Upcoming Megan Lindholm story: Neighbors

[Farseer]

You are over there in the Netherlands. We are here in Australia. Our people go over to your people to see how our education system can be improved...

For real? All I've been hearing is that there's all sorts of things wrong in Dutch education. Just today I read that as many as 1/5th of all Dutch teachers are unqualified to teach their respective students.

I have no stats but I'd be surprised if the *majority* of our Australian teachers aren't qualified to teach. Yes, they have been to university and acquired their degrees but this in itself does not make a qualified teacher even as it qualifies them to teach.

It is a sad state of affairs in our country when our teachers are more often than not sourced from the student cohort that actually failed or jut passed their secondary education. There are exceptions but it is 'more often than not'.

I think it may have changed very recently (to overcome this very problem) but the OP, or Overall Position, cut-off for university to entry as a teacher here in Queensland is an 18. The highest OP is a 1 while the lowest is 25. This is absurd to me. Our teachers should be taken from the 1 to 5s or even 1 to 10s! Even those who end up with a lower OP than 18 can commence another degree and then switch over to teaching later (somewhat like the back door pathway you have taken AR). This can work well or not at all. For those who actually go on to teach in the field in which they have previously studied, such as you are doing, it usually works very well...because the teacher is actually qualified and well versed in their teaching area. It's simply the 'teaching' that they have to learn. Overall, the problem is that most teachers can teach but don't know the subject matter that they are teaching. All very scary when you witness just how lacking in basic skills some are!

My son is now doing his second year at Uni, completing a dual degree of a Bachelor of Secondary Education and a Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science. He wants to be qualified to teach as many subjects as he can, including upper secondary maths and science (physics etc). He has had to deal with a lot of criticism for his choice - those who know him well berate him because they think he could have chosen better, more in line with his intelligence rather than 'just being a teacher' eg chemical engineering etc, and others who don't know him particularly well berate and look down on him because they think he's just another 'dumb teacher' who had to choose teaching because he had nothing else.

He chose the profession because he wanted to help raise the bar in teaching (having had his own experience with 'bad' and 'good' teachers) and he genuinely wants to teach. He also wanted to teach in rural and remote regions and even earned a scholarship that not only pays his tuition fees but also ensures him of a four-year rural and remote teaching position as soon as he graduates.

At least our government is becoming increasingly aware of the problem (that teachers are not sourced from the cream of our academic crop and they also, as a profession, now lack respect) and are taking some measures to make the bar a little higher.

By the way, is "neighbors" American spelling or something? I would swear it's supposed to be spelled "neighbours".

Yes, the British (and thus Aussie) spelling is with the 'u', and that's the 'u' that I was refering to in my previous post...joost and 'thul are just toying with me!

It does my head in to see it u-less but I am sure Megan's story will be a terrific inclusion!