Teaching To The Test

When I taught high school and when I talk to people who still teach high school, aside from being miserable, the main topic is statistics and how they are doing everything humanly possible to get those stats up.  (Notice, nothing is being said about getting knowledge up.)  Not only has a generation of students been corrupted, but a generation of teachers as well.

Several days weeks ago I covered a class for a colleague.  The lesson was on exponential and logarithmic equations.  When I called to tell her I covered the entire section she told me she never bothered teaching one particular method because it is never on the final.  I couldn't believe she was teaching to the exam in college.  After years in high school she was brain washed into caring about stats and not education.  Another colleague sent out an e-mail about her 100% passing rate in the remedial class she taught.  While this is great, and she should realize she worked hard and accomplished a lot, the passing rate is no indication of the type of teacher she is.

More and more I see adjuncts teaching their college classes like high school classes.  They run off work sheets and make photo copies of books because that is the only way to get students to work and succeed.  The dummying down of high school has unwittingly spread into college with teaching being as corrupted as students.