The Most Important Subjects are the Worst Taught

I glanced through this article from Computer World about how badly computing is taught and thought that the problem is much wider than they make it out to be. The problem is that when you underfund and underpay your teachers, the situation you end up with is that all of the most important subjects end up being taught the worst.

Computing’s a good example. The fact is, if you know your way around computers, there are a fair number of pretty well-paid jobs for you out there. If you’re good at handing this information onto other people, you won’t be short on offers of doing IT training for good pay, long before you have to wonder about working in a school.

Maths or science are pretty similar in this respect. It’s true that most scientific research jobs are far from being well-paid, but I think most keen scientists would go for them long before they decided to try teaching. 

Unless you pay your teachers properly (and frankly, ‘properly’ might not be a great deal more than we already do, especially if you gave them the support, respect and tools required to do their jobs at the same time), you end up with all of the subjects that will really make a difference in a pupil’s ability to have a successful, rewarding career being taught by people who broadly failed to get a career in that area themselves.

That said, there are great teachers in our current system in all of the above subjects. Indeed, the ones we do have are those that are so passionate about teaching that they’re willing to overlook the lack of kudos and remuneration because it actually means that much to them to pass this information on. But the system is fighting against them doing their jobs properly, and it’s also excluding people like them from joining the profession at all. And that’s a pretty stupid situation to create.