I applaud you for what you've stated. Frankly, acute minds do travel in different directions - unless they are in the body of a Da Vinci - then they're implanted in the Renaissance.  I find the hard science separation from other areas of (I guess what is inferred to be) "soft" liberal arts or arts to be quite disturbing. Time for somebody to eat a peach.

I can't imagine an undergraduate accounting major who holds Mississippi teaching certification agreeing to teach business related courses in Mississippi's high schools at a salary less than that of a biology major. The proposed "different pay for the same work" model will not work.

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Originally posted by: Scientist
" I like to ask the question: "What percent of the majors in the discipline belong to fraternities and sororities?"  This will tell you what the "hard" disciplines are.  You won't find a large % of students in the "hard sciences" doing the Greek thing.  Nor will you find many athletes in the "hard sciences".  You can use this as an operational definition of "hard" instead of the antidotes about memorizing and understanding Chaucer  or material in Social Sciences.  "

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The problem is the partly the inapropriate language used -- not simply issue of differential pay.

The reason you might need to pay more to qualified math/science teachers isn't (or shouldn't be) the perceived "difficulty" of the discipline for all the reasons cited. It is also patently not true that differential pay ought to be based on who "works harder" -- an incredibibly subjective standard which might possibly be applicable to individuals working in similar fields but is extremely difficult to determine when comparing individuals in differing fields.

If math and science are regarded as areas in which there is a percieved weakness of aquired skills among students, and if it is difficult to get the required number of qualified teachers in those disciplines, then it may be necessary to pay them math and science teachers more to attract them. This is the kind of decision that exposes the matrix of market, politics, and ideology.

It is at least partly necessarry to determine if (1) math and science are crucial disciplines to the project of educating students (2) whether american students are measurably underperforming in those areas (3) whether it is therefor important to invest a larger share of resources to elevate student performance in these areas, even if that creates imbalances or inequities of pay across varying disciplines.

Part of the issue here is that many of our public officials also suffer from the same problem they are attempting to address.  Many have an inadequate education  themselves (speaking of education not simply as the aquisition of a specific set of skills but rather as the aquisition of experiences that lead to a more sophisticated and nuanced view of the world  than most of them evince).

 

 

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Originally posted by: stephen judd
"The problem is the partly the inapropriate language used -- not simply issue of differential pay. <SNIP> If math and science are regarded as areas in which there is a percieved weakness of aquired skills among students, and if it is difficult to get the required number of qualified teachers in those disciplines, then it may be necessary to pay them math and science teachers more to attract them. This is the kind of decision that exposes the matrix of market, politics, and ideology."

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As the hippie carpenter was wont to say, I think Dr. Judd has "hit the head on the nail" here. The problem is inappropriate choice of words. Or is it? I remind everyone that Governor Barbour wrote some of the choicest utterances of the "Great Communicator," so I think he knows exactly what he's saying. He thinks mathematics & science are harder to teach than other disciplines. At least that's my take on it.

I'm not about to accuse Haley Barbour of being a deep thinker, because frankly, I don't think he is. He is a politician.

Now, I have a bit of a background in science education. I don't think math & science are harder to teach per se than anything else, but I do think that math & science are often not taught well. The easiest explanation for this is that schoolteachers aren't paid very well (across the board) & that the pay simply doesn't attract the "best & brightest" among science majors, where folks perceive that there are more & better paying options than exist for, say, foreign language majors.

A lot of this is perception. Teaching is the only sure gig for a biology major who wants to stay in Mississippi & doesn't have a graduate degree. The same really applies to chemistry, because entry-level lab tech jobs at outfits like Chevron or Mississippi Chemicals don't pay a whole heckuva lot better than teaching.

Barbour would do better to look for ways to make systemic improvements in science curricula in Mississippi. But I'm afraid he'd get hung up trying to have creationism put in...

If high school biology and chemistry teachers are paid more than high school english and history teachers, many students who would otherwise choose a high school teaching career in the humanities of social sciences, but who are equally capable of excelling in biology and chemistry, will select the higher paying major. In other words, the brightest and most capable will defect from the humanities into the sciences. This will undoubtedly erode the quality of instruction of english and history in Mississippi's high schools. That would not be good for Mississippi and it would not be good for society. If funds are available to raise teacher's salaries all of our competent high school teachers who deserve a raise should be given a raise  - not just the science and math teachers.

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If math and science are regarded as areas in which there is a percieved weakness of aquired skills among students, and if it is difficult to get the required number of qualified teachers in those disciplines, then it may be necessary to pay them math and science teachers more to attract them. This is the kind of decision that exposes the matrix of market, politics, and ideology. It is at least partly necessarry to determine if (1) math and science are crucial disciplines to the project of educating students (2) whether american students are measurably underperforming in those areas (3) whether it is therefor important to invest a larger share of resources to elevate student performance in these areas, even if that creates imbalances or inequities of pay across varying disciplines.

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Hey Charlie and Stephen. It is true that children in the US and MS are underperforming in math and science, and this becomes particularly clear at the HS level. The number of science and math teachers USM puts out in secondary ed is relatively small. The reality is that there are several areas in education in which there is a significant shortage. This also includes special education. Some states give larger signing bonuses for these specialties, and it is simply supply and demand. But the bottom line is teaching overall is becoming less attractive (in my opinion) because of low overall salaries, poor infrastruture, pressure of unfunded NCLB mandates, lack of support for supplies and other necessities, and so on.

Now Haley said a lot of good stuff (he knows how to parrott the experts in the area), but then he'll ruin it by saying something weird, like higher pay for "harder" majors (whatever that means). For example, classroom management and discipline is an important area in which pre-service teachers receive minimal training. Haley said on the Gallo radio show something to the effect that schools that are allowed to whack kids hard are better off. That is his idea of classroom management. Research I have seen suggests that corporeal punishment as a policy can increase incidents of school violence, not reduce it. Maybe he figures that the simplistic spare the rod tune plays to his core audience. Who knows....    

ANY kid who goes into K-12 teaching deserves a medal and reasonably good financial support for taking that career path. 

I will try to respond to Stephen, Curve Ball, Invictus and Charles all at once.  I knew I would be going against the flow for saying what I say.  But I believe the evidence is there.

 

 My experience is that the more Mathematics required for the discipline the more the students will find it difficult.  The reason is, if you are using or applying math, you can’t memorize mathematics, but rather it is a logic language that must be practiced rather than crammed.   Also the grading becomes much less subjective when you are problem solving with Math.   So I do not agree with Curve Ball, who implies everything is “curved” in a subjective manner.  For this to be so, high school and college teachers would all have to agree to curve to make Physics harder than Chemistry, and Chemistry harder that Biology, etc.   Just check the enrollments in these subjects. At USM (and most universities) Bio. enrollment is much larger than Chem. which is much larger than Phy.  

 

I agree with Stephen, but for the reason that there are fewer students majoring in the “hard sciences" and therefore, fewer people qualified to teach these subjects in H.S.  In addition there are good paying jobs for science majors, however they may need to leave this state for these jobs.

 

Finally, Charles,  I only meant that in my experience, students in the “ hard sciences” appear to have mush less leisure time for socializing.  A few students I had in my class who were from Europe told me they were shocked at how little time the students at USM spend on their studies.  More than one told me that  except for math and the hard sciences they were taking,  they didn’t really have to study to get an “A”.  Other American students confirmed this when I discussed it with them.  They said taking the hard sciences was a culture shock.

 

I realize I can be wrong, but I wanted you to see what I’m seeing on this end of things.

I enjoyed the different opinions on this issue and appreciate the discussions.

 

I think the issue here is the shortage of teachers in various specialties at any given time. Adding a bonus or salary supplement to teaching areas in short supply strikes me as a good idea. In many school districts this might include special education and foreign language as well as math and science, and the list of subjects could change over time. However, the base pay for teaching should be the same for all subjects.

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Originally posted by: Charles D. Noblin
"Scientist, this has certainly been an interesting discussion, and I appreciate your observations. But I do want close with one more comment. I believe the reason there are so many biology majors is that hoards of entering college students have medical school in mind and they believe that biology is the pre-med major of choice. That goal is but a pie-in-the-sky for most of them, of course, and when they take their first chemisty course their medical school goal usually collapses and they change majors pronto. Based on my inspection of grade rosters, the grading curve in biology courses is not nearly as rigorous as it is in chemistry courses. If biology gave more F's and fewer A's, many of those bright-eyed, bushy-tailed pre-med students wouldn't even think about continuing into chemistry. Your arguments are persuasive, Scientist, but I still believe a discipline's level of difficulty is largely a matter of perception: students see chemistry as difficult because of F's and rumors of F's. I do agree with the notion that a recruitment "bonus" is warranted in some fields in order to attract the best and the brightest (I believe Frank Glamser's posting touched on this). Such bonuses appear to be quite common in nursing, for example, and nurses most definitely deserve that consideration.  "

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Scientist-interesting thoughts. 

Some more anecdotal info-it probably wouldn't surprise you to hear that Charlie, Frank, and I are "social scientists." There are only a few faculty that I know of at USM who have had a paper published in Science (a pretty good journal). Among these is Charlie, and another social scientist in COAL. So, some pretty bright people who could easily have become "hard" scientists self-selected into a "soft" science field. For many, it is not the issue of ability, but interest. As a final note, in the fields of theoretical and applied mathematical statistics, many of the most important contributions were made (and continue to be made) by social scientists.      

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Originally posted by: Mitch
". . .   in the fields of theoretical and applied mathematical statistics, many of the most important contributions were made (and continue to be made) by social scientists."

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Mitch, your posting serves to support the notion that the division of knowledge by discipline is largely artificial and is merely a matter of organizational convenience. As you know, and as you suggested in your post, there are numerous examples of such crossovers. I will cite only one: Herbert Simon, the Carnegie-Melon faculty member who won the Nobel Prize in economics, is actually a psychologist! I once had the pleasure of introducing him at a psychology presentation and there were as many economists there as there were psychologists.

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Originally posted by: Charles D. Noblin
"Scientist, this has certainly been an interesting discussion, and I appreciate your observations. But I do want close with one more comment. I believe the reason there are so many biology majors is that hoards of entering college students have medical school in mind and they believe that biology is the pre-med major of choice. That goal is but a pie-in-the-sky for most of them, of course, and when they take their first chemisty course their medical school goal usually collapses and they change majors pronto. Based on my inspection of grade rosters, the grading curve in biology courses is not nearly as rigorous as it is in chemistry courses. If biology gave more F's and fewer A's, many of those bright-eyed, bushy-tailed pre-med students wouldn't even think about continuing into chemistry. Your arguments are persuasive, Scientist, but I still believe a discipline's level of difficulty is largely a matter of perception: students see chemistry as difficult because of F's and rumors of F's. I do agree with the notion that a recruitment "bonus" is warranted in some fields in order to attract the best and the brightest (I believe Frank Glamser's posting touched on this). Such bonuses appear to be quite common in nursing, for example, and nurses most definitely deserve that consideration.  "

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This has indeed been an interesting discussion -- well provoked Dr. Noblin!

I'd like to suggest we put a cloture on the term "hard" (as in "hard science") to discuss an academic discipline. I think most of us know what we mean -- but the public does not -- and even some of us might more easily succumb to the associative qualities of the word "hard."

We mean something else of course. We think the sciences can be circumscribed by some idea that they are analytical, deal in verifiable "facts", are attempts to explain what is visible, are based in  "rational" truth and eshcew subjectivity in favor of objectivity.  It is no coincidence that the common American notion of science tends to be biased in favor of those aspects of a discipline that are clearly applied vs those aspects of science that are speculative or those sciences that by nature seem to present more questions than answers. It also makes sense that our early notions of "intelligence" tended to follow this bias.  

Our cultural judgement about what constitutes "work"  aligns with a value system which places a premium on work that is as measurable and rational as our science -- because we it is something we understand.

We tend to understand less well disciplines that demand a high degree of intuitional judgement as a part of their method. Of course, those who practice any "art", whether it is painting,  writing, surgery, or theoretical physics know that there is always a high degree of rationality and logic at the heart of any such practice -- in other words, there is always some "system" that evolves, some process of experimentation, testing, even (loosely expressed) hypothesis that must be solved. But these systems that evolve in these disciplines can tend to be more impenetrable to most people -- especially in the early stages of testing. The path to discovery is often only describable through logical process after the discovery is made -- the process itself often is "felt."   Because such a process as a disciplinary practice is foreign to most people,  we tend to assign success to "genius" (no sweat or work) rather than to view it as the product of much hard work and combined with the application of a specific set of intuitive talents.

I've had brilliant students in my classes who could solve complicated mathmatical problems that would make me crazy but who simply could not learn to solve the riddle of a piece of poetry; could not diagnose the structure of a painting or unlock its meaning. Nor could some of them respond intutively to a piece of music by reacting visually. Their talents, at least insofar as I could relate to them, were entirely in the world of solving problems for which the solutions were inevitable and "closed". Some of those students have indicated to me that trying to work in this way was far harder to them than anything they had ever done in the fields in which they were more at home.

So the idea that any our our disciplines are inherently more valuable because they are "harder" is completely wrong. The language of our culture: "measurable productivity" for instance, tends to simply accept this misplaced assumption. 

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Originally posted by: Raisin' Cane
"If high school biology and chemistry teachers are paid more than high school english and history teachers, many students who would otherwise choose a high school teaching career in the humanities of social sciences, but who are equally capable of excelling in biology and chemistry, will select the higher paying major. [...] That would not be good for Mississippi and it would not be good for society. [...]"

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For some reason the same logic doesn't apply in higher education. Here are the latest nation-wide statistics provided by AAUP:

Average Salaries of Professors, By Discipline, as a Percentage of the Average Salaries of
Professors of English, 2001--02

Law and Legal Studies 144.5
Business Management and Administrative Services 134.3
Computer and Information Sciences 119.1
Economics 117.4
Engineering 116.5
Health Professions and Related Sciences 106.0
Physical Sciences 104.4
Public Administration and Services 102.4
Psychology 101.9
Agricultural Business and Production 101.3
Biological and Life Sciences 100.4
Area, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies 100.2
Mathematics 99.7
Social Sciences (excluding Economics and History) 97.6
Parks, Recreation, Leisure, and Fitness Studies 96.1
Conservation and Renewable Natural Resources 94.4
Architecture and Related Programs 94.3
Communications 93.7
History 93.6
Education 93.4
Philosophy and Religion 92.3
Agricultural Sciences 91.8
Home Economics 91.6
Foreign Language and Literature 89.2
Visual and Performing Arts 84.8

Explain to a student armed with those figures how society rewards merit vs. discipline.

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Originally posted by: Scientist
"
Mitch, Charlie, Frank and others,
I hope I didn't give the impression that I don't value and highly respect the work of Social Scientists.  I was just pointing out the problem that this country (and Mississippi in particular) has with preparing the citizens in math and science.  In my opinion, students find theses fields very interesting, but difficult enough to require more time than they are willing to devote to the subjects.   
Also I didn't mean to imply that people in other field don't have the abilities of those in the "hard sciences".   Being Social Scientists, I would appreciate hearing why you believe so few of our students pick the "hard sciences".  While I'm at it, let me ask when and where the terms "hard" and "soft" originated and why.  I believe you know my answer.
 "

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Coming full circle in this discussion, I think that a major problem is the shortage of good math and science instruction in the lower grades which might generate a desire to study natural science at the university level. If you have seen many student ACT scores you have noted that among bright USM students the reading and English scores tend to be much higher than the math scores. I believe this is evidence of weak instruction.

Another factor in the United States is the emphasis on instant gratification. Much of science is tedious drudgery if one is going to be precise. Put simply, it's too much work.

Finally, the youth culture emphasis on being "cool" and not being a "nerd" keeps many high school students from investing much time in math and science.

It's no accident that half the PhD's awarded in the U.S. goes to foreign students.

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Originally posted by: Tinctoris
"

Mathematics 99.7. . . .Visual and Performing Arts 84.8

Explain to a student armed with those figures how society rewards merit vs. discipline."

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All I can say is, I'd much rather be in a room with a student beginning to learn mathematics than one beginning to learn to play the violin.