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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Sadly, neither are most teachers.  Stop pretending it's neurosurgery.  It isn't.  As an educated parent, I can tell whether the classroom is well managed or not.  I can tell whether the kids are being taught effectively or not.   That B.A in education doesn't make you uniquely able to discern those things.[/quote]

I don't have a B.A. in education, thanks. In fact, I'm not a teacher.

Yes, teaching is not neurosurgery. What teaching is, is:

1. a set of skills
2. an empirical body of knowledge

If you are an educated parent, that means that you have a lot of experience being a student. It doesn't mean that you know the best ways to teach reading to kindergarteners, or fractions to third-graders, or stoichiometry to tenth graders.

For example, here is an article from this week's Sunday New York Times magazine about teaching math:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html?_r=0

Is that how you learned math? Would the PP who started this discussion, and complained that group work is not instruction, be happy to see these teaching techniques in action? [/quote]

I am tired of seeing teachers (or whoever you are) say things like "you can't criticize the schools/curriculm, because you're not a teacher".  That's ridiculous.  We can judge outcomes, and teaching is not that complicated.  If you saw a doctor who had bad outcomes over and over again, you would certainly draw conclusions about that.  If you saw a plumber getting worse results using a new technique, you would question that new technique.  
I have no opinion about group work *generally*, though I certainly have seen it used as a way to occupy kids' time while not actually teaching them anything.  But this notion that parents shouldn't question or criticize because we aren't the "experts" is ridiculous.[/quote]

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