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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#121

Post by candiddevmike »

_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. Parasitic administration salaries

2. Depending on the state you may not even need one

3. It's the parents, not the kids that make them feel this way. Kids typically love their teachers

4. 100%

5. Building a new school is 10-100s of millions typically. Why it costs so much is worthy of debate, but plunking down new schools these days is far more costly than in the past.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#122

Post by viraptor »

sidlls wrote: post #84
viraptor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most qualified high school physics teachers have way differently valued skillsets in the labor force by alternate employers than most kindergarten teachers. Do they? I read that as implying that physics teachers could potentially get some stem jobs. But is that actually true? If you can do math, you can teach yourself enough physics to teach in high school. But that gets you nowhere near the knowledge necessary for…

"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.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#123

Post by prirun »

mattkrause wrote: post #76
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue $13K per student is quite low relative to the services expected. I mean, compare that to the price of college tuition. Now, college is too expensive and I certainly wouldn't want to replicate that problem in K-12 schools. But... well, in some ways colleges have it easier, because the students are older and can be expected to be more independent. You can't have a 100-person lecture in a K-12 setting (not tha…

Yup. $13k/year works out to about $10 per pupil-hour, and even less once you include costs like the building and work done out-of-hours (grading, lesson planning). I’m pretty sure I made something like that babysitting in junior high!

"Pupil-hour" makes no sense in a classroom environment. When you were babysitting, they didn't pay you $10/hr per kid.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#124

Post by Wowfunhappy »

zmgsabst wrote: post #87
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue $13K per student is quite low relative to the services expected. I mean, compare that to the price of college tuition. Now, college is too expensive and I certainly wouldn't want to replicate that problem in K-12 schools. But... well, in some ways colleges have it easier, because the students are older and can be expected to be more independent. You can't have a 100-person lecture in a K-12 setting (not tha…

$13k per student is more than the cost of undergraduate education, at $12.5k per student for the University of Washington. https://www.washington.edu/opb/tuition-fees/current-tuition-...

It's $40K if you select "non-resident", which I assume is because the in-state tuition is taxpayer subsidized.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#125

Post by areoform »

zarzavat wrote: post #46

The problem/solution is YouTube. There is prestige in being a YouTube super-teacher like 3B1B, teaching millions of people. There is no prestige in teaching kids at a local high school who don't even want to learn. The smart people who once might have found their vocation in teaching, now prefer to set up YouTube channels. The role of teacher is splitting into content makers and babysitters.

Believe it or not, YouTube is not good pedagogy. A YouTube video doesn't help you to fill in the gaps of your understanding by re-working a difficult concept with you. A YouTube video, nor an app, doesn't go through the steps of solving a problem with you, and watch how you do it to give you constructive criticism.

Educational content is amazing, but it's not teaching. It's a resource. It's like saying that the existence of books negates the need for teaching and that all the clever people are now writing books.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#127

Post by gedy »

tinsmith wrote: post #43
uniqueuid wrote: post #2

As a European, it has always been perplexing to me how little the US invests in teachers and schools, given that we know how huge the benefits are down the road (educational attainment, income, pro-social behavior, life satisfaction). Watching how large parts of the political spectrum embrace hardship as a societal teaching tool, I begin to understand that the expectation may always have been that kids ought to figur…

When you're actually from the US as a Millennial or Gen Z'er, it's not hard to see what happened. The previous two generations taught us nothing, but expected us to know everything they did, as though by virtue of being a living human this knowledge is just granted. Our parents never had the time to show us how to budget, care for a home, etc, so we had to learn from the Internet. But why? I posit that Boomers and Ge…

> Gen X had such an easy go of it

Please, economy and real estate prices has been boom and bust for Gen X too, 3-4 serious recessions, pensions lost before 401k were a thing, etc.

Maybe look at who you vote for and blame them, not normal people 10-20 years older than you.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#128

Post by horsawlarway »

GiorgioG wrote: post #5
uniqueuid wrote: post #2

As a European, it has always been perplexing to me how little the US invests in teachers and schools, given that we know how huge the benefits are down the road (educational attainment, income, pro-social behavior, life satisfaction). Watching how large parts of the political spectrum embrace hardship as a societal teaching tool, I begin to understand that the expectation may always have been that kids ought to figur…

"K-12 schools spend $666.9 billion or $13,185 per pupil annually." - https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... We invest plenty. We just don't get a great return on our investment.

I'm not actually sure that's "plenty".

For comparison - we currently pay more per year to keep our 1 year old child in daycare (roughly ~15,000/yr) and for daycare we literally only expect them to keep him alive & clean. And this is considered a "cheap" daycare. Most places in our area (the much cheaper south-west side of Atlanta) still charge more than 1600/m or almost 20k/yr.

We certainly don't expect them to be significantly enriching his education experience (although the simple exposure to other kids will likely do that at this age). We also don't expect the employees to have any sort of educational/vocational training to excel at teaching, or expect them to perform any sort of off-the-clock work (ex: grading, class prep, parent-teacher meetings, etc). I expect them to be mostly high-school graduates with a background check.

So I look at that number, and while it's certainly a large number if you're making 1 teacher manage 30 kids, I don't really know that it's a number that results in viable conditions to truly "educate" children.

I strongly suspect that education is highly dependent on the family at home, and that's becoming harder to meaningful do as more and more families are forced to have both parents work full time.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#129

Post by powerhour »

seibelj wrote: post #56
mnd999 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a societal decision we have to make. Should all children have access to good education - i.e. should we invest in public schooling? Or should it be dependent on your parents ability to pay in which case lets go all in on private.

In my opinion, the voucher system is correct - keep funding public school through tax dollars, but give the parents a voucher for the amount to spend where they wish. If every parent in Boston received a $25,000 voucher to spend at the school they wished, competition would force public schools to improve or shut down as every school vied for the vouchers. Unlike many on the left, who despise monopolies in business an…

> competition would force public schools to improve or shut down as every school vied for the vouchers.

I don't know how to fairly evaluate a school's performance. I guess we could ask if the students perform better in the job market 10-20 years later, but that's not obviously not helpful or useful information on which to make a decision now.

I get why the voucher system is appealing on first glance. After all, you often can evaluate the quality of goods and services. You can, say, estimate that a shirt you find at the mall will last a few years or that it will fall apart in a month. I just don't think you can do the same for schools. I have a feeling most people will evaluate education based on their beliefs (religious, etc) and the grades their kids "earn".

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#130

Post by pnf »

anthonyskipper wrote: post #86
swinnipeg wrote: post #67

In Canada each province has a fairly strong teacher union. In Manitoba for example a teacher with 10 years experience will earn approximately $95K CAD (more than most software developers here). This with strong pension benefits that can be collected at 55. I know teachers that retired in their late 50s, and will continuing making 70% of their inflation adjust salaries until they die. Relatively speaking this salary/b…

Quoted post unavailable.

Some of the worst educational outcomes in the US are in deep blue states and deep blue cities. Meanwhile, suburban communities in the US tend to vote more "red" and are also the places people go to raise families because of the better public schools.
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