me teach the World War II unit.
  • I had my dad for eleventh-grade English, and a great Creative Writing teacher my senior year. Finally.
  • Senior year "Government" class was taught by a guy who was very obviously counting the hours until retirement. How completely had he given up? He'd assign ten-page papers. A well-researched eight-page paper would get a "C". Ten pages of dirty jokes wrapped with a beginning and end-page that looked like thesis and conclusion pages would get an "A+". His wife - the aforementioned tenth-grade social studies teacher - was the same thing, only her hair was curlier. He counted the pages, rather than reading them. This was one of the few classes where summer school was a plum merit assignment; kids competed to get into the summer class, working hard for the limited number of seats; it was great practice for medical and law school (although I got into it...).
I got a BA in English, with a minor in History (and one in German, but for some reason Language teachers seem to want to teach languages; I never met a coach that taught languages).

Point being, if you want people to learn social studies, it might be a good idea to put a premium on finding people who care about teaching the subject.

Posted by Mitch at March 11, 2004 06:01 AM
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