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tl;dr American education system won't improve until American kids get off their asses and study hard. All these movies and articles about fighting w/ teachers
by bryanwb 16y ago
tl;dr
American education system won't improve until American kids get off their asses and study hard.
All these movies and articles about fighting w/ teachers unions aren't the real issue. Many of those "bad" teachers would be more motivated if they didn't have to babysit lazy brats all day and if they earned a decent wage.
Charter schools mostly work because they siphon off the most motivated kids and teachers. I am skeptical that they help the system as a whole. Maybe they raise test scores but mostly by helping the most enthusiastic kids get higher scores, not helping the average non-charter kid get higher scores.
btw, i am an american who has spent 6 years living in both(South Asia and East Asia), where kids do get off their asses and they don't have complex charter/teacher motivation/reorganization schemes. Why do kids study so hard there? Because there parents beat it into their skulls that they will be dirt-poor farmers unless they get an education.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoWait, that last sentence also applies to a lot of universities. Not really. At least in the university programs I know about, the biggest problem is that teaching sucks because the administration doesn't care about instructional quality at all. That's why you end up with professors who literally can't teach: their value to the organization comes from the grant money they pull in, not their ability or interest in teaching. Given how wrong you are about the problems of university level instruction, I'm not sure whether to trust your claims about primary and secondary education.
- bryanwb 16y agomy comment only applies to universities, esp. those that function more like country clubs, and doesn't really apply to big reseach-centric schools like Berkeley or UCLA. You are correct that teaching quality there is a reflection of university administration priorities