Education Majors Getting Babied

[Greenday]

This has always been a sore subject for me. Honestly, I think teaching is one of THE most important jobs possible. But the college work you go through to get there is somewhat...easy. Almost too easy. I'm a forensic chem major. I started "high-risk" courses 2nd semester of freshman year. All of my friends who are education majors will never take a high-risk course in their lives. I know education classes involve lots of homework and stuff, but the level of hardness isn't too high in my opinion. I mean, I am sick to death of hearing, "I'm taking a class on volcanoes!", "I have a two hour lab, how much does that suck?", "I'm going to Math 103 (intro to math)". Hell, if you plan on taking intro to math with a science major, don't plan on graduating on time. Here's a list of some of the classes I have to take over time:

Analytical Chem I
Organic Chem I
Organic Chem II
Physical Chem I
Forensics
Microbiology
Biochem
Calc I & II

Here's the really rough part. The curves in these classes are extremely small. If your grade is a C, that's what you'll get. One of my teachers shared with my class how apparently, everyone that is an education major has to have a B-average to graduate. So what happens? All the education teachers gotta make sure their students don't get below a B or else it'll look bad on them so: GRADE INFLATION!

Honestly, I think education majors should be on a different GPA system than science majors. I mean, how can you compare a 3.8 GPA to a 2.8 GPA when the person with the 3.8 is taking all basic courses and the person with the 2.8 can't even take a basic class other than their gen. eds? I mean, when it comes to higher level chem classes, it's practically impossible to get an A. I literally studied my ass off for my first tests of the semester. I got a 67 in Organic I (average was a 68), a 79 in Analytical I (average was a 73), and a 81 in Physics. I'm happy with the 81 and the 79 is alright. If I got ANYTHING like that in one of my Gen. Eds. I'd be seriously embarrassed. I'm just sick of these education majors boasting about their amazing GPAs when they are taking classes I wouldn't even bother showing up for except for the tests.

[AFPheonix]

I got an A in first semester O Chem
But you're right, the sciences ARE a hard major. I roomed with a anthropology/sociology major, and she didn't have the kind of work I did. She had the good sense not to complain too much once she saw the books I had compared to hers, though. Ah well. I have a BS in Biology, and if it makes you feel any better, I found that the higher level classes like Micro and Molecular were frankly easier than the lower level classes, because you didn't have the huge range of crap to memorize.

But, back from the derail, do you think it's just your school that lets off education majors off easy, or do you think it's endemic to upper education across the country?

I do think teachers need to know a level or two higher of whatever subject they teach, simply so they can help their students make the connection to what they'll be doing eventually, but I don't think that it should be a requirement for grade school math teachers to ace differential equations, either.
What kinds of classes do those Ed majors take later? I imagine there will be a lot of psych classes and child development type things.

[Greenday]

Yea, they do take a lot of psych classes and such. But most psych classes are huge lectures where everything is on powerpoint and notes are all online. My biggest class is 40 people, and if I skip one class, I already missed too much. This semester I have TWO four-hour labs.

As for education majors being forced to take really high up classes like Calc or whatever, it all depends on what they want to teach. I know New Jersey, for primary education, you are certified for K-8. So you have to at least be able to do geometry. But supposing that most of their courses are low level ones, I'd just like to hear the moaning about how "hard" all of their classes are.

Most people in the education program get through college no problem. Is that really a good thing? Do we want everyone who thinks they can teach to have a degree? I know I've had a few teachers who didn't know what the hell they were doing. There's no way they should have gotten a degree. But somehow, they magically did.

[linguist]

having an education degree doesn't guarantee being a teacher. there are still licensing exams to pass, which most of the time are pretty tough. most of the education majors i know had to go through more schooling after getting their degrees just to prepare for the cert exams.

[Boozy]

In Canada, all high school teachers need an honour's B.A. in whatever field they want to teach, and then they go to teacher's college for two years. We pay our teachers well up here, so the competition to get into teacher's college is incredibly fierce. A friend of mine had a 92% average, was four time Dean's list, and had already been accepted to three of the top graduate schools in the country. But he really wanted to teach. And he was wait-listed for teacher's college.

So I am fairly confident that the best and the brightest are teaching our kids here.

And incidentally, I have a B.A. in History/Political Science. I also took a handful of math classes for fun. I quickly learned that most people in the math classes wouldn't last a day in an arts class, and vice versa. And yet both sides claimed that the other was "easier".

[Dreamstalker]

The Twit was, as far as I could tell, going for a BFA in Photography (I could take better pictures without even trying, but that's another story) while I was on first a Theater Lighting, then a Computer Science track. Neither one was particularly easy (in CS I had probably one of the worst professors in the school for that).

She seemed to think she was above me because she could skate by with easy classes (of course, when she did have to take "hard" courses--what a sane person would consider a cakewalk--I got to hear alll the whining). She used to brag about getting a 4.0 (that don't necessarily mean you're smarter than me, kid).

Honestly, I think education majors should be on a different GPA system than science majors.

I agree. Maybe different calculation methods for Arts students and Science students (with some overlap depending on the particular major).