Pennsylvania is considering putting the funding with the kids, rather than through the system/administration. The average spending per student in the US is about $15k/yr. If that money went with the student, instead of to administration, etc. a teacher could take on 10 students and make $150k/yr revenue. A mainstream online curriculum for those students costs less than $30/mo. I'm not saying that's exactly the solution, I don't want to get caught up in the details on the HN forum, but I hope we can head in that vague direction.
Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
441–450 of 954 posts
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#442It's too late to put the genie back in the bottle. Whether we like it or not we're going with the Sweden Model. I've got school age kids myself, and I understand the risk. This is going to be a situation that could become hard to manage but our society's economy is constructed in such a way that relies on daytime programming for children and teens outside of their home. The teachers are going to have to help bear the…
> The teachers are going to have to help bear the load, just as we all are.
Judging by how this pandemic has unfolded in America, we certainly aren't sharing the load equally.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#443I feel like there is too much emphasis on these and not enough on the ones that earnestly want to go back to work. There should be a balance here, as we really do need a lot of students to have access to schools in the fall. Remote learning doesn't work for everyone and leaves a lot of people behind. The overall consequences of another lost semester may be far worse than the consequences of reopening.
Here's a question to consider: behind on the way to what, exactly? If we keep on getting pandemics (something that's been expected for a long time) the whole baseline of how society operates will be forcibly disrupted. (a baseline people can be 'left behind' on the way to: I hear talk of students missing vital academic AND SOCIAL connections, which sounds like pre-pandemic talk) If we have even moderate economic coll…
Societies collapse long before public infrastructure or economies. It starts when people become callous to one another just to do whatever they want.
No schools in a war zone. That's a choice, making everything about you and your celebrity instead of just walking away. School for a long time has been a chore, like boot camp, instead of a place of education which really starts in the home. For a long time there's been no real community in America, looking out for each other, trying to be nice. Just unbridled ambition for celebrity.
Perhaps we are on the way towards no more fooling ourselves, that mistakes are meaningless and other people's lives are very important. Churning people, firing people, someone else's failures dumped onto society are often the very worst outcome as you no longer can help, and always come back home to hurt you far worse than what you have now.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interdimensional cable. You can't prove that I don't have it. Ask yourself this, could the current administration's response have been better given what was known at the time? If the answer is emphatically yes, then perhaps another person is better suited for the job.
Why is this even a discussion we're having? Yes, literally anybody would have had a better response than what we got. Just looking at the current state of the US vs practically any other country in the world shows how cripplingly bad the response has been from the current administration. Sometimes, I really hate the people in this country.
I can take a guess. People consume different information sources, and have different ideologies. So, they may arrive at different conclusions than you. I suspect this is more heavily on the ideology side because it's hard to deny the body count.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#445My wife is a teacher and starting school (in person) in a week and a half. There’s no answers to questions like: - Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away? - When a teacher gets sick, what substitute teacher is going to want to teach an exposed class (also, they’ll be making sub plans with covid?)? - When they’re sick are will they be getting additional sick leave? - Do they get wo…
All good questions. If it were me I would join forces with other teachers and parents to bring the questions to the principal and school board (or district). I suspect that in many cases, teachers and parents will need to put significant pressure on the PTB to force them to confront these important questions. edit - If your wife belongs to a teachers union, this would be a great thing for the teachers union to push f…
I think the problem is a majority of parents are FOR school opening up.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of this is a consequence of ideologies that have become popular in the US both in politics and in business. Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. A mandate that people wear masks is not acceptable. Having manufacturing capacity to make low-value products in large numbers in the US is bad business when poorer countries can do it for less. Having spare inventory is bad, because just-in-time man…
> Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes. > ... good leadership ... but we chose someone who is committed to division, ... I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a…
> Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes.
Maybe if it were also possible to lock down borders between states, making them truly separate sovereign nations.
A lot of states had a declining infection rate and looked to be getting things under control, then people traveled to other states and brought back the virus with them.
There are still things only the federal government can do or coordinate.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters. Parents choose to send their kids there - if the existing public school was so good, why would they send them somewhere else? It's simply about choice, and sending your own kids to the best possible option. No one would ever deny their own children the best possible education available. It's so clearly about administrators and professionals over the n…
> I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters The left doesn't hate charters, it hates publicly subsidized private schools that are not effectively accountable. That's a subset of charters plus all vouchers. Actual public charters, by which public schools are granted some variance of generally applicable rules to trial new methods are not a problem to the left; the hijacking of that process to c…
it hates publicly subsidized private schools that are not effectively accountable
As opposed to existing publicly subsidized public schools that are not effectively accountable?
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good. The current state of the world is incredibly unnatural when you compare it to even 50 years ago. Everything is too connected. We are so much more efficient, but so much more fragile. The best thing you can do to save the world is save yourself and your family. Less fragility, more robustness at the personal / local level. I am mid twenties, and was homeschooled my entire childhood. My father owned a technology…
> but its a good kind of weird. This isn't guaranteed. A counterexample is Tara Westover[1] who grew up in an extremist version of what you are describing. She ultimately became successful but it was mostly despite her parents isolation from "the system", not because of them. [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/02/20/587244230/memoirist-retraces-...
I went to public schools for 12 years and I still turned out weird. No guarantees either way.
I think the view that homeschooled kids are weird is caused less by homeschooling and more by the fact that weirdos are more likely to homeschool.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think one of the things that has been so disheartening to me about the pandemic is that it has shown how we just can't really do anything anymore in the US. I mean, just look at PPE. I understand being a little flat footed when the pandemic first started, but it's been nearly 6 months now. I would have expected mass mobilization to pump out N95 masks, gloves, gowns, face shields, etc. by the millions. I mean, look…
The United States government is completely and utterly dysfunctional when it comes to serving the needs of its citizens. The government rarely goes out of its way to help its citizens, and the rare times it does something to help, it does so incredibly begrudgingly, intentionally making the process as painful as possible. The pandemic payouts are a wonderful example of the government going out of its way to make help…
This is entirely at the feet of the Republican party. They're the ones who have declared states are on their own and have suggested (and this is not a joke) that the next round of "relief" must include a capital gains holiday. There have been missteps from the left, but the Democrats overall approach has been to serve the needs of citizens in general while the Republicans have been eager to continue their program of concentrating wealth.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#450I have pretty much given up on everybody at this point. I have already pulled my kid from school and will not send them back. I am in a single income family and I am now working from home. All actions and purchases at this point are to help us to become more independant from the system. Society and government at large has shown itself to be unreliable and undependable. I am also making longer term plans to move out o…
I think one of the things that has been so disheartening to me about the pandemic is that it has shown how we just can't really do anything anymore in the US. I mean, just look at PPE. I understand being a little flat footed when the pandemic first started, but it's been nearly 6 months now. I would have expected mass mobilization to pump out N95 masks, gloves, gowns, face shields, etc. by the millions. I mean, look…
Honestly I think the government is too big and centralized. At this point is isn't much different that Soviet Russia back in the 80s and 90s. I think the reason the government can't do a good job is because it wasn't designed to operate the way it is now. We were supposed to be 50 states all doing what is best for them and not dictated by the federal government. The right decision for New York will probably not be the right decision for Wyoming and so forth.
To your comment about WWII. We had a common enemy and a common effort. This "wartime" economy pretty much envolved the entire economy and I would argue wasn't much different than what communism would be. Meaning that the central government pretty much controlled the means of production.