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From: windley@iris.ucdavis.edu (Phil Windley)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Ph.D.'s and Teaching
Message-ID: <844@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 16 Jan 88 21:19:24 GMT
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Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: windley@iris.ucdavis.edu (Phil Windley)
Organization: U.C. Davis - College of Engineering
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All this discussion of Ph.D.s and teaching has lead me to a question.
The US is largely regarded to have one of the best university systems
in the world and at the same time is largely regarded to have one of
the worst secondary school systems around.  Why then should we suppose
that taking education classes that up until now have been largely
tailored for secondary school teachers will help?

I know someone is going to say that the problem is not the education
that these people receive, but the lack of money.  Certainly more
money could be spent on teacher's salarys, but I beleive an even
larger problem is that most secondary school teachers don't know their
subject.  A chemistry teacher in high school should be a chemistry
major who took a couple of education courses, not an education major
who took a couple of chemistry courses.  Rather than try to figure out
how to improve and already good system, the univesities, let's discuss
how to improve a not so good system, the high schools.

Phil Windley
Robotics Research Lab
University of California, Davis