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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: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 01 2016, @03:22PM
Sure, let's just let the kids be taught by 90 IQ simpletons. That should turn out well. Oh, wait, we already do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Friday July 01 2016, @07:19PM
To be fair, high IQ is pretty useless, and maybe even counterproductive in a situation where what we call "learning" is really just rote memorization. I remember getting admonished in high school when I asked "why?" until it was obvious the only answer available at the time was "because it's in the damn book."
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 01 2016, @07:31PM
Not really, it's only a hindrance after however long it took you to stick X in your head. Then homework instead of a learning tool becomes a test of how much pointless bullshit you can put up with. Come to think of it, that's probably good life experience. I'm pretty sure I didn't need that many years of practice though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Friday July 01 2016, @07:54PM
I don't disagree, but I think we're talking two different things here. You're talking about how it should be, not how it is. Any benefits provided by high IQ would suggest that there would be less time teaching to the standardized tests, which I understand to be the "only thing that matters".
High IQ teachers would be a good thing if class time was more organically constructed. That SHOULD be obvious. Thing is, if your entire curriculum is focused around basically teaching a standardized test, then there's really no point.
Sigh, I don't know, man. Maybe you don't see that around you? Might just be a "the midwest sucks" kind of thing.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 01 2016, @08:03PM
Nah, it's exactly like that here too. Reality vs. Should Be. I'm just not adjusting my ideas of what's good for students down to fit the insane and useless public school system we have.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday July 01 2016, @09:09PM
I dunno, I think there's probably more legitimate reasons why a 160 IQ teacher may not be the best even in an ideal classroom. Because not all students have a 160 IQ, and the teacher needs to be able to explain the concepts to all of them. If you're asking questions the teacher can't answer, you're smart enough to go look it up yourself (although in a perfect world, the teacher should help you with that). But if the teacher is explaining things in such a way that only a handful of kids get it, then they're leaving everyone else behind. In later highschool and university classes you can certainly make the case that such people *should* be left behind if they're not willing to work for it...but there's plenty of classes for which that is not an acceptable strategy. The teachers need to understand what they're teaching, but they also need to think about and understand it in a way that their students will be able to grasp too.
Basically...we don't want this:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3565 [smbc-comics.com]