8 ms·

My significant other is a teacher and entered the workforce 2 years ago. I now firmly believe that the education system is the way it is because of the teachers

by jbob2000 11y ago

My significant other is a teacher and entered the workforce 2 years ago. I now firmly believe that the education system is the way it is because of the teachers, and not in a good way. The few who got into it because "they love children and teaching" are so massively outweighed by those who took it because there was nothing else. It's created a system that is center around Dear Teacher, a frustrated individual upset that they couldn't get the overseas marketing job or field marine biology study position they spent $40,000 trying to attain. Lecture with assigned homework happens because it's easy. Read a script, send home to mommy and daddy to do the hard stuff. Any attempt to change and you get a strike. There's a fucking strike every year now in Ontario.

Mz 11y ago
Bonus: A lot of elementary school teachers are there because they can't cut the math for some program they wanted and their college shunted them off into early education. These are, unfortunately, very often women. As a mathy woman who homeshooled my sons and spent considerable time getting my oldest over the math phobia school instilled in him, I harbor the opinion that sending math flunkies in droves to teach our children is part of why math has such a reputation of fear and loathing. They not only cannot teach it, they pass on their fear and loathing to the students. Extra bonus: Since they are overwhelmingly female, I think this contributes to keeping the stereotype alive and well that girls are bad at math. We give our kids sucky math education and also model that "All the women you know and admire are terrible at it and hate this shit." Go, us.
- wvenable 11y ago
  Based on my son and daughter's math education I agree with this. It's not all entirely on the individual teachers; the program (created by groups of other teachers) is heavily based around non-algorithmic math. I really liked math in school but I absolutely hate the math my children have to do.
- mmmBacon 11y ago
  As a person with math degrees, I cannot agree with this more. I'm fighting this battle at home now with my first grader. There is way too much focus on the mechanics of grinding out arithmetic and way too little in teaching kids how to think about numbers and mathematical operations. You can't teach kids how to think about math when the focus is on mechanical mathematical operation. When I work with him on his homework I have to undo a lot of stuff before we can make progress. Then he goes to school and they undo all the stuff we did at home. Rinse, repeat, it can really drive you insane. Furthermore, he's already terrified about getting the wrong answer. He's so worried about doing it wrong that he is afraid to think. When he thinks he does just fine.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    > There is way too much focus on the mechanics of grinding out arithmetic and way too little in teaching kids how to think about numbers and mathematical operations. As I posted to a friend on Facebook: arithmetic : Math :: spelling : English It's a critical component, but it's not the entirety of the subject. But we drill, drill, drill it, and when people have trouble with it they say they're "bad at math". I know plenty of mathematicians (also have a math degree) that were horrible at arithmetic, but mathematics (whether for the particular person this meant some field of algebra or geometry or topology or whatever) itself was easy for them. I tried to help my last girlfriend out with this. She is a teacher and a severe mathphobic person. It was incredibly frustrating, because she did get higher concepts when they were separate from numbers, but introduce numbers and her mind would shutdown. This attitude will be passed on to her (future) children and her students if she's not careful.
    - Mz 11y ago
      Unless she genuinely gets over it, it will almost certainly be passed on even if she is careful.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    I just had a talk with my brother about this Sunday night as he did his homework at my parent's home. He wasn't able to find his sheet of rules on how to simply some math expressions, so I sat down and showed him how I would simplify them without rules. He had been given rules, but never actually taught why these rules worked. (Not to mention at least one of these rules I would not count as simplification, though it would be useful in simplification.) Like you mention, he was scared of getting it wrong instead of understanding it. An hour before that, I was talking with another brother why 'oh, I don't need help with that because we are no longer on that chapter' is a horrible way to think about math, especially at a grade school level where you are building up the core foundation.
- plonh 11y ago
  Indeed, I have read that women can be the most rigid and cruel sexists.
  - Mz 11y ago
    plonh: Indeed, I have read that women can be the most rigid and cruel sexists. I have no idea what your point is. But let me use this as an opening to suggest that men with math challenges are not being routinely encouraged to give up on challenging careers and go spend their days with small kids. In fact, men who want to spend their days with small kids face the challenge that people look askance at them and assume they have nefarious motives and are probably child molesters. So I don't think women who are bad at math being actively encouraged to go teach elementary school is evidence that women are overall inherently worse at math than men. I think it just means that when we don't readily get something, people cluck at us about how nature designed us to spend our days with small children and why don't we go do that in some capacity. My ex husband sucked at math. I tutored him when he took college math classes. He got really frustrated sometimes and threw his pencil across the room. He did not give up and no one suggested that, well, maybe you should just go do something easy, like teach small children basic things in elementary school. You are welcome to clarify if your remark is an ad hominem or not. Have a good day.
netcan 11y ago
Assigning blame for a system that sucks is tricky. That kind of narrating is often just an outlet for bias, frustrations and such. In reality the way things are has a long history, with interlocking effects and counter effects. Teachers being unhappy with being teacher is a problem. It's partly because teaching is often an available profession, mostly due to how many we need. There are other things to blame too: Education is bureaucratic and regimented, this makes teacher dislike the job. It's the legacy of reactions to failures in the past, an attempt to make sure that schools can't fail kids. Class sizes are way too big, often. A class of 15 9 year olds can learn more in 4 hours than a class 30 9 year olds can learn more in 8. But, we need babysitting. Teachers don't have high pay or a respected place in our society. Etc. Etc. The reality is that it's hard to do this right. It's easy to blame. Even if you're right, it's not useful.
- jbob2000 11y ago
  No, it's important to assign blame here. Teachers welcome praise with open arms, but the minute we criticize them, "oh you know, the issues are complex, it's not my fault". They are the sum of the education system, it is wholly represented by the person leading the classroom. Just like we blame a president for a shitty economy, so too must the teachers carry the blame for a shitty classroom.
  - phil21 11y ago
    I'm not so certain. I've been in many educational environments ranging from home school to private college prep high school, to suburban high school, to inner city high school, to the ghetto school in the area. There were good and bad teachers in all of those. However, the good teachers may as well have not had existed in the inner city/ghetto schools. Their talents were 100% wasted, and those classrooms would have been far better served with a police officer in front of the classroom who was enabled to boot the dysfunctional future criminals from the classroom. With those students in class, there was no point in even calling it school. Call it daycare, or juvie, or whatever you like - learning wasn't much of the process though. I find it hard to blame teachers when their job is primarily daycare, and they have zero tools available to them to deal with poorly performing and disruptive students who have no business being in the classroom. tldr; Almost all the US education problems can directly be tied back to the parents. Full stop. This goes for my private schooling as well. The college prep school I went to was probably more diverse than the inner city school - the only difference was the self-selection of the students and parents who attended. They also taught with about half the funds. That said, there are tons of horrible teachers too. The problems go far deeper though, and until you solve the parenting problem you may as well shut the public school system down in many areas. No amount of epic-level teachers will be able to get anything done in those environments.
shardinator 11y ago
I think the real problem is that "marketing job" and "field marine biology study" are preferred to teaching. Finding a way to make teaching a job people want, and keep wanting after doing it for a while, is the key.

Mz 11y ago

Bonus: A lot of elementary school teachers are there because they can't cut the math for some program they wanted and their college shunted them off into early education. These are, unfortunately, very often women. As a mathy woman who homeshooled my sons and spent considerable time getting my oldest over the math phobia school instilled in him, I harbor the opinion that sending math flunkies in droves to teach our children is part of why math has such a reputation of fear and loathing. They not only cannot teach it, they pass on their fear and loathing to the students. Extra bonus: Since they are overwhelmingly female, I think this contributes to keeping the stereotype alive and well that girls are bad at math. We give our kids sucky math education and also model that "All the women you know and admire are terrible at it and hate this shit." Go, us.

wvenable 11y ago
Based on my son and daughter's math education I agree with this. It's not all entirely on the individual teachers; the program (created by groups of other teachers) is heavily based around non-algorithmic math. I really liked math in school but I absolutely hate the math my children have to do.
mmmBacon 11y ago
As a person with math degrees, I cannot agree with this more. I'm fighting this battle at home now with my first grader. There is way too much focus on the mechanics of grinding out arithmetic and way too little in teaching kids how to think about numbers and mathematical operations. You can't teach kids how to think about math when the focus is on mechanical mathematical operation. When I work with him on his homework I have to undo a lot of stuff before we can make progress. Then he goes to school and they undo all the stuff we did at home. Rinse, repeat, it can really drive you insane. Furthermore, he's already terrified about getting the wrong answer. He's so worried about doing it wrong that he is afraid to think. When he thinks he does just fine.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  > There is way too much focus on the mechanics of grinding out arithmetic and way too little in teaching kids how to think about numbers and mathematical operations. As I posted to a friend on Facebook: arithmetic : Math :: spelling : English It's a critical component, but it's not the entirety of the subject. But we drill, drill, drill it, and when people have trouble with it they say they're "bad at math". I know plenty of mathematicians (also have a math degree) that were horrible at arithmetic, but mathematics (whether for the particular person this meant some field of algebra or geometry or topology or whatever) itself was easy for them. I tried to help my last girlfriend out with this. She is a teacher and a severe mathphobic person. It was incredibly frustrating, because she did get higher concepts when they were separate from numbers, but introduce numbers and her mind would shutdown. This attitude will be passed on to her (future) children and her students if she's not careful.
  - Mz 11y ago
    Unless she genuinely gets over it, it will almost certainly be passed on even if she is careful.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  I just had a talk with my brother about this Sunday night as he did his homework at my parent's home. He wasn't able to find his sheet of rules on how to simply some math expressions, so I sat down and showed him how I would simplify them without rules. He had been given rules, but never actually taught why these rules worked. (Not to mention at least one of these rules I would not count as simplification, though it would be useful in simplification.) Like you mention, he was scared of getting it wrong instead of understanding it. An hour before that, I was talking with another brother why 'oh, I don't need help with that because we are no longer on that chapter' is a horrible way to think about math, especially at a grade school level where you are building up the core foundation.
plonh 11y ago
Indeed, I have read that women can be the most rigid and cruel sexists.
- Mz 11y ago
  plonh: Indeed, I have read that women can be the most rigid and cruel sexists. I have no idea what your point is. But let me use this as an opening to suggest that men with math challenges are not being routinely encouraged to give up on challenging careers and go spend their days with small kids. In fact, men who want to spend their days with small kids face the challenge that people look askance at them and assume they have nefarious motives and are probably child molesters. So I don't think women who are bad at math being actively encouraged to go teach elementary school is evidence that women are overall inherently worse at math than men. I think it just means that when we don't readily get something, people cluck at us about how nature designed us to spend our days with small children and why don't we go do that in some capacity. My ex husband sucked at math. I tutored him when he took college math classes. He got really frustrated sometimes and threw his pencil across the room. He did not give up and no one suggested that, well, maybe you should just go do something easy, like teach small children basic things in elementary school. You are welcome to clarify if your remark is an ad hominem or not. Have a good day.

netcan 11y ago

Assigning blame for a system that sucks is tricky. That kind of narrating is often just an outlet for bias, frustrations and such. In reality the way things are has a long history, with interlocking effects and counter effects. Teachers being unhappy with being teacher is a problem. It's partly because teaching is often an available profession, mostly due to how many we need. There are other things to blame too: Education is bureaucratic and regimented, this makes teacher dislike the job. It's the legacy of reactions to failures in the past, an attempt to make sure that schools can't fail kids. Class sizes are way too big, often. A class of 15 9 year olds can learn more in 4 hours than a class 30 9 year olds can learn more in 8. But, we need babysitting. Teachers don't have high pay or a respected place in our society. Etc. Etc. The reality is that it's hard to do this right. It's easy to blame. Even if you're right, it's not useful.

jbob2000 11y ago
No, it's important to assign blame here. Teachers welcome praise with open arms, but the minute we criticize them, "oh you know, the issues are complex, it's not my fault". They are the sum of the education system, it is wholly represented by the person leading the classroom. Just like we blame a president for a shitty economy, so too must the teachers carry the blame for a shitty classroom.
- phil21 11y ago
  I'm not so certain. I've been in many educational environments ranging from home school to private college prep high school, to suburban high school, to inner city high school, to the ghetto school in the area. There were good and bad teachers in all of those. However, the good teachers may as well have not had existed in the inner city/ghetto schools. Their talents were 100% wasted, and those classrooms would have been far better served with a police officer in front of the classroom who was enabled to boot the dysfunctional future criminals from the classroom. With those students in class, there was no point in even calling it school. Call it daycare, or juvie, or whatever you like - learning wasn't much of the process though. I find it hard to blame teachers when their job is primarily daycare, and they have zero tools available to them to deal with poorly performing and disruptive students who have no business being in the classroom. tldr; Almost all the US education problems can directly be tied back to the parents. Full stop. This goes for my private schooling as well. The college prep school I went to was probably more diverse than the inner city school - the only difference was the self-selection of the students and parents who attended. They also taught with about half the funds. That said, there are tons of horrible teachers too. The problems go far deeper though, and until you solve the parenting problem you may as well shut the public school system down in many areas. No amount of epic-level teachers will be able to get anything done in those environments.

shardinator 11y ago

I think the real problem is that "marketing job" and "field marine biology study" are preferred to teaching. Finding a way to make teaching a job people want, and keep wanting after doing it for a while, is the key.