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Thomas Friedman on education: 'There is no secret'

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Oct 23, 2013.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Also, the idea that teaching is some killer lifestyle that compensates for the low salary is batshit insane, and it is also an assumption that you make in every one of these discussions, permitting you to break from your steadfast belief in market economics the one time that it happens to inconvenience your argument.

    Yes, you get summers off. And, in exchange, you get no downtime. No time to yourself. No ability to leave your work at home. Parents hassling you. Kids hassling you. Endless meetings. Endless stress.
     
  2. amraeder

    amraeder Well-Known Member

    I don't know what this means. Changing careers into teaching isn't that hard. There's certification requirements but they're run through the states. Not some cabal of teachers.
     
  3. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Yes, it is the problem. Or at least the main one. Along with the salary potential over the long haul. This is the only time I've ever heard you tout $50K a year as some sort of financial windfall. The only time.

    Aside from the teachers, the other problem is poor standards to begin with. And not enough time in class for kids. Lots of problems. Better teachers would do a better job. But the system, as it exists, would limit their potential, too.
     
  4. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    All true. But, your hours are the same as your kids, and so is your vacation schedule.

    That's a big deal, and it appeals to a lot of people, and not just because it saves money on childcare.

    Just the regularity of the hours is a convenience many jobs don't have. You know what time you'll be out of work, and you know your days off well ahead of time.

    The job security is also very appealing.

    For many people, money isn't the greatest motivator. (I call them crazy people.) For them the stability, environment, and mild prestige of bein a teacher, along with the decent pay, and benefits, makes it a very good job.
     
  5. amraeder

    amraeder Well-Known Member

    You might not have a chance to pee for 8 hours....
     
  6. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Yep.

    You're on drugs.

    You are definitely on drugs.
     
  7. Riptide

    Riptide Well-Known Member

    Maybe they need a job in which they can work the message boards.
     
  8. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Consensus on these points.

    The idea that schools should be run on an agrarian calendar, that let's kids out of school by 2:30, so they can "play sports" is insane.

    The school year should be longer. The school say should be longer.

    I wonder who would ever oppose such changes.
     
  9. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Don't send me cordial PMs, then try to perform for your pals here by questioning my work ethic in public. It makes you look like a phony.
     
  10. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    YF, think of it this way ...

    Let's assume that we could quantity competence via some numeric scale. Below 60, let's say, you're incompetent. Now let's further assume that, beyond the minimal level, there are substantially diminishing returns to competence. So someone who's at 70 will outperform someone who's a 60 by, say, 2%, but someone who's a 90 will only outperform that someone who's a 60 by 4%. Finally, let's assume that in assessing competence, there's a whole lot of year-by-year variability. By that I mean that a given teacher who's really a 60 will score in the low 70s some years and in the high 50s in other years (and this kind of thing will occur across the faculty). These are absolutely not unrealistic assumptions.

    If you constantly are churning out your worst performers, you are probably not going to be remotely more effective. Because of these diminishing returns to competence AND the difficulty you have in nailing down competence, you're going to wind up with very little improvement in competence. WORSE, however, is the fact that you're making this gig even less attractive to those who would be more likely to actually be mid-range performers.

    I just don't see the "we can't fire bad teachers" lament as all that substantive. Yes, there are bad teachers who go un-fired. But that really isn't why our educational system doesn't perform as well as we'd like it.
     
  11. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    I can think of plenty of parents who would.
     
  12. amraeder

    amraeder Well-Known Member

    You know when you'll be out of work. Except that you had to give a kid a detention today, because he he was acting up in class. So you have to stay after school for that. Then tomorrow you find out, Suzy comes back from he week-long illness, so you have to stay late to help her catch up. Then there's the parent who wants to come in to talk to you. Then there's the tutorials for your struggling student. Then there's the fact that your switching units, so you have to stay around to change what's on the walls in your classroom. Then there's the meeting to figure out how you're going to run the schedule for standardized testing. Then there's the plays/games/concerts you stay late for because you want to develop relationships with your kids. Then there's the day you're staying late b/c one of the parents never comes to pick their kids up. Then there's....

    Yeah. Some teachers don't do those things (and there's many more). But if we're talking about getting high-quality teachers, those are what high-quality teachers routinely do.
     
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