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[QUOTE="vanhees71, post: 6846706, member: 260864"] In Germany it's even worse. There's such a lack of teachers that nowadays anybody is taken as a teacher. Since I'm involved in teaching the real teachers (in theoretical physics) I hear a lot of devastating stories. I just met a professor in physics didactics, because we have to rearrange our module plans due to new ideas of the state (bringing the teacher students earlier into the schools in form of a practice semester, where they teach together with a mentor, which of course is a good thing), and he told me two stories, which make me very worry about the ever more declining quality of the STEM education in our public (high-)schools: (a) many of our teacher students are no longer interested to get teaching-assistant jobs at the university, because they can get easily a job at a high school to teach, and that's possible even for students in the 1st semester, i.e., they know (at best) what they learnt for the "Abitur". They have no clue about didactics nor a deeper understanding of the subject, and it's not that they get an introduction to teaching by an experienced teacher at the school, but they start from day 1 just as a usual teacher with the full responsibility for the entire teaching of a class. (b) The professor examined a student, who already studied for getting a teacher for 48 (sic!) semesters. He just wanted finally get its final certificate ("Staatsexamen"). His performance was so bad that he couldn't even answer questions at the level of 7th grade middle school (in optics, mechanics, and other subjects usually taught at this level). So the professor had to tell him that he had not passed the exam. The student was far from being disappointed, because as he told, the entire exercise of getting his final exam done was, because the head master of the school where he already "teaches" for years, promised him to make him an official ("Beamter") with a lot of advantages and better salary, but he also promised him that, if he doesn't pass the exam, he can still continue to work as an employed teacher as before. So this guy is still teaching physics without understanding even the very basic qualitative facts about the subjects, maybe for years and years to come. In another state (Brandenburg) they now hire any BSc absolvent in a STEM subject without much additional training at the official rank as a teacher. I think one can go on and on with such stories. The prospect for the really important future STEM people is thus very bad, and indeed already now the freshmen numbers in the STEM subjects at German universities decreases faster than the overall student numbers (which decrease is natural due to demoscopic effects), i.e., of those being able to get the highest education level more and more get attracted to other than STEM subjects, but who should then provide the expertise needed? [/QUOTE]
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