Green's statement hits directly on the cause of much of our current problems in education… the fact that intelligence, performance, and real-world career success often play little or no role in selecting who should teach. While I do agree that much of teaching is an art-form, the best teachers I had were people who could effectively communicate what they know while using their life experiences as a teaching tool… and they were genuinely intelligent people.
As we have discussed in class, in the United States teachers come from the bottom 50% of their respective graduating classes… then we expect these teachers to improve the performances of students in their classes… such a system seems doomed to failure.
Green’s comments that intelligence and real-world experiences are of little concern are disconcerting to say the least. Wouldn't we want our educators to be the best and the brightest? Wouldn't we want people with real-world experiences who bring an element of applied learning to the classroom rather than simple theory or worse yet, a collection of facts with no applied value?
I have the solution to all our education problems!
With the millions of dollars spent each year on improving test scores and creating new ways to torture graduating seniors, perhaps we should simply recruit teachers from that top 10% as our competitors do from all those countries which consistently outperform us.
Thoughts?