Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!burl!codas!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Ph.D.'s and Teaching
Message-ID: <2970@killer.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jan 88 04:02:33 GMT
References: <136@mccc.UUCP>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 50

[Re: Chemistry teacher in secondary schools should be a Chemistry
major with a couple of education courses, not an Education major
with a couple of Chemistry courses:]

in article <136@mccc.UUCP>, pjh@mccc.UUCP (Peter J. Holsberg) says:
> Noo Joisey has recently enacted legislature/created policy that allows 
> school boards to hire people with subject matter expertise but no teacher
> training, based apparently on thoughts similar to yours!

Louisiana also recently passed a similiar law (about time -- the only
school system worse than that of Louisiana is Mississippi). It
requires the person to take 9 hours of Education classes during
the summer.

One problem, however, is that very few schools can support more than one or
two sections of Chemistry, at least, not Louisiana public schools or
"fundamentalist" academies (which are mostly Bible-study groups :-(. Around
here, the only schools that could possibly feed and clothe a full-time
Chemistry teacher are the more prestigious parochial schools of the
"established" religions (note that Louisiana has never had a tradition of
prestigious private academies such as some Northern states have... that niche
has always been filled here by parochial schools, especially the Catholic
ones, since over 50% of the state's population is Catholic). Of the two public
high schools that I attended, both of which had about 1400 students, both had
trouble filling a single section of Physics, and both only had a couple of
sections apiece of Biology and Chemistry. It's interesting to note that in the
parochial school I attended for a couple of years, they DID have both a
full-time Physics teacher and a full-time Chemistry teacher -- but then,
Chemistry and Physics were both required, at that school.

Things might have improved a bit since then, especially with recent Louisiana
laws requiring two sections of science in order to graduate. But still, I
doubt it (probably all that the Louisiana laws accomplished was the dilution
of science and mathematics courses to the point where any semi-vegetative
potato-brain could pass them, especially with the shortage of mathematics and
science teachers -- thus the justification for the recent law to allow math
and science majors to teach high school with just a summer's worth of
education courses). It is still quite probable that in the majority of the
U.S., students are still not required to take science and mathematics courses
in order to graduate (or, at least, not beyond "Consumer Math" and "Home
Economics"). Until we put those kids in class, it gets very hard to
economically justify paying a person full-time wages to work 2 hours a day
(and do you REALLY think that someone with a BS in Chemistry can afford to
work part-time?).

--
Eric Lee Green  elg@usl.CSNET     Asimov Cocktail,n., A verbal bomb
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg              detonated by the mention of any
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191              subject, resulting in an explosion
Lafayette, LA 70509                    of at least 5,000 words.