Speaking of US K-12 education

[Darth Wong]

Education majors are the weakest on campus.

Ours are actually fairly good, but they're mostly PK-P, and quite good people. Our communications majors, OTOH...they need a few more ethics courses. They've falsely attributed quotes to my boss (she was so fed up with it, she kept an open intercom channel to the desk I was at, and I took notes on everything that was said). They've done it to sports coaches too, and been nailed on it. And yet they still keep doing it...*sigh*

With all due respect to those people, if their programs were truly difficult, the entrance requirements wouldn't be the joke that they are. You can get into education by proving you can write your name, and "communications" by proving you can say it.

[Exonerate]

In Taiwan, teachers are very highly paid and highly respected. They are also among the best academic performers, because the entrance requirements are brutal and the best and brightest try to get in because it's such a good job.

That's how you improve teacher quality, not by clever focus groups or motivational experts or "new guidelines". Mind you, it would not sit well with the existing system, where the teachers want more money but would never accept lofty academic expectations or brutal entrance requirements to teachers' college.

When I was in Taiwan, there were a few questionable teachers though. Most were fairly competent (But strict of course. Plus, it seems all they did was have kids memorize stuff), but one went a little over the edge by pushing one of my classmates down a flight of stairs. The guy was in the third grade, and ended up with a bunch of bandages.

Not to mention the stupidity of punishing the whole class for the action of one person. That teacher sure did a great job of making the whole class hate her.