Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nobody wants to teach anymore

jessicalexicus.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

871–880 of 1001 posts

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#871

Post by Ekaros »

astrange wrote: post #826
Tomte wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homework usually isn't rote learning (unless we're talking foreign language vocabulary – and there rote learning is important!), but practice. Students get to practice what the teacher (tried to) showed them with different problems, so both they and the teacher can see if they mastered the topic.

IIRC most of the evidence shows homework isn’t very useful for learning. (And, unfortunately, that almost no skills generally transfer over to other skills, ie that practicing math doesn’t improve anything other than that specific math.)

What about algebra? Which I consider the field of math that actually carries over to many many other things. Like physics and chemistry. And certain skill level in it is required to be able manipulate expressions in other fields.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#873

Post by horsawlarway »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #343
horsawlarway wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think comparing the costs between the 5 year olds in our daycare and the 6 year olds entering first grade is entirely fair. Our daycare gets more expensive as the child ages - not less. > The person taking care of a baby (or 4 babies) might need to be much less qualified than an AP physics teacher in high school, but the labor (and liability) costs do not necessarily scale exactly with the minimum qualifications ne…

>Our daycare gets more expensive as the child ages - not less. I have shopped around daycares on east and west coast, and I have never encountered this type of pricing. Infants have always been more expensive than toddlers and pre K in at least 10 to 15 daycares I have priced. I also do not see the purpose of comparing prices for different prices of labor for justifying the prices. Physics teachers may very well need…

> I also do not see the purpose of comparing prices for different prices of labor for justifying the prices.

Then you're unable to see that market forces are making it incredibly unattractive to be a teacher.

The comparison is to point out the following: Why bother to take loans for college, then complete the additional certifications required for teaching, only to spend more effort at a career that will pay you considerably less well than simply working as a McDonalds manager? And seriously, my mom taught for 48 years - McDonalds manager is an easy job compared to handling 32 kids a class, for 5 classes, and their ~320 some parents (seriously - the parents are usually the pain).

You could have instead spent 4 years generating income roughly equivalent of the same job, spent no money on school, and end up making far more by just going the corporate McDonald's route - not even discussing the "buy your own class decorations bullshit", or the hours lesson planning and grading, or the certification required once every three years to stay current.

This has EVERYTHING to do with how much other professions are getting paid - it's just become incredibly clear we don't value or respect teaching - so why fucking do it?

And that's my point with the daycare workers - it's objectively an easier job, with less education and certification requirements, that also lets you work with kids, and pays almost the same as intro physics teacher. Why wouldn't people choose that instead? Love of physics is bullshit - that's not enough, it has to be genuine respect and the compensation that follows. And that clearly isn't happening.

So we can argue about why that isn't happening, but "nobody wants to teach anymore" is because teaching has become a fucking terrible, shite, job. No fucking duh no one wants to teach anymore.

So 13k per kid clearly isn't getting enough money to the people we need. You can claim that's due to inefficiencies in the system, but given that we pay more for a daycare that pays roughly the same... I suspect we're just genuinely not paying enough - although at least we could have a fair discussion around how that money for each child is allocated.

For comparison - the well known private schools in our area (Paideia, Woodward, Lovett, Galloway, Westminster, etc) all charge at least 22k per student, and many go as high as 36k for high school.

And that's with an expectation that parents are more available and involved.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#874

Post by idontpost »

amusedcyclist wrote: post #745
ekianjo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but plenty of people still want to be one The much higher salary makes up for it, but you can't seriously expect teachers to get the same salary as lawyers.

Why not ? I would argue that most teachers provide a more valuable service than most lawyers (For my definition of value atleast). Lawyers have strict licensing requirements while teachers don't, which would be one of the major differences

Teachers have strict licensing requirements in literally every state.

Although the bar exam specifically is probably harder than any single component of teacher licensure, overall they are comparable, as teachers have more components.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#875

Post by idontpost »

starkd wrote: post #64
uniqueuid wrote: post #2

As a European, it has always been perplexing to me how little the US invests in teachers and schools, given that we know how huge the benefits are down the road (educational attainment, income, pro-social behavior, life satisfaction). Watching how large parts of the political spectrum embrace hardship as a societal teaching tool, I begin to understand that the expectation may always have been that kids ought to figur…

It's not about money. Avg salaries are plenty above the OECD average. The U.S. has a strong tendency to just throw money at a problem. There are many urban school districts that have trouble getting 50% attendance rates ON THE FIRST DAY. And that's with going door to door to remind parents the day before. How can you even address it when the people don't even believe in the institution anymore? Let parents have some…

None of what you describe is progress. It's simply a selfish desire to abandon poor children to poverty.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#876

Post by LegitShady »

Jensson wrote: post #700
bobthepanda wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lesson plans vary by the day, so I’m not sure how exactly you would do that without the data from the previous day.

Teachers aren't paid to personalize lessons though, if you work overtime to do that then you can only blame yourself. Teachers are paid to hold standardized lessons and answer questions help students with problems. You could argue it would be better if teachers were paid to personalize lectures, but they aren't. Maybe some document somewhere says they should, but in practice nothing will happen to you if you just use…

You say this because you don't know better, but its very common in schools for kids with learning or other disabilities to be in the same classes as other students - called 'mainstreaming' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstreaming_(education)

Teachers are 100% supposed to teach the standardized kids, the kids with disabilities, and the kids who are a little faster than everyone else. It's simply not possible to do with one standardized lecture without individual attention to those with special needs.

It's not some document, its literally a major movement decades old in education.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#877

Post by LegitShady »

prepend wrote: post #425
bee_rider wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They spend all day herding children, so they are at least qualified to be Project Managers.

You jest, but this is my suggestion to anyone who wants a career change. You can study and get a PMP or Scrum certificate and get an entry level job fairly easily. And, if successful, can be making 100k within a few years. Of course you have to be a PM, so there’s that. I’d rather literally herd cats or manage a kindergarten class.

"So what do you do for a living?"

"I call people and ask them to do the things they said they would do, on time. Then we have meetings about it for 4-6 hours a day. Technically I'm in charge."

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#878

Post by bryondowd »

0xFEEDC0DE wrote: post #783
KennyBlanken wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, and hear me out: we could cut our military budget (which is larger than the next ten or so countries combined, both total and per capita) and start tipping the corporate tax share back towards the ~%50 it was sixty years ago and magically be able to: * pay teachers a fair wage * hire enough teachers, assistants, and admins so that teachers don't have to work at least another half a workday 'off the books' * fund…

Ah yes the ol' "Let's just cut the military budget" position. Teachers salaries are 100% a local issue. If you want to raise their salary then vote to increase taxes in your county. Teachers are state employees. The states governments are more than capable enough to solve these issues since they are local issues.

To be fair, state and local governments would have to increase the total tax burden on their populace to increase education funding, or makes cuts to other things in their domain. The federal government could certainly cut the military budget and grant those funds to state or local education programs, without increasing anyone's tax burden.

That said, my understanding is that the military budget mostly goes to salaries, so any drastic cuts would leave us with massive unemployment. You'd have to take things really slow to make that big a change in the labor force without pretty ugly side effects.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#879

Post by PuppyTailWags »

ilaksh wrote: post #867
draebek wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emphasis on "classroom control" personally doesn't surprise me. If two or three students start refusing a teacher's orders, that teacher is done for the year, and maybe forever at that school. In my middle school, discipline was all but lost in most of my classes. Play cards in class, tell the teacher to shut up. What's she going to do? We stole her phone and keys in first period, locked the doors to the room, an…

I think you are right. But the kids who are involved need to actually be held responsible. In middle school I was a kind and polite person. There were a significant portion around me who were not. And more than enough who were literally underage criminals. Many abused the teachers, especially ones who were having a tough time such a chemotherapy. Stealing by middle schoolers should result in imprisonment of middle sc…

My understanding is that juvenile prisons have not been evidenced in decreasing the amount of crime?

Generally my understanding is that children who severely misbehave is actually an indication of neglect, abuse, or something else seriously wrong with the environment that the child cannot escape.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#880

Post by aporetics »

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…

Why would you think that technology would make teaching easier and faster?
Post reply on HN