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Can you elaborate? The general negative sentiment towards teachers is confusing to me. It seems you trust them enough to take a very major part in raising your
by anon9384929 5y ago
Can you elaborate? The general negative sentiment towards teachers is confusing to me.
It seems you trust them enough to take a very major part in raising your child, but not enough to make a decision about what’s best? I’d like you to elaborate because this view makes it seem like parents view teachers as nannies (who, by the way, should also have a say in whether they want to get exposed to a virus or take it home to their own family).
- macinjosh 5y agoNot sure what in GP you think is negative towards teachers. Sounds like you probably don’t have kids of your own. As a parent and tax payer I’d like to have my child taught in a school by competent people. Not via Zoom by someone who can’t understand that the risks are unbelievably low and kids are being damaged by missing out on school.
- taeric 5y agoGP is a fairly standard anti union stance against teachers. And, honestly, your post seems further in that direction. That is, you are furthering the narrative that many teachers are not competent, since they "can't understand the risks.". If they are that incompetent, why are they still teaching?
- rootusrootus 5y agoWe've arrived in a weird situation where we pay so little to teachers and yet require a high level of education, that we aren't attracting our best & brightest to the profession. I've still met some great teachers, but I've met a lot of glorified babysitters. It's infuriating.
- slibhb 5y agoPublic school teachers get paid plenty. Where I live ~68K is the average and they get summers off. Plus tenure.
- swasheck 5y agothat only partially addresses one half of the comment though. additionally, “summers off” is a fairly common red herring that’s just designed to distract from the primary argument. this has nothing to do with time off or tenure so please stop trying to distract.
- rootusrootus 5y agoHow many people here on HN would consider 68K "plenty", and what percentage have a master's degree? Or even a bachelor's?
- slibhb 5y agoSalary isn't based on which degrees you have, it's based on what job you're doing. It's inane to compare a computer programmer's salary to a teacher's salary. That aside, 68k is perfectly reasonable for a job with fantastic security, summers off, lots of vacation time where you get to work with children. Also, when I started working as a programmer, my salary was ~72k which is not much more and I had no trouble living off it. Of course the ceiling is higher for me but that's the market's doing.
- acdha 5y ago> summers off, lots of vacation time This comes at the expense of having absolutely no flexibility during the school year and usually plenty of long days & weekends, and summer has things like professional development / continuing education keeping it from being a long work-free block. It’s not bad but it’s not a compensation game changer. One other thing to remember: for a teacher, being out sick is almost as much work as a normal day. The tempo of a school year means that a lot of people need a couple weeks to unwind at the end of the year.
- taeric 5y agoAnd where I live, 68k is... Probably not going to let you live in this area. :( I'm torn. Both sides of this debate can make pretty good arguments. And I'm particularly swayed by the arguments in Case Against Education. That said... What is the path forward? I'm just not seeing it.
- sqqqqrly 5y agoBecause those teachers are publicly funded and many or even most parents cannot afford anything else.
- taeric 5y agoApologies, I meant my question mainly rhetorical. But I'm not seeing what direction this answer takes it. The premise above was that school choice could fix things. But, for places without capital, how?
- swasheck 5y agothe primary argument against school choice/voucher systems is that it would implicitly recreate segregation across races and classes. there are counter arguments to this line of thinking, but that’s what i’ve heard as the primary argument against choice
- taeric 5y agoRight, that argument is what I meant by places without capital. If you don't have the wealth to get your kids to a good school, what do you do? And, as a nation, are we ok with the current predominant answer?
- google234123 5y agoThese unions have set up a system where it takes 5 or 6 years to fire a bad teacher in LA and SF. How does that benefit children? And you act like parents have much of a choice.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- BurningFrog 5y agoTeachers have been given the choice if they want to work for their paychecks, or not work and still get the paychecks. Like anyone else, they've mostly chosen the latter. The point is that teacher unions have too much power, not that teachers are worse or better than other groups - they're not.
- hotpotamus 5y agoThis isn't about working or not working; it's about remote vs in-person.
- Pigalowda 5y agoThere’s no reason to pay actual teachers for remote work. They can just be teaching videos with offsite proctors. It’s 100% about doing less work for the same pay
- slibhb 5y agoNo good parent just "trusts" teachers to raise their children. Good parents are constantly involved: keeping tabs on schoolwork, helping and encouraging their child, meeting with teachers and administrators, volunteering, and sometimes getting their child moved from one class to another when the teacher is bad.
- refurb 5y agoI mean the teachers unions in CA are exempt from the vaccine mandate. One of the few public workers who are. What does that tell you?
- nostromo 5y agoIn my state, Washington, the teachers union got teachers to the front of the line for vaccines, right behind healthcare workers. We were told it was to get schools back open. Once they were all vaccinated, they decided not to re-open schools.
- refurb 5y agoSame thing is CA. Teachers were one of the first to be vaccinated (while resisting any vaccine mandate), yet immediately put up roadblocks to reopening. It’s about teachers, not students.
- swasheck 5y ago> It’s about teachers, not students. this is a false dichotomy and reeks of political rhetoric. it’s honestly both. teachers desire a safe working environment for themselves AND want to do the best they can to educate students under the circumstances.
- refurb 5y agoIt’s not a false dichotomy if you just look at the union’s actions. How does opposing a vaccine mandate help students? The answer is it doesn’t, its just the union flexing its politics muscle by using the mandate as a bargaining chip.
- swasheck 5y agowe’re not debating vaccine mandate efficacy, we’re debating you implication that teachers aren’t in it for the students. you’re being intellectually dishonest.
- zdragnar 5y agoUnions represent the teachers' interests, not the students'. Not only that, but there's more than sufficient evidence that remote learning harms kids, especially the poor or otherwise disadvantaged. At the end of the day, you have to weigh potential risks, which for kids COVID is a very small (though still real) risk. It is especially hard on parents whose jobs don't allow working remotely- retail, manufacturing, etc. Why should teachers be exempt when parents are not?
- aaronbrethorst 5y agoWhy should teachers be exempt when parents are not? Good point, more Americans should be unionized.