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> In Finland, all education schools were selective. Getting into a teacher-training program there was as prestigious as getting into medical school in the Unite

> In Finland, all education schools were selective. Getting into a teacher-training program there was as prestigious as getting into medical school in the United States. Immediate implication: teachers are actually paid well over there. The job is actually desirable and respected. > At the education college, Bethel discovered that he didn't have to major in math to become a high school math teacher. So he didn't. Nationwide, less than half of American high school math teachers majored in math. Almost a third did not even minor in math. Quick note: I've a degree in Physics. They pumped so much math into us all in college, I could easily teach high-school math. Easily.

kami8845 13y ago
Easily?
- TheCraiggers 13y ago
  I presume he means he has the mathematical aptitude to teach high-school math, which (at least in my area) maxes out at trig in most schools and Calc 1 in the bigger ones. To teach as an adjunct, that's about all you need to teach. If you want to be good at it, some genuine compassion for your students will help there. If you want to be awesome at it, you'll typically need the above plus some training in the proper ways to educate, motivate, etc. Source: married to a college math teacher.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  More easily than a teacher who, like we kids always suspected, actually needs the answer key?
valar_m 13y ago
> Immediate implication: teachers are actually paid well over there. Apparently not: "The average salary for primary education teachers with 15 years experience in Finland is about $37,500, compared to $45,225 in the United States." http://www.cato.org/blog/no-teachers-finland-are-not-paid-doctors http://www.cato.org/blog/no-teachers-finland-are-not-paid-do...
- jeffasinger 13y ago
  That's very interesting. In the US, if we only accepted 20% of people who wanted to be teachers, we'd have a very bad shortage of teachers. The real questions is, why do so many people want to be teachers in Finland?
  - fulafel 13y ago
    the 2.5 month summer vacation, prestige and relatively good salary. the Cato quoted PPP corrected salaries might mislead if they fail to account for stuff you get for the high taxes (healthcare, education, retirement homes etc).
    - valar_m 13y ago
      Cost of living is a much better way to compare salaries. They actually mentioned that: "Moreover, the cost of living in Finland is about 30% higher."
      - fulafel 13y ago
        Their cost-of-living link just leads to OECD stats that are used as basis of computing PPP. So the cato article makes 2 mistakes: applying the PPP normalization twice (once by using "PPP normalized income" and a second time in adding the ~30% from the "cost of living"), in addition to ignoring what you get in exchange for the taxes that lower your purchasing power.
Jhsto 13y ago
> They pumped so much math into us all in college, I could easily teach high-school math. Easily. I'm from Finland and we have bunch of such teachers here. In my school there's a teacher whose major is physics, but he also teaches chemistry and B (short term) math. I'm still unsure whether is it because of my school is so small (circa 150 pupils) or just because they can. > Immediate implication: teachers are actually paid well over there. The job is actually desirable and respected. The job is respected, but not as desirable or well paid as you might think. I can actually recall many teachers joking that if you can't do anything well, become a teacher. And in a way that's true: if you can't pick a profession you can continue your studies for practically free of charge. Although teachers do not have hard time finding a job, the pay is pretty bad and only becomes worse if you decide to teach younger students. Although, teachers here get paid according to their best paying speciality, so it may depend on who you ask. For example, a former PE teacher said this to me: "Do not become a teacher if you plan to become rich". But since the respect between student and teacher here cuts both ways, it gives the sentence a bit more depth than you might think at first.
jlgreco 13y ago
Of all the non-math degrees that there are, I would expect that Physics would be the very next best thing for teaching mathematics, if for no other reason than because of physics' privileged position when it comes to mathematics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_... and the intertwined history of physics and mathematics.) As a counterpoint, I have a degree in Computer Science, which I personally consider to be a slightly "vocationally oriented" field of mathematics, but I am currently reteaching myself trigonometry that I should have learned in highschool. The math that I needed for my degree I still have down pretty solidly, but for the most part the mathematics that is taught in high-schools I am fairly rubbish at. I currently would have no business teaching a high-school mathematics course; I could probably get through the lectures but would be completely unable to help any student that actually had an interest in mathematics. A physics guy teaching highschool mathematics seems perfectly reasonable to me. A linguistics guy though? Ehhh...

kami8845 13y ago

Easily?

TheCraiggers 13y ago
I presume he means he has the mathematical aptitude to teach high-school math, which (at least in my area) maxes out at trig in most schools and Calc 1 in the bigger ones. To teach as an adjunct, that's about all you need to teach. If you want to be good at it, some genuine compassion for your students will help there. If you want to be awesome at it, you'll typically need the above plus some training in the proper ways to educate, motivate, etc. Source: married to a college math teacher.
jessaustin 13y ago
More easily than a teacher who, like we kids always suspected, actually needs the answer key?

valar_m 13y ago

> Immediate implication: teachers are actually paid well over there. Apparently not: "The average salary for primary education teachers with 15 years experience in Finland is about $37,500, compared to $45,225 in the United States." http://www.cato.org/blog/no-teachers-finland-are-not-paid-doctors http://www.cato.org/blog/no-teachers-finland-are-not-paid-do...

jeffasinger 13y ago
That's very interesting. In the US, if we only accepted 20% of people who wanted to be teachers, we'd have a very bad shortage of teachers. The real questions is, why do so many people want to be teachers in Finland?
- fulafel 13y ago
  the 2.5 month summer vacation, prestige and relatively good salary. the Cato quoted PPP corrected salaries might mislead if they fail to account for stuff you get for the high taxes (healthcare, education, retirement homes etc).
  - valar_m 13y ago
    Cost of living is a much better way to compare salaries. They actually mentioned that: "Moreover, the cost of living in Finland is about 30% higher."
    - fulafel 13y ago
      Their cost-of-living link just leads to OECD stats that are used as basis of computing PPP. So the cato article makes 2 mistakes: applying the PPP normalization twice (once by using "PPP normalized income" and a second time in adding the ~30% from the "cost of living"), in addition to ignoring what you get in exchange for the taxes that lower your purchasing power.

Jhsto 13y ago

> They pumped so much math into us all in college, I could easily teach high-school math. Easily. I'm from Finland and we have bunch of such teachers here. In my school there's a teacher whose major is physics, but he also teaches chemistry and B (short term) math. I'm still unsure whether is it because of my school is so small (circa 150 pupils) or just because they can. > Immediate implication: teachers are actually paid well over there. The job is actually desirable and respected. The job is respected, but not as desirable or well paid as you might think. I can actually recall many teachers joking that if you can't do anything well, become a teacher. And in a way that's true: if you can't pick a profession you can continue your studies for practically free of charge. Although teachers do not have hard time finding a job, the pay is pretty bad and only becomes worse if you decide to teach younger students. Although, teachers here get paid according to their best paying speciality, so it may depend on who you ask. For example, a former PE teacher said this to me: "Do not become a teacher if you plan to become rich". But since the respect between student and teacher here cuts both ways, it gives the sentence a bit more depth than you might think at first.

jlgreco 13y ago

Of all the non-math degrees that there are, I would expect that Physics would be the very next best thing for teaching mathematics, if for no other reason than because of physics' privileged position when it comes to mathematics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_... and the intertwined history of physics and mathematics.) As a counterpoint, I have a degree in Computer Science, which I personally consider to be a slightly "vocationally oriented" field of mathematics, but I am currently reteaching myself trigonometry that I should have learned in highschool. The math that I needed for my degree I still have down pretty solidly, but for the most part the mathematics that is taught in high-schools I am fairly rubbish at. I currently would have no business teaching a high-school mathematics course; I could probably get through the lectures but would be completely unable to help any student that actually had an interest in mathematics. A physics guy teaching highschool mathematics seems perfectly reasonable to me. A linguistics guy though? Ehhh...