Hacker News Reader

Comment by hedberg10 | Hacker News Reader

Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, administrate.

This pattern of phrase is so condescending, and insulting to those who genuinely choose to enter a profession.

Unfortunately, it contains a kernel of truth. I personally met staffers at my alma mater that worked there after failing to advance in their academic career but being too well connected to not have a safety net.

I always considered that part of a much needed safety net for a professional where stagnation in the hierarchy is no option, but there are less positions at the top than at the bottom. So yes, a kernel of truth, but not necessarily a bad thing.

It’s a bad thing when the cost of higher education is rising at rates 8-10x than inflation due to this excess administrative overhead.

If you’ve been out of school for >10yrs, I’d strongly encourage you to look at the current cost of your alma matter - it may well shock you.

To the contrary. It might shock you to hear that it's still free.

It is a problem. Those that are capable and drop out of the insane career filter that is academia get good jobs elsewhere. Others end up in the University. And there, they don't even teach.

I disagree that it contains a kernel of truth, though I would agree that it truthfully identifies a malign surface growth that occasionally metastizes and, left unchecked, destroys the kernel.

I certainly agree that there are people who teach because they can't do, but I don't think that teaching because you can't do is even part of the kernel of teaching.

As for admins... this is a huge problem right now. They are threatening to destroy the host. But a healthy host does have a trim, effective, and dedicated group of admins.

It's a play on "those who can, teach" which was a marketing campaign in the UK, which somewhat backfired within the UK and became the saying "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach".

Clearly there are lots of people who genuinely choose to enter teaching, but in certain subjects, for some people, it is the de-facto profession if you cannot use your degree to do something else. See Avenue Q's "What can you do, with a BA in English?".

This is more about high school than university-level though.

[Note - I was mistaken - please see the clarification in post below!]

> It's a play on "those who can, teach" which was a marketing campaign in the UK, which somewhat backfired within the UK and became the saying "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach".

Lol I think you’ve got that backwards!

The marketing slogan was a play on the common criticism of teachers which is a quote of Shaw from around 1900.

Oops, I'm happy to be corrected - I'll go back into my hole...

Yeah. Especially since a great number of faculty chose to turn down jobs that pay 3-4x what they receive from universities. My friends from grad school who ended up in R1 positions were the most consistently brilliant of my cohort.

I don’t know if this attitude is a cause or an effect of the failures in the American education system. In many other countries, especially in Asia, teachers are respected if not outright revered. Their status is often comparable to medical doctors and other professional classes. So people who choose to teach are not seen as unfit to engage in other endeavors. But in America there’s this undercurrent of contempt for those who would choose to teach. It just seems like a rather self-defeating attitude for a society to have, especially in a world where knowledge is the ultimate competitive advantage. It seems like our current anti-science, pro-ignorance culture is more or less an inevitable outcome of such an attitude.

The attitude is the outcome of the ignorance culture, not the other way around.

Doctors in the US make 2 to 3x what doctors in Asia make so thats not a good comparison. American schools are some of the best funded in the world so I'm not sure where the stereotype that teachers aren't appreciated enough comes from

Doctors in the US are unnecessarily overpaid and supply is artificially constrained. Their station in the US should not be considered a litmus test compared to other nations and their healthcare systems.

I'm not sure which part of Asia you're in. Respected, perhaps. Not nearly on the same level as a doctor /lawyer /engineer, social status wise, but not horrible. Revered? I don't think I've seen this where I am.

Do note that I'm fitting this to pre university, though the constraints are relaxed a bit once you bring in the higher statused tenured profs.

> Those who can't do, teach.

Oh, you must mean rubber duck debugging, where a programmer pretends to teach a rubber duck about a bug for the purpose of doing the job of revealing the fix for it in the process.

I absolutely love rubber duck debugging, too!

Do you tend to start a bug fix with it, or do you reserve it for times when you get stuck? I feel like I should use it way more often, or at least way earlier than I tend to. That would probably eliminate a lot of headaches.

Anyway, great to see a fellow rubber duck debugger here on HN! You know I bet if we tried teaching each other about rubber duck debugging we'd reveal even more techniques to become more efficient at doing our work.

So much to talk about! So much to teach and do!

I love HN!

Those who can't administrate, consult.

(I always heard it as "those who can't teach, consult" but I like the administrate introduction...)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com