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July 16, 2003

The Kids Aren't So Bright

...and the teachers aren't much better either:

Nearly half of the nation's middle and high school teachers were not highly qualified to teach their topics in 2000, a report to Congress says.

Federal law defines highly qualified teachers as those who hold a bachelor's degree from a four-year college, have state certification and demonstrate competence in the subject they teach.

I would say that I'm surprised, but - sadly - I'm not. Even though Tom and I attended LAMP*, an accelerated curriculum public school, we didn't always have the best teachers.

In eleventh grade (I believe), Mrs. Womack who, when not detailing for all of us the wonders of her husband's alcoholism, once informed us that the Spanish Armada was destroyed because all of the ships got stuck in ice. Historians, on the other hand, are pretty sure it was more like battle damage and storms.

Sure, she was our English teacher, so history probably wasn't her strongest area - but, on a test in which she asked for three examples of foreshadowing in a certain novel, she gave me credit for the non-answer "That the book had a beginning foreshadowed that there would be an end." So, maybe English wasn't the right subject for her either.

On the other hand, there were teachers like Mrs. Mullins. Not only did she do an outstanding job of teaching us the finer points of algebra and calculus, but (and Tom can vouch for this) she also looked great in jeans and sun-dresses - and out of them too, I would imagine, but that's all it was: a high school boy's imagination**.

Sigh.

* Originally LAMP stood for the Lanier Academic Motivational Program, but the school recently moved. It is now known as the Loveless Academic Motivational Program. There's some not-so-subtle irony in a school for dorks being called Loveless.

** Many of us were also convinced that she intentionally dropped pens and such so she'd have to bend over to pick them up, thereby delighting the straight males in the classroom. Hey, we were young and imaginative - and desperately hoping for our very own Mary Kay Letourneau. Sigh.