Teacher's resignation letter: "My profession ... no longer exists"

[D.Allred]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

I stumbled across this on the internet this afternoon. This line was, to me, particularly striking.

Ian,
Thanks for sharing this post. I do not interpret this as STEM pushing out social studies. It appears to be a lament against data driven approaches necessary to comply with the "No Child Left Behind" act. School funding rides on this data and pushes school administration to focus on the numbers, not teacher's needs.

I'm not a teacher. This is just my interpretation of this teacher's frustration.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by D.Allred

It appears to be a lament against data driven approaches..

Yup. This phenomenon is not limited to education.

[popnbrown]

Honestly, this is why I am part of FIRST. While FIRST's stated goals are STEM related, the method of accomplishing this (vs. other organizations) creates opportunities for students to excel in other fields.

I am going to become an engineer, and many of the students I mentor have already become interested prior to joining the robotics team in being engineers. I see my role as instilling in them the same values I have learned in my experience on being a better person.

STEM in my view is still important, and dependent on arguments I would be willing to concede it is more important than other fields, but that is a situational conclusion.

Ideally, everything that everyone wants to do should be equally important, but in reality, there are things that are more important some times.

I also agree with D. Allred, the teacher seems to be more frustrated with the numbers focus rather than giving a true education. It does seem he isn't all that happy with the focus of STEM and I would disagree with the teacher about that. I don't think his subject is of less importance when you are developing a young mind, but outside of development and learning (real world) STEM has more problems to solve.