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To most people, teachers are authority figures first and employees second. Having worked on educational software for several years now I can tell you that, whi

To most people, teachers are authority figures first and employees second. Having worked on educational software for several years now I can tell you that, while most teachers are smart enough not to talk about it, they're all very aware of this fact. So the worry probably isn't that teachers will be replaced by software. It's that availability of teaching software that's almost as good as some teachers will erode the social prestige held by all teachers. That prestige has been a central feature of the American political landscape over the last few decades. From a survey I happend to have on my desktop, taken during the Wisconsin Union Thing a few weeks ago [1] [2]. What's your overall opinion of: Teachers 73% pos 10% neg Teachers' Unions 47% pos 30% neg Other Unions 38% pos 35% neg Barack Obama 49% pos 35% neg As a group, teachers enjoyed a 63-point spread between favorables and unfavorables during a coordinated attack in the national spotlight that went on for 3 weeks. Maybe a president enjoys that kind of popularity for a little while, right after winning a war, but not always. If I were a teacher, I think a slogan like "[We] aim to make the world bad teacher-proof" would sound very ominous. [1] http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_Politics/___Politics_Today_Stories_Teases/2-24-28-11.pdf http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_Politics/_... [2] This is a good time to point out that I'm trying to make this post politically neutral, because politics is first in the official list of topics best avoided on HN: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jasonrr 16y ago
I think I understand what you're trying to say here, but the comment about presidents in war time is really throwing me off. A president is an actual person who has done "things". My opinion of the president is informed by my knowledge of those things, so, when asked my opinion of the president, I can answer. The survey question you compare it to is essentially the equivalent of asking "Do you like the idea of teachers?" If you were to ask people about the teachers in their district or their child's teachers, you would likely get a very different spread. That's not to say that teachers don't enjoy a good deal of prestige, but I think it is safe to say that the survey you are using here may overstate your case for just how popular actual individual teachers are with their respective communities.
- mnemonicsloth 16y ago
  I think we're probably in agreement here. I wanted to use the president-in-wartime reference to parallel the fuzzy attitudes about teaching that you're objecting to. We'll rally around the flag regardless of who the president goes to war with, and if you ask people about teaching, and they'll tell you they love teachers because teachers love their children... while the reality is that teachers are just as human (and yes, just as venal) as everybody else. There is one angle I'm not probably not seeing. I don't have kids myself, so I don't know what it's like to leave a child in the care of strangers for seven hours a day. You might have to ascribe positive motivations to those people to keep from going crazy. But then I think about how much unhappiness one incompetent teacher can inflict on a child, and that really gets my hackles up.

jasonrr 16y ago

I think I understand what you're trying to say here, but the comment about presidents in war time is really throwing me off. A president is an actual person who has done "things". My opinion of the president is informed by my knowledge of those things, so, when asked my opinion of the president, I can answer. The survey question you compare it to is essentially the equivalent of asking "Do you like the idea of teachers?" If you were to ask people about the teachers in their district or their child's teachers, you would likely get a very different spread. That's not to say that teachers don't enjoy a good deal of prestige, but I think it is safe to say that the survey you are using here may overstate your case for just how popular actual individual teachers are with their respective communities.

mnemonicsloth 16y ago
I think we're probably in agreement here. I wanted to use the president-in-wartime reference to parallel the fuzzy attitudes about teaching that you're objecting to. We'll rally around the flag regardless of who the president goes to war with, and if you ask people about teaching, and they'll tell you they love teachers because teachers love their children... while the reality is that teachers are just as human (and yes, just as venal) as everybody else. There is one angle I'm not probably not seeing. I don't have kids myself, so I don't know what it's like to leave a child in the care of strangers for seven hours a day. You might have to ascribe positive motivations to those people to keep from going crazy. But then I think about how much unhappiness one incompetent teacher can inflict on a child, and that really gets my hackles up.