Straight talk across the pond
A recent report from the British government's Office of Standards in Education attributes the schools' continued failure to meet proficiency targets in math and English to "a stubborn core" of badly trained teachers with a poor grasp of subject knowledge - about one in eight teachers, it suggests. "Where teachers don't have that sort of knowledge they tend to be limited and therefore rather insecure in encouraging pupils to do more," said David Bell, the chief schools inspector. He added that teachers who lack adequate subject knowledge tend, somewhat counter intuitively, to talk more in class and thus stifle student creativity. In America, a federal official making such a claim in public would be tarred and feathered.
"Ofsted pins literacy blame on weak teaching," by Lucy Ward, The Guardian, December 10, 2003
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