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E-PrinceRichardson Auditorium, where I spoke last week at the invitation of the Woodrow Wilson School, is where Wilson himself first called upon Princeton to be “In the nation’s service,” in 1896. His words still resonate today.
Wilson said of ...
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If you want smart kids to go into teaching, you need to make the profession of teaching more prestigious/lucrative. Pretty simple.
Break the unions and you'll get your teachers. But as it is why would someone from Princeton want to start a career in teaching public schools? No merit pay, no freedom, no money.... But of course taking on the unions means giving up the #1 Democratic voting bloc so they'll never do it.
Grover, I had started to respect you, but this is a ridiculous comment. "Break the unions and you'll get your teachers." Right--even less pay, less respect. Do YOU want to take a job where Christopher Whittle is deciding who's meritorious, and who isn't (not to mention the budgeting nightmare variable salaries would cause any school district)?? Look at the Sr. Calvo mess (tragedy) if you want to see what happens when teachers don't have tenure. And, it is true that not all teachers are good teachers, but based on my experience as the daughter of, and friend of, many teachers, as well as someone who has worked on Wall Street, there are many people out there in many occupations who are not good at their jobs. Getting rid of teachers' unions will only cripple the profession more. Maybe we should just get rid of ignorant commentators such as you--that would at least be one step in the right direction.
NONONONONONONO!
"The single-biggest impact we can have in education is to get America’s hardest-working and smartest people to pursue teaching"
Getting the most productive members of society to not further everyone's well-being (and tax revenues for Mr. Duncan) in their chosen profession but instead choose a profession that requires people to have pedagogic skills rather than in-depth knowledge of their fields is a complete waste of talent. There are wonderful people out there who would not even need a University degree to become a middle school teacher perhaps, because they have life experience and pedagogical skills.
When people complain about the brightest minds ending up only in Finance, I am pretty sure the reason is because they should use their intelligence in more productive ways and not in a job that is necessary but does not require extreme intelligence of the kind Princeton rewards.Should the best physicists leave physics to the mediocre people and instead go and teach middle-schoolphysics? This is absurd.
Obviously, it would be great if ALL professions had the smartest people at their disposal, but given that they are in limited supply, using the smartest people in a profession where effectiveness is not really related to their IQ and that is plagued by inefficiencies is a loss for the country as a whole. Thank you, Mr. Duncan.
Being a teacher isn't as easy as you all make it out to seem. Some of us are motivated by making a difference in the life of a young adult. The way I see it is this: I can burn my one candle completely, or I can light the flames of countless others who will go on to pursue my subject. It's disgusting to imply that teaching is a "job that is necessary but does not require extreme intelligence of the kind Princeton rewards" (@ good intentions...). I would not be the teacher I am today if I had not graduated from Princeton. Every day I challenge my students to think deeply in the way that Princeton professors challenge their students to think.
If you're not going to part of the solution, then don't go spreading around your negativity, discouraging the best and the brightest from doing noble work. We all agree that the educational system in the U.S. isn't as good as it can be. As I went around observing teachers at schools, the best teachers I saw - the ones who were making the greatest difference in the lives of their students - were Princeton grads. Just something to think about before you perpetuate the stereotype that "those who can, do; those who cannot, teach."
Great teachers aren't rewarded. Teachers with seniority are. When you reward mediocrity, what do you get? (Hint: the answer is not "excellence")
@every child...
You misunderstood my post: As I said, it is of course true that it would be great if excellent people were in every profession including teaching and of course they will be able to do SOME good there. However, if we have to choose what profession the brightest should join (eg amazing physicists), it should be the one that they have the greatest comparative advantage in, ie the one that we could not very well train other people, with less potential on other fields to do.
It is clearly absurd to say that teaching should be an end in itself and the employment of choice for all the brightest graduates: after all, we teach students so that they will be bright and go on to...improve the world in ways other than teaching. In the same way that the best minds going to Finance is not a great way to make this world a better place, all the brightest minds going to education would be a bad idea. Especially in a system that is too rigid to allow their creativity and insights t make a large difference because what matters are union rules, seniority and silly social norms like herding large numbers of students together in large concrete buildings early in the morning although that is of dubious educational benefit.
parent, breaking the unions would make current teachers worse off in aggregate. It would also allow better teachers to be rewarded and terrible teachers to be fired, taken off the books. Rewarding good teachers increases the incentive for Princeton graduates to enter the field--as it is they get the lowest pay, the least respect, and the least security with LIFO. If you think that your friends/mother are good teachers, wouldn't you want them to have the ability to earn the rewards they deserve?
every child, you are more than a little over the top. For all the anecdotes, it's unclear what effect, if any, teachers have on life outcomes. Your good students would have been good without you, your bad students will be bad despite you, and that one in the middle who you just know you saved...how are you going to track his success? Really, you have to be pretty arrogant to think that you, personally, can make a big difference in a kid's life. His parents, his peers, his talents, his interests, his luck--all dominated by the influence of one noble teacher who saw him for an three times a week for eight months. You're burning out your one candle completely, you just don't know it yet.
@good intentions are not enough: we need smart people to *fix* the system that is plagued with inefficiencies and to teach our lower-income/minority students, so as not to allow the talent of a large number of our nation's young citizens to drain away into crime & poverty. graduation rates in a number of cities are as low as 53% (compare to suburbia: 71%) (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/education/22d...). there's a strong correlation between lack of education and the perpetuity of social ills, and even if there are too many variables to call it direct causation, it's a problem that needs to be solved.
@grover: here's something to think about. despite a kid's parents, peers, talents, interest and luck, he still has to spend YEARS in K-12 education. if you look back on your own education, you might find that you did indeed learn something. So perhaps there might be a difference between having 13 years of good teachers vs. 13 years of mediocre or bad ones.
"The single-biggest impact we can have in education is to get America’s hardest-working and smartest people to pursue teaching."
Hardest-working? Sure. Smartest? Hardly necessary. Let the smartest pursue what they are best at... unless what they are best at is "teaching". Seriously, one does not need to go to Princeton to be a competent teacher of inner city kids (and I say inner city kids because you would probably say that prep schoolers are receiving adequate educations already), nor would going to Princeton necessarily help you in your endeavor of teaching poor, dumb, at-risk youth.