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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#611

Post by Spivak »

bArray wrote: post #547
_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…

> 4. Many school problems are caused by disruptive children. > 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. Some. Most children I believe require an approach that the education system cannot adequately provide (for numerous reasons). Children are relatively malleable and in the right environment will thrive.

The bend is an while for every kid there is an educational environment that will work for them, there isn’t an educational environment that will work for every kid.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#612

Post by andrewprock »

dionidium wrote: post #540
jedberg wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% of America lives in California. Can't really call it an outlier.

You're right. Outlier is a poor word choice. I just mean to say that increasingly we need separate discussions for the 10% of people who live in CA and the 90% who don't, because the experiences are really quite different.

When it comes to education pensions, CA is not an outlier. The precise terms vary, but I think most public educators have access to similar pension programs.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#613

Post by mantas »

paganel wrote: post #48
mantas wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much better in many parts of europe... :(

Especially the teacher-pupil relationship, which has been transformed into a teacher-parent relationship where the teacher is seen as a service-worker and the parent sees him/herself as a client/customer. I've heard this first-hand from a close friend of hours who works in the education system for French expats' kids.

One of the issues in my country is „student's money“ where public schools get paid per-student. „2nd year“ if student performs very poorly vanished as a result. 3 decades ago it was pretty common for kids to repeat the curriculum. Now parents just threaten to transfer the kid to another school. Administration lets the kid move on to the next grade for the sake of €€€. At the end of the day, kid never catches up academically..

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#614

Post by locutous »

The entirety of the edifice of public education is rotten. Nobody likes building software for clueless business types, running deathmarch after deathmarch. I don't blame teachers for seeing problems.

Time to rework the system. More likely, blow it up and start over as it's politically impossible to make the structural changes required. Just like since companies can't be salvaged, this one is done.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#615

Post by germinalphrase »

seibelj wrote: post #573
germinalphrase wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

There is a place in society for schools that will treat you like cattle and babysit you all day. There is also a place for academically challenging schools that provide a strong education. I don’t want to ban the latter in order to improve the former.

Those are the choices, huh?

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#616

Post by mattkrause »

GiorgioG wrote: post #325
mattkrause wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some school systems offer 'gold plated' healthcare plans So? If you want good teachers--or at, some point, any teachers--you need to offer working conditions that are good enough to attract them, just like any other job. Spending on benefits "instead of" education is a false dichotomy; in fact, I'd say that's the central thesis of the article.

This was the school system I went to in a rust-belt city, the teachers were not 'good' on average.

But if you tried to hire teachers while offering less, would they have been better? My guess is no; they'd have been even worse.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#617

Post by r3trohack3r »

juve1996 wrote: post #546
carapace wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The Internet obviates most of our current educational system. E.g., textbooks are absurd in a world where every child has a radio-networked pocket supercomputer. The daycare aspect of schools is broken, obviously, but that's a deep societal problem far beyond the ability of teachers to fix. The educational aspect of schools is (mostly, but not entirely) redundant to the resources available for free on the Inter…

People with kids will tell you how well "internet education" went the last 2 years... This isn't a technology problem. Kids are still kids. Fortnite will still be more fun than doing math, whether that's on a computer or in a classroom.

> People with kids will tell you how well "internet education" went the last 2 years

We had a bunch of school districts with little to no experience running distance education, with a vested interest in return-to-classroom, all attempt to implement an online curriculum practically overnight. I don't consider it fair to consider that "online learning" or an earnest attempt at a successful home schooling curriculum.

To drive that point home, a family I know in Washington State had two kids in the school district during that disaster. The school district shifted a tone of responsibility onto parents and kids. The parents were fed up and switched to a for-profit homeschool program. Their kids are still home schooled - they never went back to the school district after COVID ended.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#618

Post by obscurette »

1. This is not about America. I'm from Eastern Europe and we have the very same problems.

2. This is not about money. Yes, being underpaid is part of a problem how teachers feel, but no money compensates humiliation and bullying teachers are experiencing.

3. It's not a rant. This EXACTLY how I feel after spending three years at school. I was a math teacher in classes of my kids because a school couldn't find any. Yes, nobody wants to teach any more.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#619

Post by santoshalper »

obscurette wrote: post #618

1. This is not about America. I'm from Eastern Europe and we have the very same problems. 2. This is not about money. Yes, being underpaid is part of a problem how teachers feel, but no money compensates humiliation and bullying teachers are experiencing. 3. It's not a rant. This EXACTLY how I feel after spending three years at school. I was a math teacher in classes of my kids because a school couldn't find any. Yes…

It's not just about the money, but I think the mediocre pay combined with all the bullshit is just too much.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#620

Post by greedo »

bergenty wrote: post #504
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…

Special Ed is as stupid as doing open heart surgeries on 85 year olds to give them 3 extra years. They’re an enormous burden on the system and are ruining everything for almost all of us. Why do severely mentally handicapped kids even need to be educated. Just provide them with an amount of money to live their lives and make their time here as happy as possible. There is going to be a reckoning.

Special Ed spending is not just severely handicapped kids. Some of them have minor issues that require assistance or an IEP. My daughter for example had a stutter that required the help of a speech pathologist. After a year of help, she no longer stuttered, and graduated with an A average. Yet you see this type of thing as an enormous burden, where I see it as no different than a teacher tutoring a student struggling with a subject.
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