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Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

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Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you agree that, in a society where kids are primarily parented by third parties in practice, teachers and educators ought to get their fair share of the blame for not being good role models and keeping kids protected from that mess?

You're asking a whole lot of teachers. And frankly, no. It is a classic case of treating the symptom rather than the disease. When what you need is stronger parenting and better social structure and safety nets, substituting that with additional responsibilities and workloads for teachers who are arguably often already burdened outside of what could reasonably be expected of them is not going to be a recipe for succe…

I'm asking teachers nothing, actually. Just wondering and asking the parent post's author...

And frankly, I've no idea what ought to be done about it.

What I do know is this much: in broad strokes, the US went from a household with a pop at work mum at home 50 years ago, to a pop and mum at work or single parent at work nowadays. In other words, it turned into a society where parents don't have the material time to parent their own children. Who should do so in their place?

Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you agree that, in a society where kids are primarily parented by third parties in practice, teachers and educators ought to get their fair share of the blame for not being good role models and keeping kids protected from that mess?

> Wouldn't you agree that, in a society where kids are primarily parented by third parties in practice, No, I would not agree that children are parented by teachers. A child has multiple teachers each year and many, if not all of them, change year-to-year. What more could we ask for such a transient figure to do beyond being a good role model? > not being good role models Where has anyone every said educators shouldn…

As I wrote in my reply to mkohlmyr, methinks the bigger problem is that parents no longer have the material time to parent their own kids.

Who should step in to fill the gap? Gangs? Militarized cops? Someone else?

It seems to me that teachers and educators spend the most time with kids apart from parents (or one would hope), and are the least bad candidates to second parents in parenting kids.

Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#53
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been given the task of controlling lots of kids, squishing their natural learning desires and ways. This should be draining as it is against the ways of how we evolved. See for example http://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/school_is_a_prison_and_damag... Despite your best intentions, coercive schooling is not a good thing. There are better ways, such as Sudbury schooling, that are both respectful of children and act…

Arguments like this make me wonder whether we should pursue homeschooling. My kids are 2 and 4, and we've been going back and forth on the decision. We couldn't afford private school, and my wife is already staying home. Our county's educational system is one of the best in the state, but it still suffers from the bad practices that plague our national education system.

A lot of the result depends upon how much energy your wife has to devote to homeschooling, after childcare and housekeeping. Unless she is above median/average, the answer is usually "not much energy". From the way you wrote, it sounds like you leave the house to work. Even if that is not the case, our field is competitive enough that even an easy "lifestyle business" will see you devote half a day every three days at a minimum to your work, making it challenging for both parents to be heavily involved. If you work at home, like most around here (including myself) you probably work a full 40-50 hours per week if not much more. The erratic nature of much at-home working also wreaks havoc upon the routine many young children crave to establish the level of trust they require; there is some clinical evidence that the successful children in the Stanford marshmallow experiment were successful because they trusted parents, which translated into trusting adults, and hence trusted the adult who told them they would get an additional treat in the future). So really homeschooling on a practical, continuing basis comes down on the shoulders of one of the stay-at-home parents (or the one stay-at-home parent).

I can tell you what worked for me, and leave it up to you to collect sufficient data samples to judge your own situation. We bring in a nanny 12 hours a week, on three separate days (8 of those hours are with a nanny who speaks a second language for an immersive experience for the children). My SO taught at home from pre-verbal stage to 4; we turned what most houses would be the "living room" into the school/playroom for the children.

Our local homeschool groups don't meet frequently enough to offset some of the lagging social development cues we suspected that were not aligning with our 4-yo's advanced verbal skills (assessed to at least a year ahead of peers), so we placed (for 15 hours per week) our 4-yo into a pre-school that specializes in Precision Learning and Direct Instruction methods (these terms are sometimes associated with developmentally delayed children, but they work even better with developmentally appropriate children). The rest of the time we continue with our homeschooling. Results: within six months, our 4-yo leapt from average to a year ahead in math and reading, and (our suspicions were correct) went from being uncomfortable in groups to being the class clown (never knew the child had that in them).

I will tell you straight up front: this is expensive. There is no way around that. Since you mention a state, I assume you are in the US. Using private resources means you will likely pay property taxes partly for a public school system you will not use. One decision we took to mitigate that was to hunt for a house that was only assessed county property taxes, and still as close-in to the metro area as we could manage. We gave up the amenities of urban living, but our city is not densifying and is growing rather dysfunctionally IMHO so I consider moving away a net positive for our particular situation.

Between the nannies, part-time pre-school, and third-party activities we signed up for that we don't have the equipment to teach (swimming and gymnastics), it is a significant chunk of change. However, I consider my children my most important investment, ever, and my capital allocation reflects that. As the children grow older, we do anticipate not having to spend quite so much on the nannies / housekeepers, so the situation does improve, but there are no easy answers here.

Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#54
I was surprised teacher salaries did not come into it. From my relatively uninformed viewpoint, I would think offering more money would give you a better choice of candidates. Look at investment banks. They offer lots of money, and they get the pick of a large proportion of the top graduates.

Here's a conversation I had with a young man in Switzerland:

Me: You seem like a smart, well educated guy (Kid speaks 4 languages, and can talk about interesting stuff at age 20). So, what do you do when you're not helping out at your dad's shop?

Him: I've got an apprenticeship at Credit Suisse. So I work there a few days and study some other days.

Me: Cool. My banker is at CS, and he started at 16, just like you. He's a smart guy, been sent to NYC as well. Probably doing quite well out of it. I guess that's your path then?

Him: Nah. I like it and the pay is good. The work is interesting, but I want to get into teaching.

Me: So, no rat race I guess?

Him: Well, I know you can make good money in banking, but I figure I can help out young people make the most of themselves.

Me: Sounds like quite a paycut. I remember going into finance thinking how on earth I could ever change back out.

Him: Well, you do get paid 120K CHF a year after a few years. (That's 125K USD.)

Me: [Jaw Drops]

I don't know a whole lot about the system here, but I do feel more comfortable knowing that it's actually competitive to become a teacher.

Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#55

And yet they are the worlds leading economy and tech center of the word. Can some explain this paradox?

Easy access to capital helps a lot. In Europe, we've plenty of good schools and universities, but capital is so much more readily available across the pond that entrepreneurs who need it readily flock to the SV or NYC in order to get it.

It also helps a great deal to have a consumer society that is on a constant lookout for the latest or greatest gadget, product or service. This helps to quickly identify the better options amongst the gazillions that see the day and die each year.

Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#56

A recurring theme here seems to be the bottom 10%, or bottom 20%, or what have you, scores in the US are dragging down the other scores. If those were ignored, the US would presumably be way up top. But that is not the case. If you compare the top 10% of PISA scores in Japan, Singapore, South Korea etc. - or Finland, Switzerland, Holland - to the top 10% in the US, the US top 10% is below their top 10% as well. http:…

That kind of study is really hard for non-experts to draw conclusions from because the process is full of confounds. Even before you look at the test content you'd want to compare across demographic profiles (i.e. parental education levels or income) to see whether that trend holds up. In the case of the PISA scores, there's 2013 paper claiming that some percentage of the differences are explained by a sampling bias over-representing low-income students: http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testin... That could have an effect on the top-end scores as well if it reduced the percentage of top students in the pool.

The other big problem you get is that this is a very narrow test of a single subject and Goodhart's law reigns supreme in this kind of comparison. The total difference being discussed is a 2% delta between the top US decile and Shanghai, which was the world leader. Even if that's not just random fluctuation, it could be explained entirely by something as simple as Singapore making that test a priority whereas it's largely off the radar in the US. That's not an accusation of cheating – it could be as simple as whether kids have drilled as heavily on a specific skill which is used more in one national curriculum than the other.

EDIT: To clarify: this shouldn't be read as criticism of PISA – I'm sure they've made considerable effort to address this challenges – but simply that this kind of comparison is a HARD challenge.

Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#57

I was surprised teacher salaries did not come into it. From my relatively uninformed viewpoint, I would think offering more money would give you a better choice of candidates. Look at investment banks. They offer lots of money, and they get the pick of a large proportion of the top graduates. Here's a conversation I had with a young man in Switzerland: Me: You seem like a smart, well educated guy (Kid speaks 4 langua…

Getting better candidates is not the only problem. Keeping them is the real trick. I have several friends who've ventured into teaching out of various more or less idealistic reasons. Most of them quit for reasons that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with the terrible working conditions. Constant micromanagement, zero control over lessons or lesson plans, endless stream of tests they had to teach to, reams of pointless paperwork that sucked up all their supposed lesson planning time. That is what drives many young, smart, talented people away from teaching in my experience.

Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't you agree that, in a society where kids are primarily parented by third parties in practice, No, I would not agree that children are parented by teachers. A child has multiple teachers each year and many, if not all of them, change year-to-year. What more could we ask for such a transient figure to do beyond being a good role model? > not being good role models Where has anyone every said educators shouldn…

As I wrote in my reply to mkohlmyr, methinks the bigger problem is that parents no longer have the material time to parent their own kids. Who should step in to fill the gap? Gangs? Militarized cops? Someone else? It seems to me that teachers and educators spend the most time with kids apart from parents (or one would hope), and are the least bad candidates to second parents in parenting kids.

> It seems to me that teachers and educators spend the most time with kids apart from parents (or one would hope),

You mean the hour, maybe two they see a child during the day?

> are the least bad candidates to second parents in parenting kids.

No, they're not even a candidate.

Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#59
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But public education is not a service used primarily by the poor unless you have an extremely broad definition of poor. I believe the figure is around 10% of children are in private education.

Education is segregated in the states by rich and poor districts; it is a felony to enroll your kid in the wrong school.

So you're really hitting on the different qualities that can exist inside of public education here, and it's definitely a state-by-state issue (although universally I'd say there are systemic differences between the quality of public urban education vs. suburban vs. rural). While that's definitely a topic of concern and a big problem, the fact remains that that is still publicly funded education. "Rich districts" are still funded by state & county tax funding, where those tax payers are directly taking advantage of their tax dollars at work. My objection was just this notion that public education is just some fringe social benefit for the poor, because outside of the mega-wealthy, its one of the few places in government that society is very deeply invested.

Re: Why Is American Teaching So Bad?

#60

Teaching isn't bad, society is. I have a friend who teaches in an intercity school: * One or more of her students will be shot to death each year * Many of her kids get pulled out of class and beaten by rival gangs each year * Many of her kids will go to jail for a portion of the school year for drug charges each year * Many of her girls will be out due to pregnancy each year How is any of that the fault of the teach…

Wouldn't you agree that, in a society where kids are primarily parented by third parties in practice, teachers and educators ought to get their fair share of the blame for not being good role models and keeping kids protected from that mess?

Even stepping back from this teaching aspect and into the abstract, making essentially mid-level staff employees responsible for factors that are well out of their control and above their pay grade is the sign of an unhealthy business. As a developer, is it my responsibility when product drops the ball or the business mis-invests its money and goes under? Teachers play a very important role in a child's development, and there are rockstar teachers that will truly turn a child's life around and put it on a different trajectory than where it would have been otherwise. But it's not in their job description to be able to do that for every child, regardless of how seriously they take THEIR job of being a student, or a parent's job of raising a child that is prepared for the real world.
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