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1. Automation. Teaching in its rawest form has been automated away, leaving it to be a valueless human endeavour. “Teaching” in the context of children survives

1. Automation. Teaching in its rawest form has been automated away, leaving it to be a valueless human endeavour. “Teaching” in the context of children survives because it has become a childcare service. But babysitting is not able to charge much as its cost must remain under the income potential of parents, else parents will take the responsibility themselves.

bee_rider 4y ago
1) Has it really? I'm sure the potential exists for video lectures or whatever, but I think the teachers still ostensibly at least teach. 2) How little do you pay babysitters? At, say, $5 per kid per hour, a teacher of 20 would be doing pretty well, and that's on the low side of class sizes these days I think.
- randomdata 4y ago
  > Has it really? I'm sure the potential exists for video lectures or whatever, but I think the teachers still ostensibly at least teach. Yes. Gone are the days that you would hire a teacher to teach you something. These days you turn to automated teaching services. The fact that the word teacher is now synonymous with the K-12 school teacher further emphasizes that the career in general has effectively disappeared. As before, "teaching" has survived as a career where childcare is the actual service offered. > How little do you pay babysitters? In my case it is $3 per hour for a daycare provider that cares for no more than five children at a time. If the babysitter cared for more children I would expect to pay less as I would get much less value for my dollar. The quality of care and attention declines as the number of children increases. Large class sizes are accepted because we are going for bang for our buck over quality of care. If teachers were charging on the same order per child as other daycare providers providing higher quality care, indeed it would be good money, but there would be a shift to putting children into those better care facilities and so it wouldn't last. Why pay the same amount for lesser care?
  - thisarticle 4y ago
    Do you have any evidence that teachers are all using “automated teaching services”? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
    - randomdata 4y ago
      Teaching as a career basically doesn't exist anymore outside of schools for children. It is not that teachers are using automated tools, but students are using automated teachers instead of hiring human teachers. When was the last time you hired a human teacher instead of consulting an automated teacher when you wanted/needed to learn something new? Like I said before, we don't even recognize the existence of general teachers anymore, with the word under typical use now only referring to those who work at schools for children.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        I've never heard of an automated teacher. I've heard of tutors and I've heard of books.
        randomdata 4y ago
        Books provide a primitive form of automated teaching, although we've expanded on the concept considerably since the advent of the book. You have not heard of automated teaching as a thing because we invent names for automation. The automated kitchen servant isn't called an automated kitchen servant, it's called a dishwasher (among others). Likewise, automated teachers are not called automated teachers. They are given names, depending on the teaching method at play. Automated teacher is used here as a generalization as the specific automation is immaterial.
  - batshibstein 4y ago
    $1 per student in a 25-student classroom for 30 hrs/week for 36 weeks is like 27k, the base salary isn't much higher than that. So that's assuming a worthless teacher with 0 added value. The added value is probably at least 3x even for a subpar teacher up to 10-20x for a top performer and the actual time variables are all probably higher than listed above. I would imagine the 10-20x value-adders aren't incentivized and are probably actively de-incentivized in the faculty senate/union dynamic unless they literally love the job that much which is debunked in the OP post.
downboots 4y ago
> Teaching in its rawest form has been automated away Wishful thinking. If kids magically taught themselves there would be no schools. Some do. Most don't.
- randomdata 4y ago
  Of what relevance are kids? We're talking about adults. When was the last time you hired a teacher instead of turning to YouTube (or whatever)? That's where teaching is effectively dead, lost to automation. Children require care. Again, "teaching" survives when children are present because childcare is the functional service offered. There is no impetus to move to automation here as childcare is not easily automated, necessitating a warm body anyway. However, the value of a teacher is constrained by the value of childcare as there is no longer market value in teaching alone. Like I said in the other comment, teaching outside of schools for children isn't even recognized in the word teacher anymore because the career, as a general one, effectively no longer exists. You've proven my point.

bee_rider 4y ago

1) Has it really? I'm sure the potential exists for video lectures or whatever, but I think the teachers still ostensibly at least teach. 2) How little do you pay babysitters? At, say, $5 per kid per hour, a teacher of 20 would be doing pretty well, and that's on the low side of class sizes these days I think.

randomdata 4y ago
> Has it really? I'm sure the potential exists for video lectures or whatever, but I think the teachers still ostensibly at least teach. Yes. Gone are the days that you would hire a teacher to teach you something. These days you turn to automated teaching services. The fact that the word teacher is now synonymous with the K-12 school teacher further emphasizes that the career in general has effectively disappeared. As before, "teaching" has survived as a career where childcare is the actual service offered. > How little do you pay babysitters? In my case it is $3 per hour for a daycare provider that cares for no more than five children at a time. If the babysitter cared for more children I would expect to pay less as I would get much less value for my dollar. The quality of care and attention declines as the number of children increases. Large class sizes are accepted because we are going for bang for our buck over quality of care. If teachers were charging on the same order per child as other daycare providers providing higher quality care, indeed it would be good money, but there would be a shift to putting children into those better care facilities and so it wouldn't last. Why pay the same amount for lesser care?
- thisarticle 4y ago
  Do you have any evidence that teachers are all using “automated teaching services”? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    Teaching as a career basically doesn't exist anymore outside of schools for children. It is not that teachers are using automated tools, but students are using automated teachers instead of hiring human teachers. When was the last time you hired a human teacher instead of consulting an automated teacher when you wanted/needed to learn something new? Like I said before, we don't even recognize the existence of general teachers anymore, with the word under typical use now only referring to those who work at schools for children.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      I've never heard of an automated teacher. I've heard of tutors and I've heard of books.
      - randomdata 4y ago
        Books provide a primitive form of automated teaching, although we've expanded on the concept considerably since the advent of the book. You have not heard of automated teaching as a thing because we invent names for automation. The automated kitchen servant isn't called an automated kitchen servant, it's called a dishwasher (among others). Likewise, automated teachers are not called automated teachers. They are given names, depending on the teaching method at play. Automated teacher is used here as a generalization as the specific automation is immaterial.
- batshibstein 4y ago
  $1 per student in a 25-student classroom for 30 hrs/week for 36 weeks is like 27k, the base salary isn't much higher than that. So that's assuming a worthless teacher with 0 added value. The added value is probably at least 3x even for a subpar teacher up to 10-20x for a top performer and the actual time variables are all probably higher than listed above. I would imagine the 10-20x value-adders aren't incentivized and are probably actively de-incentivized in the faculty senate/union dynamic unless they literally love the job that much which is debunked in the OP post.

downboots 4y ago

> Teaching in its rawest form has been automated away Wishful thinking. If kids magically taught themselves there would be no schools. Some do. Most don't.

randomdata 4y ago
Of what relevance are kids? We're talking about adults. When was the last time you hired a teacher instead of turning to YouTube (or whatever)? That's where teaching is effectively dead, lost to automation. Children require care. Again, "teaching" survives when children are present because childcare is the functional service offered. There is no impetus to move to automation here as childcare is not easily automated, necessitating a warm body anyway. However, the value of a teacher is constrained by the value of childcare as there is no longer market value in teaching alone. Like I said in the other comment, teaching outside of schools for children isn't even recognized in the word teacher anymore because the career, as a general one, effectively no longer exists. You've proven my point.