51–60 of 68 posts
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You're absolutely right that children are not to be blamed for the sins of their parents. But in order to advance society we must work with human nature to make incentives aligned between disparate entities. One of the most fundamental parts of human nature is that parents want to see their children do well, and it's often the biggest reason why people toil and overcome great difficulties instead of settling for the…
That appears to be a false equivalency, Yao Ming doesn't "value" being tall, he is tall. Parents who don't value education may be crappy parents, or they may be hard-eyed realists who think nothing will better the lot of their children. But it's in the interest of a society to not have large numbers of uneducated and angry young people causing havoc.
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Yeah, it's really amusing that anyone expects anything innovation-wise out of the US when we basically put the minimum amount of money humanly possible towards education (for the majority of the country). Looking at Asia and the Nordic countries and how highly they value educators, it's clear where all the talent is going to be in the coming decades.
The US spends $14k/student per year on primary and secondary education, more than almost any other country in the world: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
Education in the U.S., like healthcare, and even defense, is an example of spending way too much money for the quality of the outcome. For a variety of reasons, we have little public capacity to efficiently provide government services compared to what the rest of the world does. This is even true for things like public works spending.
Anyone that tells you we are "not spending enough" has either no idea how much less the rest of the world spends, or they are just lying to you (usually it's the former).
It's hard for people without kids to realize just how much COVID-related school closures fucked everything up. An entire generation of students is at risk of forever being behind. And even those that always attended online class, did all the work, and excelled given the circumstances are still going to fall behind because so many of their peers in the classroom are behind that entire curriculums are changing to accom…
> An entire generation of students is at risk of forever being behind. That ship sailed when Common Core was introduced. Teaching kids neat hacks instead of actual math will permanently stunt their progress.
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Studies have shown that people tend to converge to their natural potential, regardless of tutors, early life interventions etc. The end product of career success seems to be much more nature than nurture
Omg, yes! I don't understand how people don't realize this, relevant YouTube video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hncVNNabglc
There will always be outliers who get ahead via nepotism, that's life. There are also many wealthy kids who end up squandering it all
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> The absolute percentage went down by 8, but who cares? I do and that's why I wrote it The only remaining mystery is which semantical variation of that would you and others accept. Fewer? No. Lower? No. Absolutely percentage? Well its not even clear if others would accept that, or find a different way to say you’re ironically dumb. The purpose of language is to convey a shared concept. Whatever this conversation is…
Typically you would say it's a drop of X percentage points, or just "points", or a decrease of Y percent. Using X instead of Y is simply wrong - whether it's wrong mathematically or verbally is philosophical.
> whether it's wrong mathematically or verbally is philosophical.
got it. yeah I don't care that much as I think what was being conveyed was obvious, and everyone else understood that too
Even without COVID the public education system is such a travesty. When I was in highschool, one year, I had a math teacher who clearly didn't understand her own subject and would routinely get lost and contradict herself and was just generally useless in trying to teach what she did not know. In another year a math teacher may have known the subject but had zero control of the class and the students rebelled against…
Some teachers I knew during COVID reported that in some cases nearly half the kids stopped attending online class and just never returned. Parents wouldn't respond to calls / efforts to get them back into class. Some school districts were faced with wondering what to do? Fail huge % of the students? They chose not to fail them. My son reports that his math classes for the last two years "are the same thing over and o…
In Europe this isnt even a possibility. If you pass students without teaching them your school gets audited by state commission.
Remote learning does not work. It fundamentally does not provide necessary environmental aspects for the healthy development of a child, even if they can be cajoled into attending and focusing.
Note that losing a year is not as simple as simply being a year behind, either. Consider spending a year completely indoors from age 25-26, say. You don't come out the same as your doppelganger who spent 25-26 living a normal and balanced life.
Even without COVID the public education system is such a travesty. When I was in highschool, one year, I had a math teacher who clearly didn't understand her own subject and would routinely get lost and contradict herself and was just generally useless in trying to teach what she did not know. In another year a math teacher may have known the subject but had zero control of the class and the students rebelled against…
Replace them with who is the real question. The pay is garbage, especially in already struggling schools in poor commmunities. So many great potential teachers leave to get far better paying jobs in any number of industries, and that leaves lots of bad teachers as the only qualified candidates that want the job.
I think another obvious thing to do is make it easier for people to become full or part time teachers by removing requirements around licensing and education. If you can prove subject matter expertise - something that, frankly, current teachers should be required to do, and demonstrate an ability to teach then you shouldn't need the licensing and degree requirements that many public schools have.
In my mind this would more like person X is curious about teaching. Maybe they are retired or underemployed or considering a career change. X is reasonably smart, knows math/science/writing/whatever to a high standard, and likes teaching. In our current reality X must either commit serious time and effort to getting the credentials required to start teaching, or just not do it. In my imagination X could easily pick up a role helping an existing teacher (after passing some subject matter tests). Maybe X is grading homework, helping prepare lesson plans, whatever the teacher needs. As X demonstrates their ability the teacher lets X take on more and responsibilities until X is either a full teacher, decides they don't like teaching, or is bounced for some reason.
If it turns out we don't have enough people who want to be teachers then we can consider raising salaries - but, again, they are already higher than average and our current hiring practices are so bad we should try improving those first.
One final thought regarding salaries - I think it really throws things off that teacher pay increases with their tenure. This results in a system where new teachers really are severely underpaid and old teachers are well paid. This can result in attrition among new teachers. Likewise, when teachers are laid off it is by reverse seniority. Again, this is due to the teacher's unions. In my opinion - if a teacher quickly ramps up to leading high performance classes then they should quickly ramp up to the top of the teacher pay scales as well - with performance bonuses thrown in.
1 - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_211.60.a...