Nobody wants to teach anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#571

Post by rayiner » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #419

elforce002 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true in almost every country. Education is a money pit.

> Education is a money pit. How exactly do you mean this? The U.S. spent $90.5 billion for "Elementary, Secondary, and Vocational Education" in 2021* (a subset of "Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services"), which is 1.3% of $6.82 trillion in total 2021 government expenditures. Compare to $696.5B for Medicare, $754.8B for National Defense, etc. If anything, this illustrates how relatively unimportant a ba…

As explained below your numbers are off by an order of magnitude. But I’m shocked to see such a basic misconception about how our government works on HN of all places.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#572

Post by ever1 » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #362

Situation is similar in France. Teachers are underpaid and in some fields (e.g. maths), it gets hard to fill open positions. The gvt tries to improve slightly the entry level salary to make the job more attractive, while betting that senior teachers are stuck there with no other job alternatives. And they compensate by hiring under qualified, short term, teachers. To some extent, it's similar in higher education. The…

yep, but I guess most people are ok with this, we have a lot of people saying that teachers are priviliged people having too much vacations and not working enough per week. It's a strong common belief. And with current government politics, it looks like we are witnessing the end of a public education in France, the unqualified contractuals teachers hired after a quick interview is more interesting financially than an official.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#573

Post by seibelj » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #490

seibelj wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is another vector on the spectrum of decisions for why quality teachers choose to work at private schools. No one takes a job purely on salary - a decision like that is based on many things. Isn’t it obvious that good teachers want to teach children with parents that want them to learn? And punish their children when they are disruptive? And the school can kick out bad kids? The current vogue of reducing everyth…

“Isn’t it obvious that good teachers want to teach children with parents that want them to learn? And punish their children when they are disruptive? And the school can kick out bad kids?” Perhaps, but that kind of school is doing a different “job” than one tasked with ensuring a base level of education for all young people.

There is a place in society for schools that will treat you like cattle and babysit you all day. There is also a place for academically challenging schools that provide a strong education. I don’t want to ban the latter in order to improve the former.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#574

Post by readingnews » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

origin_path wrote: post #213

readingnews wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to quote that very paragraph, as a professor teaching three classes this semester, in addition to my 50 hour a week job as the technical director. I see at my university the outside consultants telling us how and when to teach. But OPs first sentence here seems to ring true a lot on my campus. Your boss, HR, some organization called "student success" which is made up of MBAs that have never taught a class…

In fairness a lot of professors are terrible teachers and don't really care about teaching at all. My own course was full of them. I'm sure they didn't like to hear it though.

I will admit, there are those, just like the SW dev that hates coding, the Dr. that hates patients, etc. Most in the teaching profession that do not "like to teach" are people who like to do research, but are forced to teach.

I would probably argue, as another poster noted, that the really good ones quit, or their classes are perpetually full as they are the good ones. In the CS department where I teach, we generally do not have the luxury of multiple sections after the intro courses, but in say Mathematics, you really see this point driven home. The "good" Calculus I profs class fills instantly, then everyone else is left with "that researcher person" who does not like to teach.

Of course, the obvious solution: have research professors and teaching professors. Right? Nope, colleges are run by business people. "Have people just do research??" Only the well off colleges can really do that.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#575

Post by notch656a » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

int0x2e wrote: post #525

bergenty wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Special Ed is as stupid as doing open heart surgeries on 85 year olds to give them 3 extra years. They’re an enormous burden on the system and are ruining everything for almost all of us. Why do severely mentally handicapped kids even need to be educated. Just provide them with an amount of money to live their lives and make their time here as happy as possible. There is going to be a reckoning.

I suspect you haven't met too many people in these programs. I had a student in one of my university programs who was handicapped and could barely see 3ft in front of him. Guy had to ride in a motorized chair, get guided around campus, and use a super-zoom lens and a laptop screen that made everything 10x-50x its size to be able to read the whiteboard/presentations. I'm sure none of that stuff was cheap. But that guy…

>Guy had to ride in a motorized chair, get guided around campus, and use a super-zoom lens and a laptop screen that made everything 10x-50x its size to be able to read the whiteboard/presentations. I'm sure none of that stuff was cheap.

Did the University pay for that? Or did that student / his family carry pretty much all those costs, except maybe the campus being built to ADA requirements? If a parent wants to spend 10x on their kid verse the 'average' kid I have no problem with that at all.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#576

Post by joe_the_user » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #391

_vdpp wrote: post #98

A few random thoughts: 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go? 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated s…

1. Administrators. We have insane administrative bloat, especially in higher ed. In some institutions there is nearly a 1:1 count of administrators to faculty. Ironically, given the social politics implied by the author, a significant amount of administration bloat is specifically tied to DEI. 2. Well, they are. A teaching certification used to only require two years of higher learning compared to typical 4 for other…

I agree with some of your points but I'd take exception to: "Partly because school in the US is boring and designed to grind out individuality in favor of making good industrial cogs."

If by industrial cog, you mean someone who's suited for work in manufacturing, the US certainly isn't producing those at even the level it's reduced manufacturing base needs. It's hard to say what the exact aim of the US education system is though it does produce some amount of people sort-of competent for the jobs that are out. It's one of X many bureaucracy/industries that both produce stuff, that once produced stuff quite efficiently but become more and more characterized by an interlocked combination of administrators/pseudo-entrepreneurs who use their connections and framework of capital investment to soak a large portion of the funds going into the industry. I mean, aside from education, you have health care, the police/judicial/prison complex, the construction industry (note recent mention of $4 billion planning in the creation of high speed rail) and etc. You could say the special product of the US education system is people appropriate to be either petty bureaucrat such as social workers or people appropriate to be client of the petty bureaucrats. But of course, the education still does, to some extent, teach people ordinary skills for more ordinary jobs but in fashion abusive to both teachers and children and profitably to those in the rackets.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#577

Post by erdos4d » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

vostok wrote: post #66

lr4444lr wrote: post #15

I realize this piece is more of a rant, and I won't hold it to a data accuracy standard it never pretended to have, but they pay issue is really misconstrued. Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median, and when accounting for benefits and pension, quite impressive. In South Dakota and a number of states in the south and rural districts, yes it is another story, and it is bad. Also, teachers N…

> Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median Is the median the correct benchmark? The median household income in NYC was $67k in 2021 [0]. Why would someone choose to be a teacher making around the median [1] when you could be a software engineer and make 3x as much? It's not just a matter of trinkets and baubles. That difference allows you to comfortably afford a nice family sized apartment […

Most teachers couldn't be software engineers, they just aren't smart enough.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#578

Post by scarmig » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #561

spoils19 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. We also have to consider the comparative ROI.

Education and social services are one of the areas where we really shouldn't be leaning that hard on ROI. The return is a well taken care of populace. Yes, it may cost, but we pay that cost because we're not assholes.

Those are still returns, just not monetary ones. You can get plenty of buy in that educational outcomes are good in themselves, but schools fail at that basic metric.

On the other hand, as a way to provide social services to underprivileged children they are pretty decent. But that's not what they're advertised as (school isn't known as an acronym for Social Care and Health Out Of a Location), and people end up pissed.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#579

Post by notch656a » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #563

bergenty wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Special Ed is as stupid as doing open heart surgeries on 85 year olds to give them 3 extra years. They’re an enormous burden on the system and are ruining everything for almost all of us. Why do severely mentally handicapped kids even need to be educated. Just provide them with an amount of money to live their lives and make their time here as happy as possible. There is going to be a reckoning.

Special education is exactly as well defined as that. Gifted children fall under the banner of special education as well. They also require resources average students don't.

I'd also be against disproportionately spending on "gifted" children. I also doubt "gifted" are much of a drain. I was in all the honors classes and basically spent my entire day reading whatever I liked, ignoring my teachers and basically demanding no time from anyone. Teachers finally learned to leave me completely alone except to grade the test because I always passed with flying colors and had zero interest in interacting with anyone but the lunch lady. I'm not asking for extra spending at all for "gifted" children, only that spending amongst all children be normalized to be nearly the same.

Meanwhile I saw nearly daily the math teacher spend 20 minutes trying to console the girl in the previous period who would beat the chair I was going to sit in senseless.

Personally I would have been much happier in 'gen pop' anyways and then there would have been even easier bullshit tests while I spent my public school time reading college CS and chemistry books.

----------------------

>You were in "gen pop". Honors classes are just that, honors classes. Gifted classes are another thing altogether.

My school was a country school, we didn't have anything beyond 'honors' classes. If you want to call yourself gifted and the people in my country school's honor class not, that's fine, I don't think we were particularly gifted. In my experience the student:teacher ratio were significantly tighter in these classes. I realize some people only consider 'gifted' as the very most challenging class in a large school system (not including 'honors' even if that is the highest available in the school) whereas others may call the gifted classes anything more challenging than the 'normal' core (I call gen-pop) curriculum.

>If you agree with the guy I responded to, in that you wouldn't mind removing the mentally challenged from the school system entirely, boy, that's not a good look for you.

I would think someone so eager to call themselves 'gifted' and the people they are speaking with 'not' would understand this is what's called a straw-man. I'm only asking for the gen-pop kids to be given roughly equal financial per-capita investment as special-ed.

>ifted classes are like 5 to 10 students.

Lower ratios to the extent you spend significantly disproportionately more than the average student are exactly the kind of special treatment I'm against when using public funds. If you want a private school for that where the student or their family pays for it, have at it.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#580

Post by sidlls » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #122

sidlls wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you can do math, you can teach yourself enough physics to teach in high school." No, you can't. Even at the high school level there is jargon, historical methodology, and domain-specific nuance that isn't accessible to the self-taught. That's true for almost any subject one might think of, in fact.

To be clear, I didn't write "be an exceptional physics teacher with knowledge of history, nuance, etc." - I agree that's not a trivial thing and a very desirable one. But if you need "just a physics teacher" for a given spot, I stand by my opinion.

I mean, if you’re talking about the happy path where every student understands the material on the first pass or can work out issues on their own then maybe. But that’s not how teaching or learning works for anyone, including super geniuses.