wrote in message
ups.com...
Part of the problem is the way math and science is taught as if they
were obscure theoretical subjects with little application to real life
and this is because most teachers do not understand the subjects.

My point exactly; or at least one of them. I work in a school with many
gifted teachers, they are engineers, PhD'd scientists (biomed), nurses,
technicians, machinists, carpenters, IT specialists, and on and on. They're
older people but new teachers. They've had successful careers but many have
wanted to try teaching and this is a great way to try it on for size. They
can and do bring math (and academics in general) to life for kids who wants
to learn. They do help the problematic kids who are "dumped" into the
vo-techs, but at the expense of that middle 50% who are now displaced by the
practices of the system. What a waste of talent when you consider that kids
sitting in sending schools are in effect being denied wonderful
opportunities because their guidance counselors and administrators have done
the evil and selfish deed of populating the vo-techs with trouble makers,
and then telling the good kids they're too "smart" for vo-tech. First they
create the environment and then they condemn it! So now the traditional
(sending) high school has highly trained special ed teachers who are working
with manageable groups of the 6 or 7 spec ed kids they kept, while the
engineers with very little training in spec ed have labs with 25 kids, 50%
of whom are spec ed or emotional support. Having said all that, I think the
engineers do a better job at spec ed than the spec ed teachers do! Maybe the
universe is in balance afterall!
Scout