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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#461

Post by [deleted] »

phonescreen_man wrote: post #334
chadash wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just don’t give a shit. Throwing more money into schools won’t ever fix this problem. I was a disruptive child and my parents were the opposite of people who didn’t give a shit. Both of them highly valued education and spent plenty of time with me. they just had to contend with a child who wasn’t well behaved at school and it was genetics more than anything they…

I thought it was well known that disruptive kids are often unrecognised creative/smart kids who are challenging the authority/leadership of the teacher. There has been some research on this in the UK, look into some of the work by David Price around creative test answers.

[deleted]

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#462

Post by vkou »

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…

Just because people are claiming to be doing work that's vital for DEI doesn't mean they are actually vital for DEI.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#463

Post by CharlesW »

munificent wrote: post #430
CharlesW wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You're only looking at federal funding here. Most public school funding in the US comes from states. My state of Washingon spent $17.5 billion on schooling this year, on top of that federal funding.

Thank you for making that very important point.

That looks like ~28% of the state budget, and per-student spending appears to very high (the 4th highest in the U.S.). Washington is spending 1.5X per student as compared to California, and is apparently not seeing commensurate improvements. I wonder if there are folks working on debugging the apparent inefficiencies of state education systems.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#464

Post by balderdash »

_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…

Could you support #1, it’s my understanding that teachers are actually quite well compensated when you adjust for pension/LT benefits and three months of vacation. Points 2-5 seem spot on.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#465

Post by [deleted] »

pnf wrote: post #105
vostok wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 […

That assumes someone qualified to be a teacher is also qualified to be a software engineer. Have you met a lot of urban public school teachers?

[deleted]

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#466

Post by randomdata »

thisarticle wrote: post #389
randomdata wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has it really? I'm sure the potential exists for video lectures or whatever, but I think the teachers still ostensibly at least teach. Yes. Gone are the days that you would hire a teacher to teach you something. These days you turn to automated teaching services. The fact that the word teacher is now synonymous with the K-12 school teacher further emphasizes that the career in general has effectively disappeared. A…

Do you have any evidence that teachers are all using “automated teaching services”? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Teaching as a career basically doesn't exist anymore outside of schools for children. It is not that teachers are using automated tools, but students are using automated teachers instead of hiring human teachers. When was the last time you hired a human teacher instead of consulting an automated teacher when you wanted/needed to learn something new?

Like I said before, we don't even recognize the existence of general teachers anymore, with the word under typical use now only referring to those who work at schools for children.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#467

Post by RHSeeger »

throw0101a wrote: post #206
diognesofsinope wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded in pension plans. > 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. Yeah, but cost is the same and cost is what's important. > 4. Many school problems are caused by disrup…

> Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded in pension plans. Counter-points to that: You still have to pay the bills before retirement. And this even assumes they get a good pensions, because a lot of states don't bother funding their public employee pensions properly (using current-year tax income for splashy announcements instead, kicking the liability down the road for the next politician): * htt…

> You still have to pay the bills before retirement.

That's a valid point, but choices need to be made. Go to the teachers union and ask if they'd be willing to drop future pensions (and cap current ones to the benefits payed in so far) in exchange for a higher salary (based on the amount saved by not longer having pensions). My guess would be that they wouldn't even be willing to discuss it.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#468

Post by jandrewrogers »

diognesofsinope wrote: post #167
_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. 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? Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded in pension plans. > 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. Yeah, but cost is the same and cost is what's important. > 4. Many school problems are caused by disrup…

The average teacher's pay in the US is essentially the median pay for all college graduates. Many engineering disciplines pay only $10k/year more, without the benefits.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#469

Post by supertofu »

selimthegrim wrote: post #439
supertofu wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me understand the proud dropout concept. I cannot wrap my mind around it. My single mom worked three jobs to put me through private school and pay for my college. I grew up thinking that no college == bag groceries for the rest of your life. How could anyone be proud of depriving themselves of the tools to succeed in life? It's like being proud of gouging out your own eyes and walking around blind.

It’s like giving the finger to the man who wants to screw your over and take resources from you.

But how do people get the idea that school/college are trying to screw them over?

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#470

Post by acjohnson55 »

dhosek wrote: post #457

Former HS math teacher here. It was the hardest job I’ve ever had. I still have nightmares about being back in the classroom 18 years later. I was easily working 12+ hours a day doing class planning, grading, etc. not to mention the actual teaching. Returning to programming my pay doubled and my stress level dropped profoundly. Teacher pay should easily be double what it is. (And about that summers off—with the excep…

I'm also a former HS math teacher and I 100% agree.
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