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Nobody wants to teach anymore

jessicalexicus.medium.com

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#481

Post by analog31 »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #351
analog31 wrote: post #247

The US has always experienced relentless political activism against public education. This creates a climate where teachers, and the institution they work in, are actively hated by a wide swath of the public. This is due in no small part to proponents of religious education. It's true that teachers receive an above-average salary, but that can be both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that your wages are a matter…

> The US has always experienced relentless political activism against public education. Lol we spend almost 3x more on k-12 public education now (inflation adjusted) than we did in 1960. I really doubt the relentless political activism was on the side against public education. Really, the cost to educate a child should have gone down substantially relative to inflation given new technologies that make teaching easier…

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them." -- Jerry Falwell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#482

Post by acjohnson55 »

jschveibinz wrote: post #365

I am an early-retired EE and I thought that I could have a second career in teaching HS physics. I got the MA Teaching in Maryland, and did my one year student teaching assignment. My thoughts: 1. The degree program was decent, although a certificate program would be better for prior professionals if the law allowed it (lower cost, too much wasted time in redundant classes). 2. Teachers are sad. Very sad. They are un…

> 1. The degree program was decent, although a certificate program would be better for prior professionals if the law allowed it (lower cost, too much wasted time in redundant classes).

There are certificate programs in Maryland. That's how I got my Maryland teacher's license. You typically have to be enrolled in an alternative certification program, like Teach For America, Baltimore City Teaching Residency, etc. But there are a bunch of them: https://www.marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/DEE/Pr...

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#483

Post by samhuk »

I've always found the media coverage around this topic strange. You will hear almost nothing about it for months, then a huge wave of Unhappy Teachers articles, videos, news items, etc. will rise up, then it all evaporates away into nothing as quickly as it began.

And little ever gets done. I feel like very few politicians want to touch the education beast out of fear, perhaps because last time they did ('member Common Core?) it went nuclear-FUBAR.

I'm not sure if anyone has already linked it, but CNBC just released a new piece on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlnspY2wOVw

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#484

Post by jongjong »

This isn't surprising at all.

Crony-capitalism is a zero-sum game. It literally rewards value extraction at the expense of value creation. Teaching creates value and it's terrible at capturing value because it offers very little negotiating power; teachers are fully reliant on big, powerful institutions for employment.

Why would the big corporations with market monopolies (which control our governments) want to educate the masses? The big corporations don't want their competitors to be educated and they certainly don't want more free thinkers in society who can learn about our dysfunctional monetary system.

Elite colleges churn out just enough graduates to keep the big corporate monopolies running. Graduates of all other schools and colleges are just fuel for the competition; they're a nuisance for big corporations; these individuals need to be kept incompetent so that they do not pose a threat to the existing order. Financially, it makes sense to dumb down the masses, pack them into tiny living spaces, feed them crickets, connect them to virtual reality and make sure that they don't have any children.

Our monetary system ensures that our economy always caters to capital and the sources of capital (reserve bank money printers), not to people. It doesn't even allow for parallel economies to form when people can't afford to participate in the mainstream economy. It keeps everyone hooked until death.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#485

Post by Cupertino95014 »

meetingthrower wrote: post #424
tristor wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Re #1) I was a school board member and did exhaustive analysis of our budget. For primary education through high school, admin is NOT the root cause. If you take any school budget, and strip away everything that is not an actual classroom teacher, you will find that ~1/3 or less goes to "frontline" teaching costs. Another 1/3 goes to special ed and all that is attendant with that. I mean, my district BOUGHT a car and…

Good data, but it's static. How has it changed over the last, say, 30 years?

I'm guessing "special ed" costs have increased the most. Why is that?

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#486

Post by pessimizer »

gshubert17 wrote: post #292
treis wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Admission is by lottery if there are more applicants than places, not by cherry-picking applicants. Filtering out kids who's parents aren't willing or able to complete the application process is the cherry-picking.

Yes, it's a big step for parents to leave the default neighborhood school, look over the various options, even staying in the same city, let alone moving to a different district. I agree with you there. The admissions people take some time to represent the whole story or big picture to prospective parents, because the school is not for everybody. I don't think it's cherry-picking to encourage parents to find the best…

> I don't think it's cherry-picking to encourage parents to find the best school for their children, even if it isn't yours.

Why? Because "cherry-picking" is bad and the best things for children are good?

It's, of course, exactly cherry-picking to find the children with the most interested and motivated parents, then filter them down to the ones that you like best. Fuck the kids with bad or no parents.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#488

Post by azinman2 »

meetingthrower wrote: post #424
tristor wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Re #1) I was a school board member and did exhaustive analysis of our budget. For primary education through high school, admin is NOT the root cause. If you take any school budget, and strip away everything that is not an actual classroom teacher, you will find that ~1/3 or less goes to "frontline" teaching costs. Another 1/3 goes to special ed and all that is attendant with that. I mean, my district BOUGHT a car and…

You say that like we’re overspending on spending ed. I don’t understand that position. Of course they require more resources than the average student - they’re special cases, literally! To take that away would be devastating for society’s most vulnerable, as most parents aren’t equipped with the skills or resources to be able to do any different with their children. Some cases are extreme. Should we just let them either fail regular classes many years over or become extremely disruptive? How is that good for anyone?

It’s easy to say X is expensive or Y takes up Z part of the budget. We saw a lot of that with the whole defund the police movement. But no one asks what should X cost? Maybe it’s already at the required level, or even less, despite it being such a large percentage of the budget?

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#490

Post by germinalphrase »

seibelj wrote: post #239
Aunche wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partially agree with you, but private school teachers often get paid less than their public school counterparts. Private schools get a flood of applications from humanities PHDs who don't have the certifications required to teach in public schools, so it's very much a race to the bottom in terms of salary. Private school's biggest advantage for teachers is that the parents treat education seriously, so they are les…

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.

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