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from the those-who-can,-do,-those-who-can't,-teach dept.
In the US: this article presents an analysis how a person's chosen college major corresponds to their IQ. The interesting thing is that the relationship has remained essentially stable over the past 70 years. At the top of the list are math, science and engineering. At the absolute bottom of the list: education.
These data show that US students who choose to major in education, essentially the bulk of people who become teachers, have for at least the last seven decades been selected from students at the lower end of the academic aptitude pool. A 2010 McKinsey report (pdf) by Byron Auguste, Paul Kihn, and Matt Miller noted that top performing school systems, such as those in Singapore, Finland, and South Korea, "recruit 100% of their teacher corps from the top third of the academic cohort."
The article points out that it isn't quite this simple: Top schools place high requirements on all of their students; poor schools generally attract lower quality students in all of their programs. Still, the national averages are clear: overall, the least intelligent students go on to teach. This is an odd priority.
Educational organizations, of course, have a different view. This article claims that teacher quality declined from the 1960s through the 1990s, but has since recovered, with teachers being barely below average (48th percentile) among college graduates.
On a related note, there is a strong international correlation between teacher pay and student outcomes. The (rather obvious) theory is that higher pay attracts better candidates to the teaching profession.
No conclusions - just thought this might spark an interesting discussion...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @02:51PM
I have no problems with that. If their children are willing to go through the effort to learn stuff and earn their status through their intelligent capabilities that's good. Then they can use that knowledge to push the technological envelope, find cures to diseases, and advance our tech to make everyone better off. That's earning a living and is far different than lazy people that rule due to how they manipulate politics and how politicians acquire their wealth due to getting kickbacks.
I know a lot of people that make millions of dollars because they own legitimate businesses but they worked their butts off, are very intelligent, and some are proficient in several languages even. They earned it and if their children aren't slack offs and wish to study to earn their living too I see no problem with that. If their children end up being lazy and all they want to do is party and drink and do drugs and don't want to put the effort to learn then they deserve to lose those fortunes. Education is a good thing and it's something we should invest in including private tutoring. and now with youtube and whatnot more people have the opportunity to acquire knowledge probably thanks to those smart people (the ruling class with their private tutors) you hate so much that made all this technology possible.