On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 18:30:04 -0500, vincent p. norris
wrote:

I believe education majors in universities have the lowest SAT scores of
any field other than physical education.

That seems to be true, and it is one of the most rgrettable things
about our society. Our kids should be taught by the brightest, not
by the dimmest.

We aren't willing to pay for the brightest, though.

Say I'm good at math and I like it, so I can go into teaching for some
miserable pittance or I can go into engineering for three times as
much. If I'm as smart as you're hoping for, I'm too smart to go into
teaching. And I save a year of college, because teaching takes five
years and engineering takes the standard four years.

In my own case, my father was a high-school teacher and my parents
really did their best to discourage me from going into teaching.
Having watched my father, I was never tempted at all. Teaching a
night course at the local junior college for three semesters just
reaffirmed the rightness of my decision.

If you want, you can blame it all on the women's movement, since it
was that that opened other occupations to women. No longer forced to
be teachers or nurses, we chose higher-paying, more prestigious
professions. Let's face it, "I'm a third-grade teacher" doesn't get
nearly the attention "I'm a research engineer at NASA" does.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer