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Comment by SmellTheGlove | Hacker News Reader

I guess 46th in the nation wasn't good enough. What problem is this actually trying to address?

There's a teacher shortage because of poor working conditions and poor pay, but rather than fix that they would rather broaden the worker pool.

> they would rather broaden the worker pool.

That was a strange way to say lower their educator standards.

You can't increase the amount of time kids stay in school without lowering standards.

If people are stuck for 20% of their life in school we'd need 1 in 5 people to be teachers to tutor them one on one. In the US 1 in 100 people are a teacher which means that we have a student teacher ratio of 1:20.

Which is quite frankly terrible.

The only sane thing to do is to reduce the required schooling and improve it's quality. But that would mean we turn schools into places or learning instead of extended day care.

Did you learn somewhere that wasn't a school? Because I learned in school.

I'm sorry to hear you haven't learned anything new since you finished high school.

Not strange. It accurately describe the strategy their employing

Do we really need people with masters degrees teaching 8 year olds how to multiply? Maybe elementary teaching should be seen as more vocational than professional. There's no reason someone of average intelligence with a few months training couldn't effectively teach kids.

Yes, you do. 5-8 years olds are at a far more impressionable age than at any other time.

While I don't necessarily agree with AZ's direction, I also don't necessarily agree that a college education makes you less likely to screw up impressionable kids.

I would be surprised if you advocated that for your own kids (Do you even have kids?). Teachers need to have masters degrees with certifications. I am not lowering my standards.

As a partner of an elementary educator in Canada, a master's degree no, but definitely an undergraduate with some amount of co-op.

Knowing how to teach well, to 25+ students, is not something you can pick-up over a handful of years. Many don't even after their degrees. Even if a school sets a lesson plan that's "perfect", you'd still need someone to adapt and tailor that plan to the classroom, or to students with special needs.

Lowering education standards is an absolutely surefire way of hamstringing the future of a state or country.

Here's a better question, why 25+ students?

You have 2 minutes per student in the average class. That hamstrings the future of a state or country more surely than having worse teachers.

Oh, 100%. Unfortunately, that's what the unions here agreed to and there seems to be very little motive from either side to change it.

In general, people don't want to become teachers because they don't get paid enough for the amount of work they do and the amount of bullshit they have to endure. I wouldn't be surprised if this was an attempt to increase the pool of people willing to be teachers.

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