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Let's not act as though those are in any ways similar. Elementary school teaching does require less academic rigor tha

by screye 8y ago

Let's not act as though those are in any ways similar. Elementary school teaching does require less academic rigor than a university professor. Same applies to RNs vs an anesthesiologist. I do not mean to belittle those career choices (if anything, I myself want to become a k12 school teacher at some point in life). But, there are a certain set of traits that are needed to excel at the 'prestigious' careers. Disposition towards hard work beyond the standard 9-5, an acumen for logical reasoning, ability to retain large quantities of information are all more rare than social skills and empathy, which take precedence in elementary teaching or nursing. Our culture idolizes the hard working, career oriented person, that sacrifice other things in life to singularly chase this money and fame driven idea of success. This is irrespective of how physically/mentally healthy it is, or if it positively correlates to long term happiness. IMO, it leads to an obsession to prove that men and women being equal, would have equal outcomes on this narrow benchmark for success. It both neglects the fact that that social norms haven't changed as much and that equal outcome is meaningless without context. p.s: nice to see someone use 'beg the question' in the correct context.

Dylan16807 8y ago
> Elementary school teaching does require less academic rigor than a university professor. But you replace that with a need for a lot more knowledge of teaching and child psychology, so I'd say doing a good job is significantly harder even in the sense of requiring a lot of education.
- screye 8y ago
  > a lot more knowledge of teaching and child psychology Do they really though? In my experience, school teachers don't really have either and both are either learned on the job or academically taught when pursuing the major. Being a great teacher is tough, but very few teachers are actually great. Being a university professor is IMO, among the hardest positions to get. In my experience, the smartest people I know are university professors. If anything, many university professors are grossly underpaid (for what they offer) in exchange for job security and complete freedom to pursue what they love.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    Well there's a reason I said 'need' not 'reliably get'. Also the original quote was university teaching. The whole professorship and tenure thing is a separate giant ball of complication, and you're right that all that non-teaching stuff is extremely difficult.
- tomp 8y ago
  > so I'd say doing a good job is significantly harder Maybe, but this highlights another problem in "soft" careers (social, marketing, teaching etc). It's very hard to objectively qualify candidates. In programming, it's easy: you can program, or not. If you can, the question is likely how fast can you learn new things, and how complex programs you can design & write. Good lawyers win cases. Good traders make money. And so on... How do you compare teachers, marketers (except bullshit "increased engagement by 1600%" claims on their CVs), etc?
- belorn 8y ago
  There is a relative recent (<10 years) government study in Sweden that looked at gender segregation of the teaching profession, and one suggestion they made to make the profession more gender equal and bring more men into the profession was to focus the program to include more academic studies.

by screye 8y ago

Dylan16807 8y ago

> Elementary school teaching does require less academic rigor than a university professor. But you replace that with a need for a lot more knowledge of teaching and child psychology, so I'd say doing a good job is significantly harder even in the sense of requiring a lot of education.

screye 8y ago
> a lot more knowledge of teaching and child psychology Do they really though? In my experience, school teachers don't really have either and both are either learned on the job or academically taught when pursuing the major. Being a great teacher is tough, but very few teachers are actually great. Being a university professor is IMO, among the hardest positions to get. In my experience, the smartest people I know are university professors. If anything, many university professors are grossly underpaid (for what they offer) in exchange for job security and complete freedom to pursue what they love.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  Well there's a reason I said 'need' not 'reliably get'. Also the original quote was university teaching. The whole professorship and tenure thing is a separate giant ball of complication, and you're right that all that non-teaching stuff is extremely difficult.
tomp 8y ago
> so I'd say doing a good job is significantly harder Maybe, but this highlights another problem in "soft" careers (social, marketing, teaching etc). It's very hard to objectively qualify candidates. In programming, it's easy: you can program, or not. If you can, the question is likely how fast can you learn new things, and how complex programs you can design & write. Good lawyers win cases. Good traders make money. And so on... How do you compare teachers, marketers (except bullshit "increased engagement by 1600%" claims on their CVs), etc?
belorn 8y ago
There is a relative recent (<10 years) government study in Sweden that looked at gender segregation of the teaching profession, and one suggestion they made to make the profession more gender equal and bring more men into the profession was to focus the program to include more academic studies.