7 ms·

> (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. Hard

> (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.
      - thehoff 4y ago
        Not responding to the differences in systems but there are US schools where kids do serve meals, clean, etc. Military schools. I’m not talking West Point, the other Academies, or VMI and the others. There are military boarding high schools where they do this.
        giantg2 4y ago
        Definitely. They typically score very highly for academics (like most private schools).
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Yuuuuup. Teaching has suffered some bad Baumol's Cost Disease... but wages haven't risen to compensate, and meanwhile a bunch of other crap has made the job even less pleasant than it was decades ago, and also costs of essentials like healthcare and housing and education have shot up, further encouraging people to maximize income just to not feel very poor. [EDIT] That is, to keep teacher supply & quality roughly static, I'd have expected Baumol-like increases in the cost of teacher labor (because accessible alternative careers are paying a lot more than they used to) but instead wages have stayed fairly flat, or even slowly fallen in many places, once you take inflation into account.
    - legitster 4y ago
      Bingo. I think it's a strong case of Baumol. If we want to have a consistent quality of education we either need to drastically increase the quality of teachers, or find a way to increase class size while keeping outcomes consistent.
  - craigbarry 4y ago
    [dead]
  - giantg2 4y ago
    There are states that pay their teachers well. We still see issue there. I think the majority of student performance issues are societal in nature. Just like the Harvard study about two parent households being the biggest factor for success.
  - prepend 4y ago
    > Almost everyone who could teach is doing something that pays better instead. The US pays their teachers better than almost every other country in the world [0]. So while teachers aren’t the highest paid profession, in the US they make more than other countries. And the US has worse outcomes than those other countries that pay worse. That makes me think that teacher pay isn’t the problem. Or at least isn’t the biggest problem. #7 on this list, https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-2017-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-...
    - bluefirebrand 4y ago
      Consider that the issue isn't overall teacher salaries, but instead how teacher salaries compare against other professions in other places. Have you ever seen Software Engineer salaries in the EU? Way less than America. Probably not much more than their teachers. So if teaching is making the kinds of income that your top earners are, it becomes a lot more likely people will go into teaching than trying to go earn more elsewhere.
      - prepend 4y ago
        That’s a good point. But it also means we could do an h1b visa program for teachers and really clean up by scooping up all the best teachers from around the world.
        red-iron-pine 4y ago
        Why would they come here to make shit-tier teacher pay? They'd have to completely uproot their lives, live in systems / cultures / languages drastically different from their normal, and in exchange get painfully median or sub-par pay? If I'm gonna schlep my ass to another country it had better be for a stark improvement in pay, bennies, and lifestyle -- not corralling brats so they can figure out what a Sin, Cos, and Tan means.
        prepend 4y ago
        Because they’d make significantly more than they could in their home country. (The same reason programmers and nurses do it). The goal isn’t to convince you, but to convince the many others who would make 2-4x from in their home country (see the chart I referenced). And pay isn’t shit tier in the US even as it’s above the median salary. It’s not the highest paying, but it pays more than most jobs in the US.
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.

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.
    - thehoff 4y ago
      Not responding to the differences in systems but there are US schools where kids do serve meals, clean, etc. Military schools. I’m not talking West Point, the other Academies, or VMI and the others. There are military boarding high schools where they do this.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        Definitely. They typically score very highly for academics (like most private schools).
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Yuuuuup. Teaching has suffered some bad Baumol's Cost Disease... but wages haven't risen to compensate, and meanwhile a bunch of other crap has made the job even less pleasant than it was decades ago, and also costs of essentials like healthcare and housing and education have shot up, further encouraging people to maximize income just to not feel very poor. [EDIT] That is, to keep teacher supply & quality roughly static, I'd have expected Baumol-like increases in the cost of teacher labor (because accessible alternative careers are paying a lot more than they used to) but instead wages have stayed fairly flat, or even slowly fallen in many places, once you take inflation into account.
  - legitster 4y ago
    Bingo. I think it's a strong case of Baumol. If we want to have a consistent quality of education we either need to drastically increase the quality of teachers, or find a way to increase class size while keeping outcomes consistent.
- craigbarry 4y ago
  [dead]
- giantg2 4y ago
  There are states that pay their teachers well. We still see issue there. I think the majority of student performance issues are societal in nature. Just like the Harvard study about two parent households being the biggest factor for success.
- prepend 4y ago
  > Almost everyone who could teach is doing something that pays better instead. The US pays their teachers better than almost every other country in the world [0]. So while teachers aren’t the highest paid profession, in the US they make more than other countries. And the US has worse outcomes than those other countries that pay worse. That makes me think that teacher pay isn’t the problem. Or at least isn’t the biggest problem. #7 on this list, https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-2017-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-...
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    Consider that the issue isn't overall teacher salaries, but instead how teacher salaries compare against other professions in other places. Have you ever seen Software Engineer salaries in the EU? Way less than America. Probably not much more than their teachers. So if teaching is making the kinds of income that your top earners are, it becomes a lot more likely people will go into teaching than trying to go earn more elsewhere.
    - prepend 4y ago
      That’s a good point. But it also means we could do an h1b visa program for teachers and really clean up by scooping up all the best teachers from around the world.
      - red-iron-pine 4y ago
        Why would they come here to make shit-tier teacher pay? They'd have to completely uproot their lives, live in systems / cultures / languages drastically different from their normal, and in exchange get painfully median or sub-par pay? If I'm gonna schlep my ass to another country it had better be for a stark improvement in pay, bennies, and lifestyle -- not corralling brats so they can figure out what a Sin, Cos, and Tan means.
        prepend 4y ago
        Because they’d make significantly more than they could in their home country. (The same reason programmers and nurses do it). The goal isn’t to convince you, but to convince the many others who would make 2-4x from in their home country (see the chart I referenced). And pay isn’t shit tier in the US even as it’s above the median salary. It’s not the highest paying, but it pays more than most jobs in the US.

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.