Now Colin don't take your bat and ball and go home.The human genome is very imperfect.The diversity produces a great variance in our society in terms of ability and diversity of aptitude,emotion and intelligence.It happens in every family.

We have to make the less able feel wanted,but not be a burden on society,the more able should be encouraged,since their diligence supports the less able with their taxes.

To punish the able to the point of exhaustion and loss of quality of life,is socialism gone insane.The intelligent hard workers deserve time off also.

P.S. I Don't have to justify my concept of "equal achiever" to anyone.Yes we are all human,but we need the doers,the courageous,the creative,and the masters of logic to make our society work!

The idea that there has been no significant advances stemming from educational research is indeed ill informed. The following news item is but one example of the ongoing improvements in terminology for which educational research is justly renouned: "Among official job-title changes implemented by the Scottsdale, Ariz., school district this year, according to a February Arizona Republic report, were those for receptionist (now, "director of first impressions") and school bus driver (now, "transporter of learners"). Said Superintendent John Baracy, "This is to make a statement about what we value in the district. We value learning." Said the new first-impressions director, "I think it's classy. Everyone wants to be important." [Arizona Republic, 2-23-05]"

Hey Sams, don't get me wrong, I have a Cert Ed myself (and a PhD in applied mathematics). I agree that many uni. teachers should get some training on teaching and they should make some of these people do a CertEd not only high school teachers. What I am furious about is the kind of fake research produced by so-called education theorists who do little more than inventing big words for trivial stuff, like the kind mentioned in Peter's first post. There are many hard workers in education, including many not belonging to an education department (e.g. IT workers helping students visualize the complex plane with Java, physicists who wrote the classic texts to make a hard subject easy, engineers who write analysis software for student use, etc.). I have profound respect for these people for their contribution to education, one of the most valuable things in our society. Since it is so important, we should not tolerate "researchers" (mostly carrying the title of "lecturer/professor" who get paid as much as the solid state physicists and engineering professors, yet contribute little that has any real value to real education. You can translate their fancy language to plain English, but what you'll then find is something trivial that would look silly to be published in an academic journal. So the cycle continues-in order to get published, they create more bogus material and the whole domain of education has now become trashland. If you cannot do real research, don't. Inventing a nebulous miasma of mumble-jumble while getting paid as a scholar is unethical. We should and must do concrete and tangible things that really will benefit the students and teachers.

To wstarck:
Sorry, I'm not a native speaker so I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or real. But if the whole deal about education theory is to invent new and more respectful/uplifting words for existing items, this can and should be done by language experts and doesn't require the tens of millions of funding we're putting into education now. One should also be careful not to make things worse because big words often lead to confusion. I remember my English teacher told us this story: some bureaucrats love saying "terminate the illumination" --an impressive way to say "turn off the lights" but, what for?

To Arjay:
I'm also not getting your point, are you saying that those with less IQ and little real skills but still professors wanna-be's should study the Art of Nebulous Miasma? But don't forget that all professors are paid the same (at least in my country which is in Europe) and this is unfair to the physicists who work their backs off and seldom engage in bogus talk.

Bradley wrote: "We should and must do concrete and tangible things that really will benefit the students and teachers."

Of course (although it is hard to know what tangible really means here!), but my original argument pointed out that time wasters don't just occur in educational research, but in all areas of research, and many other areas as well (in business for example). In fact, I was dismayed about what sometimes goes on in theoretical physics research for entirely the same reason, which why I found it easy to get out of, and into the more tangible area of programming. I don't think science researchers should be pointing the finger at education researcher without a bit of self-examination in the process.

The deeper question is what is of benefit to society, why, and most importantly, who should decide ... but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader :-)

Bradly,quite the contrary.Nebulus Miasma is the subterfuge of many educationalists who seek refuge in confusion.Our politicians and lawyers do this for a profession.We call it spin.It is just a result of too many public servants having too much time on their hands.

They become counter productive to societies aims and people in private enterprise who work hard and long for all this BS for no result.

The result of high taxation and wasted private enterprise is family break down due to interfering socialist do gooders and the collapse of motivation with the resultant demise of our economy.

Am I making sense now?