I Don't Want to be a Teacher Any More

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/26/950079/-I-Dont-Want-to-be-a-Teacher-Any-More

by hypersoar • 15 years ago

131 117 15 years ago

karzeem2• 15 years ago

It's sad how common these feelings are and how nearly all of them trace back to the government's (arguably) well-intentioned insistence on running schools itself.

stretchwithme3• 15 years ago

The pattern with the government is the same from situation to situation.

1) Government makes something free

2) The market for private delivery of the same thing dries up. Those few that still want to pay must pay much more than they would have before the government started giving it away for free because the market has shrunk so much

3) The same thing happens to alternatives to the thing they made free

4) Decisions are now made by those delivering the process instead of the person choosing between the alternatives. Costs and benefits are no longer weighed together or by the person that cares about the outcome the most. Considerations easily described in resumes and sound bites become uber important

5) The corporations and unions move in and start influencing the decision makers, carving out expensive niches for themselves

6) Things that truly matter but aren't profitable for the politically connected fall by the wayside

7) People getting something free put up with it because ditching the free thing for same thing done right is now a super expensive alternative

8) Delivering the free thing grows more expensive, much faster than the rate of inflation

9) Eventually the tax payers fight back and the costs of delivering the thing are slashed, along with quality. The corporations and unions have to spend and/or threaten more to hang on to their protected positions.

10) Those getting the service for free now have to spend all their time at rallies and fine tuning the stories about how badly they're being treated.

crayz• 15 years ago

Why is this seemingly not true in other western countries where they have cheaper, better-functioning public institutions? I think there's truth in what you're saying, but the idea that government itself is the sole problem is far too simple an answer

epistasis• 15 years ago

Does anyone think it really was well-intentioned? Did the people who passed No Child Left Behind think that the federal government is capable of doing anything good? Did they think that federal regulations and requirements help things on the local level? Did the people who voted for NCLB value education? Did anyone involved with education think that NCLB could improve education?

I don't think so. I think NCLB was a giant Fuck You to people who don't have the money to pay for private schools, a corollary to Starving the Beast. There's little other rational way to look at it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

ylem• 15 years ago

I though Singapore, Japan, etc. have government managed schools that seem to be doing rather well...I can't even argue the locality issue because Switzerland seems to be doing rather well also. I think one of the difficulties in US schools is brought up by the author--we try to teach everyone and we believe in 2nd and 3rd chances. Many countries begin tracking rather early, so their teachers don't have some of the same special needs issues (I'm not arguing right or wrong here, just fact) that teachers here face.

Then, there is the family component. In a number of industrialized countries, education is highly prized and parents are deeply involved in their kids' education. Here, that is again not necessarily the case in many schools--and there is a limit to how much teachers can do to overcome that.

Also, I think that in many other industrialized countries, teachers are respected and paid reasonably compared to other professions. This draws talented people into the field (passion is important, but so is economics).

lutorm3• 15 years ago

One aspect of the "family component" is also that the US is a much more unequal society than most western European countries, which is further exacerbated by the very local nature of US school funding. This gets lost in looking at averages.

angus7716• 15 years ago

Most Japanese kids end up going to cram schools to make up for what the school system (both public and private) lacks. The system sucks---long hours, Saturday classes are being reintroduced this spring, and the cram schools are usually at least 2 hours long---sometimes as much as 4 or 5 hours.

And Japan still can't get into the top 10 of the Education Index.

kenjackson3• 15 years ago

It's largely the same at private schools. The budget crunch and parents who insist their children are A+ stars, often worse.

The big thing you don't have at private schools is often the child who can't speak English, or is special needs (whether learning or behaviorally). They simply reject them or kick them out.

To put it another way, you hear a lot fewer complaints from teachers in public schools that teach in the gifted programs.

robryan• 15 years ago

Essentially I guess the government are trying to remove the downside of bad teachers by destroying the upside of good ones, as well as standardizing the teaching process, making it easier to run on a tight budget.

You have to wonder how much long term impact these cuts have, I'm sure in the short term they can keep parents happy by producing decent test scores as they are only focusing on the tests.

Would love to know how the Australian system compares for teachers currently if anyone is involved there?

yason2• 15 years ago

By focusing on the efficiency of scoring well in tests, they can ignore the costs of the work left undone. These social, curricular and work environmental costs don't have numbers now but they will manifest in concrete money years later. So effectively the school is borrowing from the wellbeing of the pupils and teachers at the current cost of zero, and moving it to gains in current productivity meters.

NY_USA_Hacker14• 15 years ago

Yup, broad problem in society, done wherever people can find an opportunity -- visible, short-term, small gain at hard to see long-term, large cost.

But the solution is at hand: In the US, local schools are run by the local school boards, and tough to keep reality from the school board members, including in the "wellbeing" of the students.

noonespecial• 15 years ago

There is a serious moral hazard faced by most administrators of the so called "heroic professions" (doctors, nurses, teachers, fire-fighters etc). The trouble is that their jobs involve taking care of people and a significant portion of their personal identity is wrapped up in this. Doctors will work extra unpaid hours "off the books" so patients won't suffer, teachers will buy classroom materials with their own money, fire-fighters will still respond to fires, even with inadequate safety gear etc.

Bureaucrats are more or less free to make whatever cuts they want in these professions because they know that those on the front lines will quietly mutter "I will work harder" and pick up the slack until the stress finally drives them from the profession entirely.

I've never once seen an employee of the DMV run out to kinkos and spend their own money because the copier was broken.

potatolicious• 15 years ago

It applies to a lesser extent to what we do also - if I had a dollar for every time coders and designers were shortchanged on time by management, but we pulled extra hours anyways; 'cos goshdurnit, we take pride in doing things right.

It also reminds me of why I left the passion that led me to software - gaming. I did a lot of amateur game dev all through high school, even networked a fair bit with the local game studios and got some valuable mentorships out of the deal. But if there's any part of the engineering profession that screams of management abusing your love for your work, it's game development.

neilk• 15 years ago

You're right that people have that attitude, but pride in one's work is more advantageous in our industry. We expect our jobs to be relatively short-term (five years at most). And with every job completed, even for failed projects, we learn something new, and probably portable. I don't need my former manager to prove that I know what the "this" keyword does in Javascript.

It's a lot harder to tell whether teachers are any good. I guess this is why they willingly submit to systems that privilege seniority.

mslate• 15 years ago

These "heroic professions" also share another common characteristic: they can do no wrong.

Doctors? They self-regulate the size of labor supply in their fields, inflating their salaries. Why do you think we have a doctor shortage? You really think there aren't enough smart people to do the job? No, the AMA controls the number of med school graduates each year by limiting the number of accredited medical schools. They also lobby governments to legislate that nurses can't perform medical procedures (all towards the not-so-discrete goal of preserving their six-figure salaries).

Teachers? They can't be fired thanks to tenure policies. This was the biggest issue with public schooling when I grew up, and [continues to be](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html?_r=...). Survive three years and you have job security for life. If my workplace hired and fired based on seniority, we would have gone bankrupt years ago.

Firefighters and policemen also can do no wrong--aside from amazing pensions they have great job security and the power to help those they know more than others in the event of disaster (e.g. Katrina).

For every example of those in the "heroic professions" doing the right thing, you have the same careerism and self-preservation that those in private industry strive for. But in many people's eyes, they can do no wrong.

RBerenguel3• 15 years ago

In part I agree with you. Tenure (which here in Spain is different: all public workers that got their job through examination can't be fired!) is a big problem. There are a lot of amazing teachers (I've had a lot in my life, since school through university), but there is a lot of lousy teachers (also had a lot of these) that do nothing and can't be fired. And the ones who love teaching (a few of my friends are math teachers) have to suffer more or less what the article says. Education always takes the blame, regardless of the quality of the teacher. Also, they have an increasing responsibility: parents no longer "educate" children (how to behave well, be quite, listen, be respective), it is something that now school teachers and HS teachers have to do, without any level of help from a lot of parents. A simple example, is that when a child gets some kind of "fine" (bad grade, a written note to her parents, whatever), most parents blame the teacher and don't believe "their little child" misbehaved.

vacri2• 15 years ago

What you really mean is not "these professions can do no wrong", but "the media finds it difficult to blindly tar these professions the way it does to others".

Doctors can do no wrong? Is that why malpractise has help skyrocket the cost of medicine in the US? Doctor shortage a machiavellian plan to keep salaries high? Pull the other one. Yes, I do think that there aren't enough people with the smarts and the motivation to be a doctor - in fact I think that there are less of them than actually are doctors.

Policemen can do no wrong? Yes, in law courts they're seen that way, but I can guarantee you that plenty of people see police as doing plenty wrong. Police cop plenty of abuse.

And Teachers can do no wrong? Tenure or not, teachers cop it from students, administration and parents.

Firefighters can do no wrong? Meh, firefighters have the soft option. Cool toys and generally don't have to deal with the general public if they're not paramedics. Stick it to 'em :)

But really, the 'can help friends in Katrina' argument you make is just desperately clutching at straws. Not sure how this is a prime motivator for emergency personnel (I know a few, and this is not why they work in their respective forces) or as a 'can do no wrong' argument.

geekam• 15 years ago

Reminds me of Atlas Shurgged. Who us John Galt!?

nhangen2• 15 years ago

I'd like to see someone explain why they downvoted the parent. Is it because everyone dislikes Rand, or because of the comment itself?

yason2• 15 years ago

A prime example of work that you can't measure with numbers: the value of teaching isn't a scalar. Pretty much like measuring a programmer's output by lines written.

However, if we think we can't afford to have a decent funding for schools then nobody has apparently been heard speaking up about not affording to not have that funding. If we keep merely chasing test scores for a couple of decades, what kind of an education will we have at that point?

vipivip• 15 years ago

When you make it big, never forget your teachers... a phone call, a text, an email, a visit means a lot

leot• 15 years ago

Canada has demographics comparable to the US's, but pays its teachers much more. The results are evident in OECD's "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA) http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/60/46619703.pdf

A rewarding job with decent compensation and time off makes teaching jobs pretty competitive.

jacoblyles3• 15 years ago

Do you have any statistics that compare the teacher pay of the US and Canada? The US spends more on education per pupil than almost every country in the world (some years I believe it is number one). I would be shocked if the US didn't pay more than Canada, on average.

warrenwilkinson• 15 years ago

According to this Cato report. Since the 1970s the US doubled spending per child. Scores did not improve but they doubled the number of school bureaucrats (e.g. not teachers) per student.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12792

angus7716• 15 years ago

It might not be so helpful to compare salaries alone (although I've heard they're actually higher in Canada, but don't have hard statistics). Remember , Canadians do have to pay for health insurance, so even if they have smaller salaries, they could still end up with more disposable income.

m-photonic• 15 years ago

>Canada has demographics comparable to the US's

I suppose so, if you aren't including race in your demographic profile. That happens to be an area where the US and Canada diverge significantly.

guelo2• 15 years ago

Really, all problems in the US come down to this, racists that dont want there tax money going to help black people.

jacoblyles3• 15 years ago

The United States spends more money on education per student than just about any other country in the world[1], and it has been growing quite rapidly over time[2]. America is not a penny pincher when it comes to education. One graph beats many paragraphs of anecdote by someone with an axe to grind. Anyway, I flagged this article because I'm hoping to see less politics on Hacker News.

[1]http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.h...

[2]http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.h...

moultano2• 15 years ago

Do you have any stats that break down where the money goes? That's probably the most interesting statistic.

wisty6• 15 years ago

My guess, text books, IT support, and admin.

kenjackson3• 15 years ago

Here are some stats on teacher pay: http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snap...

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-aro...

So while we may spend more on education, the delta is not going to teachers.

I suspect admin is a big part. There's a big controversy here in Seattle, the second in recent years where there was either large corruption or tens of millions of dollars that disappeared (the last ended up in the super of the school district losing his job -- the Seattle Times has asked for the current super to either resign or be fired).

rtaycher• 15 years ago

This is my own theory but I would guess the price of education goes up with the average wages for a country. In the US there are a lot of high paying professional jobs . I suspect this is one of the reason many communist countries seemed to have decent educational systems(compared to how many things they are bad at).

lutorm3• 15 years ago

On average, the US is not a penny pincher. Given the local nature of school funding, it would be interesting to see how the median, or the 25th percentile to be even more harsh, compares to those countries.

wisty6• 15 years ago

I think there's two sides to the story.

Actually, no, there's more than two sides to the story, and the idiots who think there are two sides to the story and making everything worse:

* Some teachers are awful, and the unions protect them. They also manipulate educational policy, both to improve teacher conditions (which is fair enough - that's their job), and to push the pet beliefs of a couple of batty union leaders.

* Most teaching "methods" (fads) suck, and are cooked up by the kind of people who get PhDs in "education" - ivory tower researchers who can't do, and can't teach, but can publish in a naval-gazing journal.

* Most "methods" (fads) require mounds of paperwork, so the teachers can prove they are complying.

* Direct Instruction (DI) was found to be the best teaching method by far, the last time they did any serious research. However, it does cramp creative teachers, and it's quite possible that more serious research will find better methods (possibly based on DI, but not as anal), but the opponents of DI don't want serious research (as their pet "methods" suck, compared to DI, and they know it) and DI fans think the problem is solved.

* Some kids are "special needs". Some kids are dumb. Some kids are smart. Some kids just look dumb because they aren't motivated, and some kids just look smart because they are being pushed hard, and nobody can agree what "smart" and "dumb" means. Mixed classes are good in some ways, but they can't be too big (or the teacher can't help the outlying kids). Big classes are good for the better kids, but only if they are streamed.

* Text books are often terrible.

* School work can be assessed (extrinsically motivated) or un-assessed (intrinsically motivated). Extrinsic motivation drives out intrinsic motivation, but some assessment is necessary. The current trend is to pile on more assessment (both tests and formally assessed homework) under the assumption that kids have already been jaded by the existing assessment, and no longer care about learning for learning's sake.

* We are spending too much, and not enough.

* Finally, there's rarely any end goal in mind. Or there are several end goals, and everyone forgets which ones are important. Feeding universities, creating a skilled workforce, providing opportunities for poor kids, getting good numbers in international tests, and most importantly convincing parents (voters) that something needs to be done, and we are already doing all that is humanly possible to help YOUR child beat the kid sitting next to them.

moultano2• 15 years ago

>Direct Instruction (DI) was found to be the best teaching method by far, the last time they did any serious research.

Do you have any good links that describe what this is? All I seem to be able to find is pages talking about how good it is, but none with a description of it that made any sense to me.

wisty6• 15 years ago

It's a faddy method, but one that works. It puts a lot of emphasis on fundamentals, but students who focus on fundamentals (in class) are found to be able to do creative stuff with the material out of class. "Wax on, wax off, now go kick ass".

It's very anal, like I said.

The teachers get a DI textbook (made up by the inventor of DI). The teacher reads from the text book, and asks the whole class to respond on cue.

The whole class responding on cue is an important point, as it keeps the students thinking. "Everybody, what's 12 * 8?"

It uses lots of repetition, and a few standardised instructions to the class.

"Everybody open your books, to page 23. One two three. Everybody should have their books open. Put your finger on the word "MY". One two three ... Now everybody read out load ..."

Interesting factoid - "The Pet Goat" (think 911, George W. Bush in a classroom) was a DI book.

shareme• 15 years ago

You have to go back to how we got here:

1. Prussian Indoctrination Training..that is the model that the USA adopted from Prussia. Prussia wanted to break the control of churches so they came up with this new teaching method and it was made to indoctrinate, not teach.

2. We USA people layered on that indoctrination system some other non-goal aligned stuff like school organized sports rather than have the community pay for the off-school hours sports that they will support.

3. Ones deciding budget have no kids in the local school systems.

4. The original geo-area that was Prussia finally saw the errors of the indoctrination approach and moved to a two-tiered education system. Both vocational and university prep share the same 1-6 grade school classes.

You take some corrective measures like remove sports and have the community pay for the off-time school sports they want to support frees up money to make rest of the changes.

pnathan• 15 years ago

Can you provide a link to #1 please? I would like to know more.

Getahobby• 15 years ago

This isn't meant to be a rhetorical question so please feel free to show me the light. A constant drumbeat from teachers seems to be complaints about standardized testing. Are there really any better ways to measure progress across the board? All of us here should be fans and encouragers of standards, right?

alextp• 15 years ago

The problem with standardized testing is not that they don't measure the progress well but that they measure all other sorts of confounding variables. Each standardized test has a small number question templates, and if the students familiarize themselves with the question templates they will do better on the tests, for example. Another important factor is timing: some standardized tests have a fixed amount of time allocated to a student, and hence there are many different ways of pacing yourself that lead to better or worse scores. Yet another important factor is the choice between open-ended and multiple-choice questions, and even the balance between these can be learned.

So every standardized test has some confounding variables, and effort spent teaching the students to do better on the tests by dealing well with these variables is effort that does not go towards helping the students learn the material. If the standardized tests are known and used to evaluate the teachers the incentives suddenly get really strong to teach to the test by focusing on the idiossincrasies of specific testing schemes over teaching the actual subject.

Standardized tests are a great way to measure performance and improvement but only if the results won't be used for decision-making, otherwise it creates an instant incentive to game the system.

NY_USA_Hacker14• 15 years ago

It's quite possible to write tests that fairly accurately measure the basic material to be taught in the third grade. Well written tests cannot be 'gamed' to any significant degree. People have known how to write good tests for over 50 years and have often done so.

Heck, when I was teaching in college, I passed out copies of tests from earlier semesters. Then the students could study just to the tests and try to 'game' them. Still, had to know the material at least to some degree to do even that. Net, the students had every opportunity to study just to the tests and I was in effect teaching just to my own tests and still the students had basically to learn the material.

syllogism• 15 years ago

Standardised tests should be used to collect data, but failure to score well on standardised tests shouldn't be punished. Otherwise you just give everyone an incentive to game the metric, and quality disappears.

NY_USA_Hacker14• 15 years ago

Nonsense. For basic material, as in K-12, people have known how to write good tests for over 50 years and often have. The concepts of reliability, validity, separation, difficulty have all been polished at least since 1950, maybe 1930.

That the tests are not reliable and valid measures of learning and can easily be significantly 'gamed' and, thus, should not be used to evaluate K-12 teaching is just an unsupported myth being put out by propaganda of the AFT and NEA to protect bad teaching.

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

I went to school in Oregon. Things I remember:

* Three or four really great teachers, who taught me a lot.

* Lots of teachers blathering on about personal and rather inappropriate stuff. In retrospect, many seem emotionally desperate and treated the classroom as a captive audience to their personal drama.

* Being singled out and harassed by at least four teachers.

* The school administrator plucking a brand new IBM 386sx off the cart that was headed to the desperately underpowered computer lab. He did this so he could run Windows. So he could launch a DOS-based menu system. So he could switch between two DOS-based applications he used.

Fire the administrators first.

aik2• 15 years ago

And the cycle continues. Fire the teachers! The students aren't learning - they're the problem! Fire the administrators! Fire the teachers! The students aren't trying! Fire the administrators!...

Perhaps the system itself is the problem. Change the system.

jleyank• 15 years ago

I am what I am today because (a) I was fortunate to be exposed to a minicomputer in 1971 and (b) I had a great teacher for 10th grade chemistry. The former was a product of a forward-thinking school trustee and the fact that nobody knew what to do it it so they let the kids play. The latter was luck.

Computers are now part of the background, and I worry there's less of the magic needed to create a proper hacker/developer. Luck is still luck.

NY_USA_Hacker14• 15 years ago

So, once again it's 'education'. And for more detail, there are two themes: (1) Send more money. (2) It is just crucial for us to have the money so that we can do lots of really, really important things that can't be measured.

So, is the article really just about (A) important issues in education or is it just (B) partisan politics fighting over money with some of the usual techniques of politics -- some truths, half-truths, deception, distortion, emotion, etc.?

So, to pick between (A) and (B), let's see:

(a) Source. The article is in 'The Daily Kos', and I believe I've heard that this site is essentially propaganda by the more liberal wing of the Democrats and paid for at least heavily by Soros who apparently believes that US politics should be something like some of the traditions of old Central and Eastern European socialism.

(b) Subject. The article is to grab people by the heart and the gut to have them open up below the belt, this time their wallet in their hip pocket. It's a big sales pitch leading to "Send more money".

(c) Timing. At present one of the hottest political stories in the news is the fighting in several states and especially in Wisconsin trying to reduce expenditures by state governments so that the states can have balanced budgets without raising taxes and to reduce these expenditures by fighting with unionized state employees, especially the teachers' unions.

(d) Unions. Now we come full circle: The unions are heavily in the Democrat party with propaganda site 'The Daily Kos'.

So, it seems to me that article really is about (B) partisan politics and not (A) education.

angus7716• 15 years ago

Except that what seems to be the most biting issue for her is being forced to teach for test scores. Throwing money at that won't make the classes any more engaging. Try actually RingTFA next time.

NY_USA_Hacker14• 15 years ago

"RingTFA" is not in my 'Webster's'.

For teaching for test scores, as in

     http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267851

that's fine: What the tests are asking for is little enough.

That article was JUST politics, pure and simple.

For 'education', see

     http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267851

Now you've gotten some 'education'.

NY_USA_Hacker14• 15 years ago

What's this sudden big deal against "test scores" from the K-12 teachers' organizations? Looks like an excuse to get paid the big bucks without any measurable results. Some good results are difficult to measure, but the basic results are easy enough to measure and should be measured. A serious practical problem is that K-12 is not doing well even on those basic results.

For "engaging", that's mostly nonsense.

You sound like a hired propaganda spammer paid for by the AFT or the NEA.

Test scores are important: SAT, CEEB, GRE, LSAT, MCAT. Board Certification in medicine. Qualifying exams for a Ph.D. Just what is it about test scores you and our K-12 teachers do not understand?

guelo2• 15 years ago

Talk about propaganda, please provide any evidence that dailykos is funded by soros.

NY_USA_Hacker14• 15 years ago

Good point that illustrates the mess of politics: The claim is common, but I have zip, zilch, zero for solid evidence. Standard situation in politics.

In politics, we don't have much. If keep only the solid information we may have nothing at all.

Sorry about the mess of politics. Maybe the Internet can make solid evidence more important.

ctdonath• 15 years ago

His problem is his employer, not the work. When your boss(es) get too stupid for too long, creating a failing business, LEAVE. There are other much better employers to join - or start your own.

NY_USA_Hacker14• 15 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267731

I argue that the article is just politics.

Still, education is important.

Since we are on 'Hacker News' (HN), there is some considerable irony in this article:

In computing now, the workers in information technology commonly need to understand subjects such as:

algorithms, programming languages, frameworks, development environments, user interface design and development, programming for application installation, operating system administration, networking and network administration, relational database and its administration, code repositories, application instrumentation, system monitoring, many utilities and applications, software as a service, the Cloud, the social graphs and interest graphs on the Internet, how to start a company, how to raise venture capital, how to manage software development, etc.

The content of these subjects changes significantly each 12 months.

To keep up, workers need their own 'computer center' and educational resources and mostly just must teach themselves, that is, without teachers. In particular, formal courses are nearly useless because the teachers are rarely up to date on this material.

This pattern has been rock solid for nearly all parts of the US computer industry going way back to punched cards.

Net, the readers of HN overwhelmingly learn independently and are self-taught using their own time, money, and effort.

So, claims by the formal education community in K-12 and college that their classroom instruction is crucial for education is an ironic, ROFL at HN.

But HN readers are not the only ones: (1) An auto mechanic has to keep up with the new systems on the new cars. (2) Workers in construction of houses and small commercial buildings have to keep up with new materials, construction techniques, and regulations. (3) Recently chefs in high end restaurants had to learn about 'molecular gastronomy', 'tasting menus', and intricate 'wine parings'. (4) CPAs and tax lawyers need to keep up on the tax law changes.

Workers in a huge fraction of the US economy have to keep up in their fields, independently, via self-teaching, and most of this work uses their time, effort, and money.

So, let's return to K-12: Basically what is needed from K-12 is at least, by age 18, to be able to (A) read with understanding materials commonly encountered, (B) write clearly, e.g., as well as on HN, and (C) know basic arithmetic, percentages, areas, and volumes.

Now we come to some simple facts: Joe gets sick and stays home from school for three weeks. His grandmother notices that he can't read so, in those three weeks, teaches him to read. Later she does the same for (B) writing and (C) basic math. This situation is common. Basically, normal kids can pick up the 3Rs with astounding speed. Just how they do it is not clear at all, and research on 'teaching techniques' is not promising but also mostly not needed.

The K-12 system should be able to get this teaching done by the eighth grade. So, to know, sure, give some tests. Simple enough.

But, K-12 does try to do more. Especially important topics include math through analytic geometry and trigonometry, biology, chemistry, physics, and history. For these subjects, sadly, the K-12 teachers rarely know enough of the material to teach it well. Even the K-12 'experts' don't: I understand calculus quite well, thank you (learned it at several levels, taught it, applied it, published peer-reviewed original research based on it), but the people who wrote the AP calculus materials did not. Sad. To learn calculus, just get any edition of the dozen or so college calculus texts famous over the last few decades, dig in, and f'get about AP calculus.

Yes, it would be good to teach some art. Sadly, apparently they don't. There may be more on how art works just in, say,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246723

In the article the teacher said:

"I’m used to wild and crazy discussions about amazing novels."

"Amazing novels"? Eventually I had to conclude that, according to the standards of information safety and efficacy well established in the first half of the 20th century, novels are at most for light entertainment so that the set of all "amazing novels" is the empty set and not worth serious effort. She was largely wasting time; it's sad she didn't know that; but I can believe that most readers of 'The Daily Kos' take novels seriously. Those English majors dragged me through six years of their 'belle lettre' nonsense when I wanted to study much more in math and science. Bummer.

So, what K-12 does with these additional subjects is at best mixed.

So, net, our K-12 system is heavily for baby sitting. We shouldn't have to pay a lot for baby sitting.

So, what about education?

HN Style Solution: Put good materials on the Internet. So have careful, detailed text in PDF files. Have some lectures by some good people. And by some experts, have some lectures with some intuitive descriptions that explain the 'forest' so well that the 'trees' become mostly obvious.

With good materials, a good student could knock off grades 7-12 independently in maybe three weeks per grade except that foreign languages typically would extend the time. But, with good materials, can do well with a foreign language surprisingly quickly.

Then for 'more' in fuzzy topics such as art, human behavior, organizational behavior, civics, politics, just have some excellent lectures on the Internet and maybe some fora.

E.g., for a curiously good start on both music and painting, in one stroke, just spend right at 10 minutes with

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7prUFflX0_E

Likely a good start on art history is the 1969 TV series 'Civilization' by Kenneth Clark. There is also a book, but the video alone is fine.

Actually, for some good material in history, there are some starts: Some of the best material on the history of the 20th century is in some selected movies; it's not common to find better materials in print, and it is nearly impossible to find materials nearly as good in K-12 or the first two years of college.

E.g., the movie 'The Battle of Britain' is relatively good on its subject. Actual dates, numbers of planes, pilots, and bombs per day along with 'logistics' would help but are generally ignored by all of the history community.

The movie 'Midway' is relatively good on its subject, a turning point in the war in the Pacific and basically for the reasons made clear in the movie. The Charlton Heston character should be cut out. The timing, crucial, of the actual events in the battle should be made more clear. Details on times, distances, and speeds would help, yes, typically ignored by the history community. Still the movie is relatively good.

The series 'Victory at Sea' was a lot of US flag waving but still does provide a good outline of a lot of WWII.

The movie 'The Longest Day' is awash in 'entertainment values' but, still, does cover the essentials of D-Day.

The hugely long:

William L. Shirer, 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition', ISBN 0-671-72868-7, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981.

actually is surprisingly sparse on important content.

Sadly the biographies of Eisenhower and Patton are so far from the actual details that they are not good. Bradley's biography is better (but nothing like the character Bradley in the movie 'Patton').

Net, what K-12 is teaching in history is below what is readily available just by watching some movies for a few evenings.

Net, for formal education in K-12 and the first two years of college, it's a huge waste of time, money, and effort for all concerned and can mostly be replaced by good materials (mostly not yet available but easily could be) on the Internet, thus, letting students get on with independent learning in areas of their interests and/or more advanced formal education.

People should say, "I want good education, but I'm not going to pay a lot for what's in K-12 and the first two years of college now."

ennimbulator• 15 years ago

>by age 18, to be able to (A) read with understanding materials commonly encountered, (B) write clearly, e.g., as well as on HN, and (C) know basic arithmetic, percentages, areas, and volumes.

Nah -- you aren't being radical enough!

For example, it isn't necessary to know the multiplication tables in order to read mathematics at university.

The argument about basic knowledge (also known as 'gateway knowledge' i.e. stuff you need to know in order to learn most other things), is back-to-front.

If there's something you're interested in, you will learn whatever gateway knowledge is necessary to learn it or learn it more fully.

e.g. football -- you will learn to count in order to keep score

e.g. multiplayer games -- you will learn more language in order to communicate with other players

e.g. harry potter -- you will learn more english in order to read the books

e.g. selling goods at market stalls -- you will learn multiplication

In each case the learner will learn more quickly and more efficiently than in the classroom. He will learn whatever it is 'just in time' and he won't be burdened by stuff he doesn't need. And he will remember it, as required, with no testing and no exams.

So, it isn't necessary to force people to learn basic stuff. We're almost certainly wrong about what constitutes the basics, anyway. (Curricula change very slowly, according to fashion, and are shielded from criticism.)

NY_USA_Hacker14• 15 years ago

That's a bit TOO radical!

The 3Rs are okay: They are easy enough to learn and useful quite generally.

pbhjpbhj2• 15 years ago

>In each case the learner will learn more quickly and more efficiently than in the classroom. He will learn whatever it is 'just in time' and he won't be burdened by stuff he doesn't need.

Part of schooling is becoming a member of a country's workforce. One must learn some things to be a benefit to society - it is not just about self-directed "hedonistic" learning (ie learning only to meet ones own perceived desires).

Indeed with some forced learning one can come to understand that one's previous desires were short-sighted and wouldn't ultimately lead to the pleasure one imagined.

For example, some who watch Harry Potter movies might not apply themselves to learning to read in order to enjoy the books; even if ultimately this lead them to greater enjoyment of more varied literature and indeed more fulfilment.

DanielBMarkham• 15 years ago

I liked the spirit of where this was going -- the personal story of how a job as a public school teacher got more and more frustrating, eventually leading the author to want to hang it all up.

I'm worried that we're overloading the word "teacher", however. I'm a teacher, and I'm a learner, and I'll never stop doing those things. It's very important that we realize that the acts of teaching and learning should be important to all of us whether we are public school teachers or not. The subject is bigger than that. Much bigger.

I'm also concerned that this is beginning to sound like on of those issues where there isn't another side -- after all, who would be in favor of continuing to increase classroom size, demonizing teachers, and the constant screwing around with the rules teachers work by?

Nobody, of course. And whenever somebody describes a situation to me that is so obviously one-sided, I start becoming concerned that there are critical players or issues that are not being addressed in the essay. Even if our author is a hero and the entire universe is against him, those other forces in the universe probably work through some system of logic that should as well be considered by the reader when looking at the subject.

Finally, instead of a he-said, she-said kind of story, or even a woe-am-I kind of story, this would work much better as a systemic story. The simple sad fact of broken systems is that they are usually filled with honest people doing the best they can at all levels. Of course, that kind of story doesn't make for much of a personal essay, but it reminds us that for every essay by a school administrator talking about how bad his situation is, there's another one from a teacher, and another one from a school board member, and another one from a parent, and so on. Each of these people have an important story to tell. Personal essays by definition are very narrowly constructed items. We enjoy the emotional insight and understanding they provide and then move on, making sure that we read the dozens of other stories which are equally as valid so that we can have a bit of much-needed context.

I Don't Want to be a Teacher Any More

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