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> Education is expensive and underfunded. Always makes me think of The West Wing scene: > Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't ne

> Education is expensive and underfunded. Always makes me think of The West Wing scene: > Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet. Video (sorry for the burned in subs, should be queued up): https://youtu.be/IzV09gESyh0?t=39 https://youtu.be/IzV09gESyh0?t=39

NoMoreNicksLeft 11mo ago
> The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. Our nation needs something on the order of millions of teachers. Competition for the best teachers would work great, if you needed exactly 1 extraordinary teacher. Or even if you needed a dozen. But when you need 40 teachers or more per school district... you're going to end up with alot of mediocre teachers, and more than a few godawful ones. And, I suspect, that the thing not even extraordinary teachers can do is give a shit. Some teachers give a shit about some students, a few give a shit about many/most students, but even those few will falter in a career that lasts long enough. Any why do they even want this silver bullet anyway, as impossible as it is? Why would you want a trillion dollar boondoggle that can't possibly ever work? The answer for that is downright frightening.
- programjames 11mo ago
  And yet, somehow, there are around a million much higher-quality professors. Yes, you need 5x as many teachers. But you don't find 1 in 5 are at the level of a median professor. You should actually expect more than 1 in 5, given they require less vocational training. There is something fundamentally wrong when you move from tertiary to secondary education, but it isn't an issue of supply and demand.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 11mo ago
    [flagged]

NoMoreNicksLeft 11mo ago

> The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. Our nation needs something on the order of millions of teachers. Competition for the best teachers would work great, if you needed exactly 1 extraordinary teacher. Or even if you needed a dozen. But when you need 40 teachers or more per school district... you're going to end up with alot of mediocre teachers, and more than a few godawful ones. And, I suspect, that the thing not even extraordinary teachers can do is give a shit. Some teachers give a shit about some students, a few give a shit about many/most students, but even those few will falter in a career that lasts long enough. Any why do they even want this silver bullet anyway, as impossible as it is? Why would you want a trillion dollar boondoggle that can't possibly ever work? The answer for that is downright frightening.

programjames 11mo ago
And yet, somehow, there are around a million much higher-quality professors. Yes, you need 5x as many teachers. But you don't find 1 in 5 are at the level of a median professor. You should actually expect more than 1 in 5, given they require less vocational training. There is something fundamentally wrong when you move from tertiary to secondary education, but it isn't an issue of supply and demand.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 11mo ago
  [flagged]