Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ncar!gatech!udel!burdvax!emerald!dave From: dave@emerald.PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity Message-ID: <8716@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> Date: 21 Dec 88 16:01:43 GMT References: <4550@homxc.UUCP> <4847@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2082@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <9237@ihlpb.ATT.COM> Sender: news@PRC.Unisys.COM Organization: Unisys Corporation, Paoli Research Center; Paoli, PA Lines: 60 In article <9237@ihlpb.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) writes: >But look who teaches the intro courses at the majority of American >universities: teaching assistants. What are their *teaching* >qualifications? None. You do not need an education in education to be >considered qualified to practice education at the college level (ironic, >isn't it?). I cannot think of any other profession where this is true. My turn to disagree. As a former professor (well, assistant professor), I used to hear these gripes all the time. Bluntly, this is bullshit. 1. True, the teaching assistants have not, in general, had any education courses. Neither have the professors! 2. We worked very hard at choosing the teaching assistants; we always had good reasons to believe that the persons we chose both knew the material and had good communication skills. Other factors are involved in choosing faculty. 3. If a teaching assistant turned out to be a poor teacher, we got them out of teaching (made them a graduate assistant, or something). While faculty can be released because of poor teaching, it's damned rare, and I have never seen a case (and I've known some pretty poor teachers!). 4. In my experience (~21 years on one side or the other), on average, teaching assistants teach about as well as faculty. The bad ones are seldom as bad, the good ones are seldom as good, and the average is probably a little higher. 5. I think few would disagree that teaching works better when the teacher is interested in and excited by his/her subject matter. When, in the name of teaching students with "real professors," you take experts and have them teach introductory material to Freshman, this is bad news for everyone concerned (again, in my experience). Often enough, however, teaching assistants ARE excited about the material, and convey that excitement to their students. 6. At most schools each faculty member is qualified to teach a narrow range of advanced courses, and nobody else on the faculty (or almost nobody else) is qualified to teach those courses. Hence, putting faculty to work teaching lowest-common-denominator courses is poor utilization of resources. This is simple economics, a matter of getting the most value for your resources. 7. Public school teachers have taken LOTS of education courses. Yet somehow, when people talk about the crisis in education, they usually mean in the public schools, not in the universities--why is that? Yes, I agree with you that everyone who teaches should have some training in how to teach. Yes, I agree with you that a student needs to build a firm foundation in the basics of a subject before going on to advanced topics. Yes, you have probably encountered a teaching assistant--maybe more than one--with abysmal teaching skills. But if you conclude from this that we should replace teaching assistants with faculty, you're dead wrong. Don't tar everyone with the same brush. -- Dave Matuszek (dave@prc.unisys.com) -- Unisys Corp. / Paoli Research Center / PO Box 517 / Paoli PA 19301 -- Standard disclaimer: Any resemblance between my opinions and those of my employer is strictly coincidental.