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How Many People Can Someone Lead?

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Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#81

Post by robbedpeter »

101011 wrote: post #74
robbedpeter wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to shit on your sacred cow, but you mean overpaid. For babysitting. The education children get in public schools is abysmal. Good teachers that actually educate are exceedingly rare. The education requirements for teachers is a sick joke. If you get a master's degree in underwater basket weaving, have a tolerance for noise, you join a teacher's union, work 9 months out of the year, get weeks of holidays, get vi…

Gee, I'll bet you were a peach to teach. Let's just fire all the teachers and see if the next batch of applicants do any better. I'm a software engineer and I'll happily admit that I'm grossly overpaid for the contribution to society I provide. I'm curious what you think teachers should be paid for trying to educate our future.

There's a market that works on software engineers. Ability, work ethic, and quality of output plays a significant part in who gets hired and fired. There are no mechanisms by which bad teachers are removed, as long as they check the boxes for attendance, not being visibly intoxicated, etc. The profession is riddled with incompetents and bad actors.

Actual good teachers are rare.

Simply being able to fire the bad ones would improve things immeasurably, but for some reason people put all teachers on pedestals. It's grotesque. Give PTAs hire/ fire powers or better yet, give the public a vote, weighted by testing scores or some performance metrics. Union ride or die is a garbage way to do things.

Treating teachers like a special caste of unimpeachable holy people is nonsense.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#82

Post by sparky_z »

thanhhaimai wrote: post #76
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I could also make my job sound extremely impressive. I don't understand why everyone believes teachers are so undervalued. On average, I don't think teachers provide that much value. My pet peeve is teachers teaching children maths. How can you teach something that you don't understand?

There are plenty people who are qualified for teaching children math. But it would be a disservice for them and their family to accept a low wage teaching job when they can work for $400k+ elsewhere. Your argument is like hiring only minimum wage workers to build rockets, then complain that on average they don't provide that much value and can't solve integrals in their heads. If we want better teachers, the solution…

Just increase the numbers on the paychecks and the current bad teachers would all go away and be replaced by different, better teachers? Somehow, I doubt that.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#83

Post by ZephyrBlu »

thanhhaimai wrote: post #76
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I could also make my job sound extremely impressive. I don't understand why everyone believes teachers are so undervalued. On average, I don't think teachers provide that much value. My pet peeve is teachers teaching children maths. How can you teach something that you don't understand?

There are plenty people who are qualified for teaching children math. But it would be a disservice for them and their family to accept a low wage teaching job when they can work for $400k+ elsewhere. Your argument is like hiring only minimum wage workers to build rockets, then complain that on average they don't provide that much value and can't solve integrals in their heads. If we want better teachers, the solution…

I don't think you need someone amazing at maths to teach kids. In fact that would probably be detrimental for most kids.

I don't say that teachers don't provide much value because they're useless, but because they are usually very generalized and most kids don't seem be to that interested in learning.

Even if you fix problem #1, you haven't fixed the arguably bigger problem. I also don't think that significantly increasing the quality of teachers would change much for most kids.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#84

Post by fragmede »

schoolornot wrote: post #71
leetrout wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But she gets her summers off! /s It's crazy how underpaid teachers are.

Tenured positions, strong unions, pensions, benefits the average blue collared worker can dream of, and no accountability or pressures to ensure students make their marks. I can support raises once merit pay is instituted and they start doing something about the bad teachers, of which young me would say is the majority.

The teachers union where I am is strong, but it doesn't preclude the administration from playing tricks similar to the exactly 39-hour "part time" employee. Specifically, the teachers get "fired" on the last day of the school year, and turn hired back in the fall, in some sort of adminstration-union rule avoiding shell game.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#85

Post by Iv »

rmah wrote: post #55
anonexpat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the part where she's criminally underpaid for the work she does.

That depends heavily on the location (i.e. school district). Last time I looked at the school district budgets, school teachers where I live make, on average over $100k/yr plus health insurance and a sweet pension plan. The next town over, I think they make half that.

Where is that?

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#86

Post by Iv »

xvedejas wrote: post #72
chrisseaton wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not everyone's motivated by money?

If they were entirely not motivated by money, we could just have them do it for free. I think clearly teachers expect at least a little money, and perhaps many potential teachers would expect even more.

I think if we removed the need to earn money to get a decent living, we would have a lot of people teaching for free.

Most people are not motivated by money, they reluctantly accept that they need to earn a living, but it is not a big driver per se in most people I know.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#87

Post by dragonwriter »

robbedpeter wrote: post #81
101011 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee, I'll bet you were a peach to teach. Let's just fire all the teachers and see if the next batch of applicants do any better. I'm a software engineer and I'll happily admit that I'm grossly overpaid for the contribution to society I provide. I'm curious what you think teachers should be paid for trying to educate our future.

There's a market that works on software engineers. Ability, work ethic, and quality of output plays a significant part in who gets hired and fired. There are no mechanisms by which bad teachers are removed, as long as they check the boxes for attendance, not being visibly intoxicated, etc. The profession is riddled with incompetents and bad actors. Actual good teachers are rare. Simply being able to fire the bad ones…

> Give PTAs hire/ fire powers or better yet, give the public a vote,

They are already good at driving good teachers out of the profession without a formal direct personnel role, giving them more power would make things worse.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#88

Post by martin_a »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #49
martin_a wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Marines have this number set to 3. For firefighters in Germany this is, more or less, defined to be 5. A group (which is one of the pre-defined tactial units) consists of 9 people: The leader, three troops of two, one machinist, one "Melder" (kind of the guy/girl for "special tasks", helping with whatever is necessary). The leader commands the troop leaders, machinist and "Melder". This is expected and taught a…

This is going to be true of more professional military specialists as well. A Special Forces team will have an officer leading 4 sergeants - med, comms, weapons, and construction(/destruction). This is more of an exception rather than the rule though. I don't see how people are supposed to reasonably manage 10+ reports. At that point they are just a figurehead.

> I don't see how people are supposed to reasonably manage 10+ reports.

True! I'm leading 5 people at work and I find that enough most of the time, as I still have projects that I'm actively working on, too.

If there are more people to come, I'll ask to integrate some kind of "team lead" for some of them, before all the work I do is micromanage and respond to mails.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#89

Post by marvin »

chrisseaton wrote: post #59
marvin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a wonder anyone wants to do the job at all, knowing all this in advance. I almost became a teacher once. Figured all the abuse would be a degrading waste of my efforts.

Maybe not everyone's motivated by money?

It's not just about money. Ultimately, it's about respect. Considering the clearing price in a free market is good and all, but you have to consider there's a buyer representing real people, who determines the working condition of this group. And also a seller whose life will be made easier and more dignified if they're properly paid, which will in turn attract better and less desperate teachers.

When I say paid, I obviously also mean in intangible ways, such as having enough time to go to the toilet between classes. Or being insulated from being yelled at by parents and meekly saying sorry for telling off their particularly concentration-destroying kid.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#90

Post by kwere »

Wistar wrote: post #79
schoolornot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tenured positions, strong unions, pensions, benefits the average blue collared worker can dream of, and no accountability or pressures to ensure students make their marks. I can support raises once merit pay is instituted and they start doing something about the bad teachers, of which young me would say is the majority.

Tenured? We are talking kindergarten here. Also, are you seriously comparing an advanced-degree career to blue-collar workers? How is it you'd institute a merit system? By the volume-of-students-per-hour, or what, exactly? The least complaining parents? Test scores that depend on parental involvement to be any good? How are disinterested or absentee parents or those parents who have it in for teachers accounted for i…

>Also, are you seriously comparing an advanced-degree career to blue-collar workers?

Like capital class could tell the difference

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