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I'm not sure it's the teachers' fault either. Not entirely anyway. They are beholden to school boards and parents (and ultimately all voters via funding). In fa

I'm not sure it's the teachers' fault either. Not entirely anyway. They are beholden to school boards and parents (and ultimately all voters via funding). In fact - I suspect this was written for parents (etc) who are not involved in the day to day experience of school, but who demand certain things from schools without any concern for the real world effects (e.g. idiotic faith in standardized testing). Those folks may not know these things. Unfortunately, they probably don't want to pause and think about it - If I showed this to some of my conservative friends and relatives they would take it as evidence that teachers are useless, not that the current teaching system needs some serious rearrangement.

germinalphrase 9y ago
The difficulty is that there is not an obvious "better way" for all schools to serve all students. The underlying goals of schools are often at odds and incompatible with each other, let alone the goals of the students/parents/communities that direct those schools. HN is full of people who hated the constraints of school but loved learning and succeeded based on that personal zeal, but I've known countless young people that wouldn't succeed in learning basic arithmetic or reasonable advanced literacy without a strong push to get them across the line. The answer is probably a larger variety of smaller schools (and cracking the nut of how to measure teacher effectiveness), but we're not economically or socially prepared to attempt that on the necessary scale.
- Pulcinella 9y ago
  Yes. I'm a teacher as well. The goals can be very contradictory. Students and Parents want to learning to be individualized for them based on their specific needs. They don't want to be treated like products on an assembly line. Students and Parents also don't want to be treated any differently than anyone else. They don't want another student to receive "better" treatment than what they are receiving. GT students need different lessons that can keep up with them. GT students don't want to feel they are doing more work than non-GT students because they are GT. GT students don't want to have to do the same work as non-GT students. Otherwise what is the point? Non-GT students think it is unfair that GT students get to do different activities. It can be hard to explain to students and parents that Samantha gets more unstructured learning time because she can handle it and Timmy has to be pushed along with less unstructured learning time because he goofs off the whole time.
jseliger 9y ago
They are beholden to school boards and parents Yes. I don't teach K - 12 but I have taught undergrads as a grad student and adjunct, and I wish more people realized this; I wrote "Ninety-five percent of people are fine — but it’s that last five percent" (https://jakeseliger.com/2017/04/24/ninety-five-percent-of-people-are-fine-but-its-that-last-five-percent/ https://jakeseliger.com/2017/04/24/ninety-five-percent-of-pe...) in part to explain the problems that a tiny minority can create. For example: Teaching, especially at the K – 12 level, really suffers from this problem. A teacher who tries to be honest and interesting risks the ire of his or her angriest, more unhinged, or most ideological students (and, even worse, their parents). Almost no teacher gets in trouble for being boring, but a teacher can get in trouble or can get in trouble for being many values of “interesting.” Even I’ve had that problem, and I’m not sure I’m that interesting an instructor, and I teach college students.

germinalphrase 9y ago

The difficulty is that there is not an obvious "better way" for all schools to serve all students. The underlying goals of schools are often at odds and incompatible with each other, let alone the goals of the students/parents/communities that direct those schools. HN is full of people who hated the constraints of school but loved learning and succeeded based on that personal zeal, but I've known countless young people that wouldn't succeed in learning basic arithmetic or reasonable advanced literacy without a strong push to get them across the line. The answer is probably a larger variety of smaller schools (and cracking the nut of how to measure teacher effectiveness), but we're not economically or socially prepared to attempt that on the necessary scale.

Pulcinella 9y ago
Yes. I'm a teacher as well. The goals can be very contradictory. Students and Parents want to learning to be individualized for them based on their specific needs. They don't want to be treated like products on an assembly line. Students and Parents also don't want to be treated any differently than anyone else. They don't want another student to receive "better" treatment than what they are receiving. GT students need different lessons that can keep up with them. GT students don't want to feel they are doing more work than non-GT students because they are GT. GT students don't want to have to do the same work as non-GT students. Otherwise what is the point? Non-GT students think it is unfair that GT students get to do different activities. It can be hard to explain to students and parents that Samantha gets more unstructured learning time because she can handle it and Timmy has to be pushed along with less unstructured learning time because he goofs off the whole time.

jseliger 9y ago

They are beholden to school boards and parents Yes. I don't teach K - 12 but I have taught undergrads as a grad student and adjunct, and I wish more people realized this; I wrote "Ninety-five percent of people are fine — but it’s that last five percent" (https://jakeseliger.com/2017/04/24/ninety-five-percent-of-people-are-fine-but-its-that-last-five-percent/ https://jakeseliger.com/2017/04/24/ninety-five-percent-of-pe...) in part to explain the problems that a tiny minority can create. For example: Teaching, especially at the K – 12 level, really suffers from this problem. A teacher who tries to be honest and interesting risks the ire of his or her angriest, more unhinged, or most ideological students (and, even worse, their parents). Almost no teacher gets in trouble for being boring, but a teacher can get in trouble or can get in trouble for being many values of “interesting.” Even I’ve had that problem, and I’m not sure I’m that interesting an instructor, and I teach college students.