Student invents new math process

On 24 Nov 2003 21:56:42 GMT, Regnirps wrote:

That's what I hate about rec.aviation.military. All the damn topic police!

Discussion of the topic police is off topic for rec.aviation.military.

-Jeff B. (here to help)
yeff at erols dot com

I blame it not on the "womens movement" which is the most ridiculous
thing I've ever heard,,(you had it right at first when you proposed
money as the real reason),,,I'll be even more ridiculous and blame it
on the Nazi's!!!!


On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 16:40:58 -0800, Mary Shafer
wrote:

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 wrote:

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.

It is true that teachers usually don't start very high, but in the Seattle area
we have classroom teachers making over $60K and they have summers off and
several one or two week breaks and frequent three day weekends. Not to mention
that once they figure out a system they have a rather short work day. It think
it is a pretty cushy racket with excellent retirement and benefits of all
stripes. I come from a family full of teachers and as a child I thought
everybody had summers off.

I have been occasionally induced to look at special programs to get people from
the sciences into teaching. Since I was laid off I have looked into them more
seriously and so far thay have turned out to be political scams carefully
designed to look good but be incompletable in practice, at least for someone
who is broke :-)

-- Charlie Springer

Regnirps wrote:

Mary Shafer wrote:

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.

It is true that teachers usually don't start very high, but in the Seattle area
we have classroom teachers making over $60K and they have summers off and
several one or two week breaks and frequent three day weekends. Not to mention
that once they figure out a system they have a rather short work day. It think
it is a pretty cushy racket with excellent retirement and benefits of all
stripes. I come from a family full of teachers and as a child I thought
everybody had summers off.

I have been occasionally induced to look at special programs to get people from
the sciences into teaching. Since I was laid off I have looked into them more
seriously and so far thay have turned out to be political scams carefully
designed to look good but be incompletable in practice, at least for someone
who is broke :-)

-- Charlie Springer

Texas did have a good plan to attract business and science folks into
teaching. Haven't kept up to it since I moved but they paid for the
hours needed to get a teaching certificate and paid you to teach while
you went to school at night.

Louisiana, where I now reside, needs to do something, they're about 40
percent shy of having enough certified teachers in the classrooms so
someone's cousin or sibling is teaching without one. Louisiana also has
the best politicians money can buy. At least two ex insurance
commissioners and one ex governor are in the federal pokey for stealing
from the public. And even at that some dumbasses are getting up a
petition to try to let the governor out because he's old and sick. He
was old and sick when he was stealing from the citizens let him rot in jail.

George

On 24 Nov 2003 21:53:16 GMT, (Regnirps) wrote:

Mary Shafer wrote:

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.

It is true that teachers usually don't start very high, but in the Seattle area
we have classroom teachers making over $60K and they have summers off and
several one or two week breaks and frequent three day weekends. Not to mention
that once they figure out a system they have a rather short work day. It think
it is a pretty cushy racket with excellent retirement and benefits of all
stripes. I come from a family full of teachers and as a child I thought
everybody had summers off.

Those teachers didn't get to $60M very quickly, either. They had to
get a Master's, keep taking courses, and teach a lot of years, like
twenty.

My dad was a teacher and I can tell you that they may not spend eight
hours every day in the classroom, but they make up for it with the
time they spend working at home. And the summers off are spent taking
compulsory courses for currency and increasing pay levels.

There's no "working out a system", either, because schools change
learning programs and texts, workbooks, whatnot, constantly. Plus you
have to teach to constantly-changing standardized tests.

Sixty thousand dollars is somewhat more than half of what I was making
when I retired and I was a civil servant, meaning my pay wasn't that
great. I wouldn't put up with teenagers all day for that. Or
six-year-olds, come to think of it.

Did you know that if you're in a fire and get a visible burn scar you
can lose your teaching credential? Any disfigurement can do it,
actually. That's not the sort of thing I'd like hanging over my head.

I have been occasionally induced to look at special programs to get people from
the sciences into teaching. Since I was laid off I have looked into them more
seriously and so far thay have turned out to be political scams carefully
designed to look good but be incompletable in practice, at least for someone
who is broke :-)

They're not designed for people who are broke; they're designed for
those of us who took early retirement, like me, military folks, and
some industry folks. Teaching would give us a chance to get more
retirement benefits without having them docked the way Social Security
is.

To he who hath shall be given. Says so in the Bible. Well, it says
more in the Bible than just that, but quoting out of context is a
time-honored tradition.

Seriously, I'm sorry they've been such a disappointment. Keep
looking, as some may be more honest.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

Mary Shafer wrote:

Those teachers didn't get to $60M very quickly, either. They had to
get a Master's, keep taking courses, and teach a lot of years, like
twenty.

My dad was a teacher and I can tell you that they may not spend eight
hours every day in the classroom, but they make up for it with the
time they spend working at home. And the summers off are spent taking
compulsory courses for currency and increasing pay levels.

My dad is a retired teacher (as is his brother). He picked up his masters when
I was about two years old so it was his third year teaching. Back then there
was not much in the way of continuing ed that had to be taken. It is his
opinion that you can learn everything you need for the classroom in about three
weeks. The Washington State Governor's progeram I looked into most recently
required that someone with a math/science BS take five full load quarters of ed
classes. It turned out to be a "trial program" with only 20 people being
accepted. Location was an extension program not far from Microsoft headquarters
so renting in the area was out of the question and commuting nearly impossible.
It was supposedly aimed at people caught in the slump who had considered
teaching in the past, but I suspect your explanation is much closer to the
truth.

My opinion is they set up the trial to fail. Probably half the students would
find "real" jobs again in the five quarters the classes took. Half those left
would shoot themselves after three quarters of nothing but mind numbing ed
classes. In the end I bet maybe three teachers come out of it and it can be
declared too inefficient to warrant further investment.

Anyway, by the time I tracked down the program it was full. None of the school
system or state school people could tell me a thing. It turned out that the
only doorway was an obscure link starting on the Governor's web site!

On the other hand, I have had some conflicting reports that some of the school
systems do not require a certificate if you have a MS, PhD, or DrS. I think I
can buy a Doctor of Science in physics or computer science from Manchester for
about $1,200 :-)

As for the high tech professions, have you seen anybody get hired at 52 lately?

-- Charlie Springer

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.

vince norris


Once in a while you get exceptions. Back in the day. . .well I guess
it wasn't THAT long ago (81 or thereabouts. . .God) I had a math
teacher that was a graduate of Brown University. In what I don't
recall but I think he just did the teaching because he *liked* it not
because he needed the money. He was a big guy and old school (even
back then) and you did NOT screw around in class like they do these
day. Well not if you valued your health :-)

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.

vince norris

Unfortunately most of the brightest won't work for what our schools and
we are willing to pay.

Fortunately there are some top notch teachers who are working for
peanuts because they believe in what they do. My wife and daughter are
among them, both graduated summa cum laude from university and both
have gone on to advanced degrees to become better teachers. Lucky for my
wife I don't teach and have always made about ten times what teachers
do. Daughter is a single mom and has sacrificed a lot for what she
believes in. IMHO we need more people like my two ladies.

George

George Shirley wrote:


Fortunately there are some top notch teachers who are working for
peanuts because they believe in what they do. My wife and daughter are
among them, both graduated summa cum laude from university and both
have gone on to advanced degrees to become better teachers. Lucky for my
wife I don't teach and have always made about ten times what teachers
do. Daughter is a single mom and has sacrificed a lot for what she
believes in. IMHO we need more people like my two ladies.

George

I know where you're coming from, my daughter is also a single mom
and teaches ECE (Early Childhood Education) in Canada. She also
has given up a lot to be able to continue, she likens it to 'drug
dependency', says she's hooked on it, loves it.
--

-Gord.

wrote:

George Shirley wrote:


Fortunately there are some top notch teachers who are working for
peanuts because they believe in what they do. My wife and daughter are
among them, both graduated summa cum laude from university and both
have gone on to advanced degrees to become better teachers. Lucky for my
wife I don't teach and have always made about ten times what teachers
do. Daughter is a single mom and has sacrificed a lot for what she
believes in. IMHO we need more people like my two ladies.

George


I know where you're coming from, my daughter is also a single mom
and teaches ECE (Early Childhood Education) in Canada. She also
has given up a lot to be able to continue, she likens it to 'drug
dependency', says she's hooked on it, loves it.
--

-Gord.

I'm just glad someone is willing to do it and do it right. I see too
many kids coming out of high school here in Louisiana who not only can't
read and write they have no "life" skills at all. I end up paying for
they and their children to live on welfare.

I would be in jail for murder if I had to teach junior high or high
school for a living. First little SOB that cursed me or showed
disrespect would learn what an old NCO can do with his boots. Sheesh,
and to think I've got five grandkids in that bunch.

Yeah, I have lots of respect for dedicated teachers and think they
should put the others up against the wall.

George