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Investment in education is one of the best ROI a society can have. Quite surprising that in the USA this relationship has been eroded by schools spending in spo

by piva00 4mo ago

Investment in education is one of the best ROI a society can have. Quite surprising that in the USA this relationship has been eroded by schools spending in sports and admin, in most other developed countries it's a quite direct relationship between more investments -> better educational outcomes.

spwa4 4mo ago
But there's 2 problems with that. To save money governments declare that "teaching is a profession". By which they mean: "teaching", not subject matter expertise, matters. Except: 1) the single thing you cannot beat is capable teachers. And NOT capable as in able to teach, subject-matter-experts. And that is what everybody wants to avoid at all costs. Put it like this: an unwashed, abrasive, offensive smelly asshole with a master in math can teach kids math. A super-friendly, nice, beautiful, polite social science major (or not even that) who doesn't know math well cannot. The level of teachers needs to be an order of magnitude above the level expected of kids at the end of the class. Knowledge of the subject needs to take absolute precedence in teacher hiring decisions, to the point that good teachers get rejected if lacking expertise in the subject. This is not how things work. They only worked that way for a short while due to the crash of 89. I've had a French teacher that couldn't speak more than "some" French. Certainly nowhere near fluent. 2) Money needs to support that. Which means for Math, the money for math teachers needs to be competitive with research departments of banks, and very different for different subjects, which seems offensive to schools and government in general. If teaching positions aren't competing with other professional careers in the subject matter, it will never work. This will, of course, mean that many science teachers make more than a school principal and even a district administrator. Deal with it. For Math, they are literally not even 25% of that, but even for French it's insufficient.
- piva00 4mo ago
  > 2) Money needs to support that. Which means for Math, the money for math teachers needs to be competitive with research departments of banks, and very different for different subjects, which seems offensive to schools and government in general. If teaching positions aren't competing with other professional careers in the subject matter, it will never work. This will, of course, mean that many science teachers make more than a school principal and even a district administrator. Deal with it. I believe this to be a heavily US-centric view, Estonia and Finland do not pay more for math teachers than they could get in banks' research departments but still manage to get competent teaching across most school subjects. Things work outside of the US, the issue is the US does not want to look outside and adapt itself to incorporate what's been learnt from other systems. It's a "do the US way or no way" attitude, and it's slowly eroding to become more a "no way" than any kind of "US way" of doing things.
  - spwa4 4mo ago
    Doesn't change the fact that I have 2 daughters that are getting Math education from someone who is easily beat in math teaching quality by Google Gemini (I realize this is a specific strong point of Gemini, but still) And I do mean easily beat.
    - piva00 4mo ago
      It doesn't change that fact, unfortunately it's a complex societal issue which presents quite heavily in your society, it requires decades of constant improvement to change anything. I don't think American society has the appetite nor patience for the actions needed for this kind of change.
      - spwa4 4mo ago
        Then the result will inevitably be AI education. AI cannot beat a good teacher, I know that. But the bar is getting raised a bit.
expedition32 4mo ago
Don't forget religion! Some crazy things being taught at American schools that you couldn't get away with in secular nations.

by piva00 4mo ago

spwa4 4mo ago

But there's 2 problems with that. To save money governments declare that "teaching is a profession". By which they mean: "teaching", not subject matter expertise, matters. Except: 1) the single thing you cannot beat is capable teachers. And NOT capable as in able to teach, subject-matter-experts. And that is what everybody wants to avoid at all costs. Put it like this: an unwashed, abrasive, offensive smelly asshole with a master in math can teach kids math. A super-friendly, nice, beautiful, polite social science major (or not even that) who doesn't know math well cannot. The level of teachers needs to be an order of magnitude above the level expected of kids at the end of the class. Knowledge of the subject needs to take absolute precedence in teacher hiring decisions, to the point that good teachers get rejected if lacking expertise in the subject. This is not how things work. They only worked that way for a short while due to the crash of 89. I've had a French teacher that couldn't speak more than "some" French. Certainly nowhere near fluent. 2) Money needs to support that. Which means for Math, the money for math teachers needs to be competitive with research departments of banks, and very different for different subjects, which seems offensive to schools and government in general. If teaching positions aren't competing with other professional careers in the subject matter, it will never work. This will, of course, mean that many science teachers make more than a school principal and even a district administrator. Deal with it. For Math, they are literally not even 25% of that, but even for French it's insufficient.

piva00 4mo ago
> 2) Money needs to support that. Which means for Math, the money for math teachers needs to be competitive with research departments of banks, and very different for different subjects, which seems offensive to schools and government in general. If teaching positions aren't competing with other professional careers in the subject matter, it will never work. This will, of course, mean that many science teachers make more than a school principal and even a district administrator. Deal with it. I believe this to be a heavily US-centric view, Estonia and Finland do not pay more for math teachers than they could get in banks' research departments but still manage to get competent teaching across most school subjects. Things work outside of the US, the issue is the US does not want to look outside and adapt itself to incorporate what's been learnt from other systems. It's a "do the US way or no way" attitude, and it's slowly eroding to become more a "no way" than any kind of "US way" of doing things.
- spwa4 4mo ago
  Doesn't change the fact that I have 2 daughters that are getting Math education from someone who is easily beat in math teaching quality by Google Gemini (I realize this is a specific strong point of Gemini, but still) And I do mean easily beat.
  - piva00 4mo ago
    It doesn't change that fact, unfortunately it's a complex societal issue which presents quite heavily in your society, it requires decades of constant improvement to change anything. I don't think American society has the appetite nor patience for the actions needed for this kind of change.
    - spwa4 4mo ago
      Then the result will inevitably be AI education. AI cannot beat a good teacher, I know that. But the bar is getting raised a bit.

expedition32 4mo ago

Don't forget religion! Some crazy things being taught at American schools that you couldn't get away with in secular nations.