not a new subject - women in electronics and computing?

Selecting good teachers, and paying them well, is a good idea. Paying bad teachers well isn't as good an idea. The teacher's unions seem to believe that there is no such thing as a bad teacher. A really good teacher is certainly worth $100K.

John

Hello John,

That is so sad. A neighbor has to teach his daughter math because the teacher doesn't. I never understood the concept behind tenure. In essence it means they can stop performing if they want to once tenure is reached. Engineers don't have tenure. Why should teachers? Or (almost) anyone else for that matter?

Absolutamente. Else most of the potentially good ones are going to stay in engineering ;-)

You haven't noticed the dumbing-down of schools that's been going on for the last two generations or so?

That's part the vast right-wing conspiracy - keep the voters ignorant, so they'll be too dumb to check your lies, and will vote for your promises of bread, circuses, and the illusion of security.

Thanks, Rich

Yeah. Jim doesn't like it, therefore the kid's a liberal weenie.

Thanks, Rich

I'm currently teaching one of my granddaughters "Pre-Calculus" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

You would be surprised, at least at the college level, the things current faculty go through to see that "bad" teachers either remediate or never make it to tenure. Tenure review committees, standardized evaluation procedures (from both colleagues AND students), counseling sessions, and the final committee of your peers that recommend you to the college president for permanent status. (See more about tenure in my response to Joerg.) Even then the college board of trustees has the last say about granting tenure, and in at least two cases I'm familiar with the process stopped at this level.

None of us want to shore up the deficiencies of one of our comrades, so we try our level best to weed out the poor ones as soon as we possibly can. It is to our benefit, to the students' benefit, and to the institution's benefit to do so.

Jim

(BTW, you must have had a particularly poor English teacher; many teachers (plural, not singular) belong to teachers' unions.)

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

It's a reaction to mind numbingly bad management practices. Amateur committees running professionals is never going to work. Go to a condo meeting sometime and see why.

I've wrestled with the concept of tenure for almost 40 years. While it certainly gives the ones who bust their butts for four years in the hopes of a sinecure for their remaining careers an easy out for their working lives, to the ones who take on "accepted norms" it allows them to express unpopular opinions and not fear for the loss of their jobs. No engineer in private industry I know has the balls to walk into the boss' office and tell the boss that his way ain't the highway. I had an old mossback department chair when I was a freshman who mandated the study of vacuum tubes to the exclusion of transistors; most of the good teachers in that department said, "up yours", and kept on with solid state devices. If it wasn't for tenure I'd still be designing flipflops with 6SK7s.

The concept of tenure has its roots in the trials of Galileo, the tribulations of Darwin, and even the ostracism of the early Einstein. Lots of folks don't believe in the status quo, but teachers are particularly vulnerable because they have a forum for expressing their viewpoint to the young of the breed. Who have parents. Who vote. Tenure is one of the few shields against the Golden Rule (you got the gold? you make the rule.).

Then I freely admit to double-whoring. Engineering in the morning and teaching in the afternoon {;-)

Jim

No doubt he also would have rejected Alan Turing since Turing was queer.

I constantly see ads for electricians which require "Experience with the XXXX model of PLC". This is a pointless requirement - knowing one particular model won't help you understand a system, and PLCs don't operate stand alone, they are part of a system. The most complex PLC I am aware of is simpler than an 8080 - but what happens when it is part of a system with hydraulics, pneumatics and electrical and electronic controls?

Hello Jim,

At my alma mater it was partly the other way around. Some of the profs taught old stuff. Maybe because they had tenure and didn't have to modernize :-(

Also, if someone ain't happy with the boss there is always the option of switching bosses. Or schools in this case.

I had my dose of teachers expressing their viewpoint. In one of the multi-semester courses at high school the literature we had to read was so left wing that I got sick and tired of it. Dumped the course the minute we were allowed to. The teacher said to me "I knew you'd do that". Nope, I do not believe in the concept of tenure.

Where do you teach? I'd love to do that some day (and they don't have to give me any tenure...).

Hello Jim,

That's all great and it is good that there is such a strict peer review process. However, the problems often manifest themselves once tenure has been granted. I've heard too many cases where staff motivation has seriously slacked off afterwards.

PROVO, Utah ? A Brigham Young University physics professor who suggested the World Trade Center was brought down by explosives has resigned, six weeks after the school placed him on leave.

"I am electing to retire so that I can spend more time speaking and conducting research of my choosing," physics professor Steven Jones said in a statement released by the school.

His retirement is effective Jan. 1, 2007.

Jones recently published theories about U.S. government involvement in the events of Sept. 11, including one suggesting that explosives inside the World Trade Center ? not airplanes striking the twin towers ? brought the complex down.

BYU stripped Jones of two classes and put him on leave in early September. It also began investigating his research.

The school abandoned its review Friday after reaching a retirement agreement with Jones, BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said.

I have. Multiple times. I've even told bosses straight to their faces, "You don't like it, so fire me". They never did.

...Jim Thompson

A neighbor had a worse candidate: Waltzed into her office wearing a T-shirt that read "People Suck". She asked him to leave. "But I thought I'm gonna have an interview" ... "You just had one".

I'll have to remember that one.

What is hard, er, ah, difficult, for me is a babe with brains ;-)

...Jim Thompson

And it seems that nobody ever taught you not to be a fathead.

John

OK, reconcile that with the fact that 90+ per cent of teachers are Democrat-voting liberals.

John

Yeah, a lot of life has to do with making rational decisions in the face of emotional overload.

John