Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

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> Without the right training, most teachers do not understand math well enough to teach it the way Lampert does.

My high school math teacher majored in math and then got a certificate in teaching. She wasn't a teacher who was told to teach math among other classes. She knew all the advanced stuff (beyond what a high school curriculum required), she was excited about it, she could explain things in various ways, give analogies, was available after class to ask questions and so on. And that is post-collapse Soviet Union full of corruption, poverty and other crap like that. Surely if we can spend trillions of dollars on F-35 we can get us some good math teachers...?

In this country I see a large disconnect between words "Oh kids are so very very important, they are our future, they can't play outside too far because they will be abducted and we care so much for them" and deeds: I see large classrooms, not enough teachers, teacher are underpaid, not interested in math. Funding comes from local property taxes so rich neighborhood get more money, poor ones get less.

Another thing is I remember teachers were respected. Imagine how we react to someone saying "Oh they are doctor. And then everyone nods, right, they are very successful. Or lawyer, or works for Google and so on". Why isn't teaching like that? My mom tells me someone back home thought she was a teacher, because she at her age spoke some English. And she took it as a great complement. In this country you tell someone you thought they were a high-school teacher and they might get offended. Something is very wrong here...

As for making it more exciting -- initially I studies math by repetition and it worked pretty well for me. I think works because kids are amazing at memorizing stuff. Why not first take advantage of that? Starting them out with set theory sounds all cool on paper that is not how humans learn. Multiplication table, basic patterns, even operations are fine to memorize first. Later on it makes most sense to introduce proofs, word problems (I remember doing lots of word problems, our teachers were crazy for them) and so on.

I don't know of any country where teachers are considered as elites. The reason your mother took that as compliment is not because teacher is a high social class occupation, but because being good at english is considered a great skill in many countries. If you really had to compare, in most cases people would feel more flattered to be mistaken as a doctor (or an engineer who works at Google than as an elementary school teacher.

I know people will throw stones at me for this, but the reason teachers are not the top 1% of the society is because functionally their job is a commodity. (We're talking about elementary/middle/high school teachers, not professors here).

It is not hard to find someone who knows high school math, for example. I'm not discounting the fact that there are sometimes really outstanding teachers, but the thing is, it's hard to objectively measure their performance since their teaching talent is not directly related to how well their students do. On the other hand, the "teachers" at universities are well respected since their talent is not only limited to how well they teach but the quality of their own research--the value is much easier to quantify.

Afaik teachers are held in the same regard as doctors and lawyers in Scandinavia.

Nope, at least not in Norway or Sweden. Or possibly only in the sense that non of those professions are held in particularly high regard. And they certainly aren't paid like doctors of lawyers.

Sure if you ask people, they respect teachers in the abstract sense that they're people doing a very tough job for very little money, but it's hardly a career people aspire to, and certainly most teachers I know will admit it was their second or third choice that they kind of fell into.

This seems unlikely. Perhaps in Finland. But the Danish teachers that I know have complained about the collapse of respect for the job as well as the system for as long as I've known them.

> Funding comes from local property taxes so rich neighborhood get more money, poor ones get less.

I used to think so too, but I don't think that is exactly the case. School districts usually span many neighborhoods, rich and poor. Within school districts, there are school zones (school boundaries), or mappings of residential addresses to assigned schools. While it's true that richer neighborhoods tend to have better schools, the property tax money is collected centrally at school district level, and then distributed across schools, both rich and poor. I haven't seen evidence that districts distribute more money to schools in richer neighborhoods.

If anyone is more knowledgeable on this, I would love to learn more.

> She knew all the advanced stuff [...] was excited about it, could explain things in various ways, give analogies

I envy you this experience. I still remember telling a math teacher in 8th or 9th grade that I wanted more information on why a formula worked, how it was originally derived, or any different way of looking at it to better understand it. She essentially said, "you don't need to worry about all that, just memorize it." It was intensely frustrating for me, and contributed to me losing interest in academic pursuits. I don't know how you can train teachers to be more open to this kind of thing, but it sure would help.

This is true, for some odd reason, teaching in America is not socially respected institution as much as it is elsewhere.

Teaching in Canada is along the lines of nursing or something: it's professional, requires a degree of competence and certification, there is social value. It's not exactly 'doctor' but it's respected for what it is, as it is in most nations.

I think it's because people assume American teachers are not paid much, but the one's I know are paid reasonably.

Some of the very worst teachers I've ever met were in Canada.

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