5 ms·

A lot of the trends we are seeing in education are mostly driven by the economics. Good teaching is a highly-skilled profession. And it requires a lot of very

A lot of the trends we are seeing in education are mostly driven by the economics. Good teaching is a highly-skilled profession. And it requires a lot of very robust interpersonal skill - (something the new batch of Millennial and Gen Z workers are bad at). This skill is rare, getting rarer, and becoming expensive. Because these workers are expensive and rare, districts can only respond by making the jobs easier and more attractive. And a lot of the "equity" initiatives are just that - at their heart most of them sell teachers on a justification that methods which require less rigour are better. And at current trends it is getting really hard to argue that a high school is much more valuable than just a daycare for teenagers (depending on who you ask, this may already be the case). If there is not much rigor or motivation being offered the students, there will be a natural regression towards student success entirely being driven by home life.

VyseofArcadia 4y ago
> (something the new batch of Millennial and Gen Z workers are bad at) Let me remind you that the average Millenial is in their mid-to-late thirties now. Hardly the "new" batch. For that matter, I see no reason that robust interpersonal skill should be distributed unevenly across generations other than the younger ones haven't had as much practice yet. They'll get there, though.
- legitster 4y ago
  Sure. And I 100% accept there could be survivorship fallacy at play here. But I am just repeating what I have been told by SMEs - that teachers and administrators are less equipped for their jobs than they might have been a generation or two ago. If there was a uneven distribution it would pretty easily be explainable as an inverse relationship to social media and screen time.
  - VyseofArcadia 4y ago
    In the US at least I'd be more inclined to suspect brain drain than something generational. Almost everyone who could teach is doing something that pays better instead. I suspect we'd have better teachers if school systems didn't have constant teacher shortages. Being able to select teachers on merit would be an improvement over hiring anyone who can fog a mirror.
    - DiscourseFan 4y ago
      This is very much the case, the US is quickly becoming a playground for the wealthy who can pay to put their kids through private school, and skilled workers from abroad who didn't have to suffer through the American educational system. The only essential difference between education in a place like the Japan and the US is the level of funding--their school system is based off of America's, and yet their teachers are competent, their students often score far higher on standardized tests. I suppose I learned something in HS, but I was an absolutely shit student and my district did what they could for me but in the end it was my own drive to succeed, after graduating, that led me to becoming a top student at college and transferring to a very respectable university. The whole system is fucked up, and while I might be one single individual who "pulled myself up by my bootstraps," there are perhaps hundreds of thousands, if not millions of young students just like me who either dropped out of highschool or barely finished and couldn't cut it at college and ended up doing unskilled labor. They suffer with no chance for a better life, no shot at a more comprehensive education, and no consciousness of their labor conditions such that they never even think about trying to fundamentally alter the system that has placed them in such an awful social position. I am not a success story, I am the exception that proves the rule.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        In what US school are kids serving others lunch, cleaning, etc? There are huge differences in the systems. Even if the curriculum is similar (which I doubt, but having investigated) the execution is vastly different. The societal/cultural aspects are also very different.
        DiscourseFan 4y ago
        I agree that there are vast social differences, but I think the primary difference is that teachers are not respected, both in terms of their wage and in terms of their social status, and education is not treated as sacred and liberating, but is used mostly (in the US) as a means of discipline and control, and the "educational" part is little more than propaganda. In the rare instances where it is not simply a means of state-control and propaganda, the would be teachers of math, science, and humanities subjects who are genuinely interested in education only for the purpose of showing what is beautiful and freeing in the world are never treated in a way which would make them want to do such a noble benefit for society.
- giantg2 4y ago
  "I see no reason that robust interpersonal skill should be distributed unevenly across generations" The difference probably isn't as large as it seems, but there is a difference. There is a lot less proper socialization today than previously. My grandparents had to actually talk to people growing up. You had to figure out how to get along with others because there were relatively few options of who to play with. Eventually they phones and radios. Then my parents had TVs, but not a lot of content and not everyone had one. So you might invite neighbors over to watch the game etc. Now we have hundreds of channels, the internet in our pockets (which is not as personal as the phone was), etc. Not to mention the legal and societal barriers to socialization, especially at a young age (helicopter parents, legal liabilities reducing freedom/openness, costing money, etc). Even if you age adjust, the younger generations will still score lower in these skills because less time is being spent in those environments, generally.
  - foogazi 4y ago
    > There is a lot less proper socialization today than previously. My grandparents… Wonder if there are any studies on this besides anecdata
    - nialse 4y ago
      It is an interesting question. A brief look yields this nugget. ”By relying on text messaging primarily for their interaction, Generation Zers have missed out on learning some vital rules of conversation. This in- cludes how to listen, ask questions, interject in a way that is seen as respectful to others, build re- lationships, solve problems in real time, and resolve conflicts.” https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aaron-Buchko/publication/349012870_Here_comes_Generation_Z_Millennials_as_managers/links/6366ff262f4bca7fd036dc15/Here-comes-Generation-Z-Millennials-as-managers.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aaron-Buchko/publicatio...
      - abracadaniel 4y ago
        Years ago, when training new employees there was a sudden shift where seemingly everyone new was afraid of using the phone to call customers back. They would all avoid doing it whenever possible and it had never been an issue in prior years. Now we know it as phone anxiety, and it’s pretty common.
mym1990 4y ago
Can you actually point to the data that says Millennial and Gen Z teachers have worse interpersonal skills than those of previous generations? Let alone point to data that says on aggregate Millennials and Gen Z workers have bad interpersonal skills? From the teachers I have come across within these 2 generations, they seem to be incredibly intelligent and personable. You saying that good teachers with robust interpersonal skills are expensive and rare just shows that you haven't stepped into a school recently, or haven't conversed with a teacher for more than 20 seconds.
- no_wizard 4y ago
  I'd like to piggy back on that and ask about any data that even supports the general thesis that Gen Z and younger Millennials have poor interpersonal skills, as that's how I took the assertion.
- legitster 4y ago
  It's a hard thing to find hard data for, but it's documented: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868990/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868990/ (We do however, have lots of studies that show grade inflation is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation) > From the teachers I have come across within these 2 generations, they seem to be incredibly intelligent and personable. I wouldn't argue that millenials are dumber or meaner (my generation, btw), but I think it would also be wrong to mistake our expressed sensitivity and aversion for conflict as actual interpersonal skill. And if we are talking about needing to pay teachers more so that we can attract better skilled teachers, what other skill would we be talking about?
  - verall 4y ago
    I couldn't find anything in that article that supports your assertion, but I only skimmed it. It does seem to imply the opposite: > We review these purported characteristics, as well as Millennials’ more positive qualities—they work well in teams, are motivated to have an impact on their organizations, favor open and frequent communication with their supervisors, and are at ease with communication technologies.
lnxg33k1 4y ago
Let's say that I agree with you, teaching is a highly-skilled profession and millennials are bad at interpersonal skills. All millennials? All genZ? I've read a while ago "The shock doctrine" from Naomi Klein, and there was a part where schools exploited natural disasters in order to fire all long term employees and hire new temporary employees with worse pay / benefits and contracts, I was wondering, is this lack of quality related to 2 whole generations of people being bad or is it that the offer doesn't attract people who would increase quality... because millennials are a lot of people, if you count genZ they're even, is it possible that billions of people are just bad point blank? Wtf.. maybe they poisoned the running water with some anti social germs that affected the whole generation... or you just said something extremely stupid classifying under a umbrella personality trait a lot a lot a lot of people

VyseofArcadia 4y ago

> (something the new batch of Millennial and Gen Z workers are bad at) Let me remind you that the average Millenial is in their mid-to-late thirties now. Hardly the "new" batch. For that matter, I see no reason that robust interpersonal skill should be distributed unevenly across generations other than the younger ones haven't had as much practice yet. They'll get there, though.

legitster 4y ago
Sure. And I 100% accept there could be survivorship fallacy at play here. But I am just repeating what I have been told by SMEs - that teachers and administrators are less equipped for their jobs than they might have been a generation or two ago. If there was a uneven distribution it would pretty easily be explainable as an inverse relationship to social media and screen time.
- VyseofArcadia 4y ago
  In the US at least I'd be more inclined to suspect brain drain than something generational. Almost everyone who could teach is doing something that pays better instead. I suspect we'd have better teachers if school systems didn't have constant teacher shortages. Being able to select teachers on merit would be an improvement over hiring anyone who can fog a mirror.
  - DiscourseFan 4y ago
    This is very much the case, the US is quickly becoming a playground for the wealthy who can pay to put their kids through private school, and skilled workers from abroad who didn't have to suffer through the American educational system. The only essential difference between education in a place like the Japan and the US is the level of funding--their school system is based off of America's, and yet their teachers are competent, their students often score far higher on standardized tests. I suppose I learned something in HS, but I was an absolutely shit student and my district did what they could for me but in the end it was my own drive to succeed, after graduating, that led me to becoming a top student at college and transferring to a very respectable university. The whole system is fucked up, and while I might be one single individual who "pulled myself up by my bootstraps," there are perhaps hundreds of thousands, if not millions of young students just like me who either dropped out of highschool or barely finished and couldn't cut it at college and ended up doing unskilled labor. They suffer with no chance for a better life, no shot at a more comprehensive education, and no consciousness of their labor conditions such that they never even think about trying to fundamentally alter the system that has placed them in such an awful social position. I am not a success story, I am the exception that proves the rule.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      In what US school are kids serving others lunch, cleaning, etc? There are huge differences in the systems. Even if the curriculum is similar (which I doubt, but having investigated) the execution is vastly different. The societal/cultural aspects are also very different.
      - DiscourseFan 4y ago
        I agree that there are vast social differences, but I think the primary difference is that teachers are not respected, both in terms of their wage and in terms of their social status, and education is not treated as sacred and liberating, but is used mostly (in the US) as a means of discipline and control, and the "educational" part is little more than propaganda. In the rare instances where it is not simply a means of state-control and propaganda, the would be teachers of math, science, and humanities subjects who are genuinely interested in education only for the purpose of showing what is beautiful and freeing in the world are never treated in a way which would make them want to do such a noble benefit for society.
giantg2 4y ago
"I see no reason that robust interpersonal skill should be distributed unevenly across generations" The difference probably isn't as large as it seems, but there is a difference. There is a lot less proper socialization today than previously. My grandparents had to actually talk to people growing up. You had to figure out how to get along with others because there were relatively few options of who to play with. Eventually they phones and radios. Then my parents had TVs, but not a lot of content and not everyone had one. So you might invite neighbors over to watch the game etc. Now we have hundreds of channels, the internet in our pockets (which is not as personal as the phone was), etc. Not to mention the legal and societal barriers to socialization, especially at a young age (helicopter parents, legal liabilities reducing freedom/openness, costing money, etc). Even if you age adjust, the younger generations will still score lower in these skills because less time is being spent in those environments, generally.
- foogazi 4y ago
  > There is a lot less proper socialization today than previously. My grandparents… Wonder if there are any studies on this besides anecdata
  - nialse 4y ago
    It is an interesting question. A brief look yields this nugget. ”By relying on text messaging primarily for their interaction, Generation Zers have missed out on learning some vital rules of conversation. This in- cludes how to listen, ask questions, interject in a way that is seen as respectful to others, build re- lationships, solve problems in real time, and resolve conflicts.” https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aaron-Buchko/publication/349012870_Here_comes_Generation_Z_Millennials_as_managers/links/6366ff262f4bca7fd036dc15/Here-comes-Generation-Z-Millennials-as-managers.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aaron-Buchko/publicatio...
    - abracadaniel 4y ago
      Years ago, when training new employees there was a sudden shift where seemingly everyone new was afraid of using the phone to call customers back. They would all avoid doing it whenever possible and it had never been an issue in prior years. Now we know it as phone anxiety, and it’s pretty common.

mym1990 4y ago

Can you actually point to the data that says Millennial and Gen Z teachers have worse interpersonal skills than those of previous generations? Let alone point to data that says on aggregate Millennials and Gen Z workers have bad interpersonal skills? From the teachers I have come across within these 2 generations, they seem to be incredibly intelligent and personable. You saying that good teachers with robust interpersonal skills are expensive and rare just shows that you haven't stepped into a school recently, or haven't conversed with a teacher for more than 20 seconds.

no_wizard 4y ago
I'd like to piggy back on that and ask about any data that even supports the general thesis that Gen Z and younger Millennials have poor interpersonal skills, as that's how I took the assertion.
legitster 4y ago
It's a hard thing to find hard data for, but it's documented: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868990/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868990/ (We do however, have lots of studies that show grade inflation is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation) > From the teachers I have come across within these 2 generations, they seem to be incredibly intelligent and personable. I wouldn't argue that millenials are dumber or meaner (my generation, btw), but I think it would also be wrong to mistake our expressed sensitivity and aversion for conflict as actual interpersonal skill. And if we are talking about needing to pay teachers more so that we can attract better skilled teachers, what other skill would we be talking about?
- verall 4y ago
  I couldn't find anything in that article that supports your assertion, but I only skimmed it. It does seem to imply the opposite: > We review these purported characteristics, as well as Millennials’ more positive qualities—they work well in teams, are motivated to have an impact on their organizations, favor open and frequent communication with their supervisors, and are at ease with communication technologies.

lnxg33k1 4y ago

Let's say that I agree with you, teaching is a highly-skilled profession and millennials are bad at interpersonal skills. All millennials? All genZ? I've read a while ago "The shock doctrine" from Naomi Klein, and there was a part where schools exploited natural disasters in order to fire all long term employees and hire new temporary employees with worse pay / benefits and contracts, I was wondering, is this lack of quality related to 2 whole generations of people being bad or is it that the offer doesn't attract people who would increase quality... because millennials are a lot of people, if you count genZ they're even, is it possible that billions of people are just bad point blank? Wtf.. maybe they poisoned the running water with some anti social germs that affected the whole generation... or you just said something extremely stupid classifying under a umbrella personality trait a lot a lot a lot of people