Nobody wants to teach anymore

I tried teaching high school CS for the best part of two years in a private school. Everything to do with the pupils was amazing and I loved every moment. I am a natural with behaviour management and although it was stressful, every time the bad kids acted up it presented a teachable moment. You could really feel the impact on their lives and behaviour, well behind the Python and the TCP/IP and while loops.

But everything to do with working with other teachers was utter misery. Never have I met such a cantankerous downtrodden passive aggressive bunch of backstabbing political jobsworths. Actually, it was probably only one third of the staff that were the hyper negative old timers, but they had such a dismal impact on me it felt like everyone was cut from the same cliquey snobby cloth. Imagine the worst, most power hungry, little-napoleon office manager you’ve ever had and then imagine one in three of the staff have that mindset.

It drove me mad and I’m now a SWE again but also volunteering at a youth center in our most deprived part of town and loving it. I can have impact with the kids, and as a volunteer I seem to command much more respect from parents than a lowly teacher.

So now I am tainted too — if I hear you are a teacher then I will see before me someone who at best tolerates that level of crappiness in their workplace, and at worst actively takes part in it. Neither leave me with much respect for you, but I know why you do it: the kids.

I am an early-retired EE and I thought that I could have a second career in teaching HS physics. I got the MA Teaching in Maryland, and did my one year student teaching assignment. My thoughts:

1. The degree program was decent, although a certificate program would be better for prior professionals if the law allowed it (lower cost, too much wasted time in redundant classes).

2. Teachers are sad. Very sad. They are underpaid and overworked, even at the better suburban high schools. Parents treat them poorly, even when they are veteran teachers with lots of experience.

3. In general, the public resents that teachers get “3 months off” in the summer. I believe that this is the justification for lower pay. It is silly, because teachers work more in 9 months than most professionals and they also pay for things out of their own pockets. They also counsel and tutor students after school. It’s a difficult job.

4. In my job interviews, the first and most important qualification was “classroom control.” Math, science, engineering, life experience were all distant seconds. Teachers—-even in advanced math and science classes—-are first and foremost caretakers. Think about that for a second…

5. What is the current model for education based on? There are several competing historical arguments, but the salient factors like student-teacher ratio, subjects, grades, facilities, etc. are based on economics and legal requirements. The quality of either a student’s experience or a teacher’s experience is not very high on the list. Education is about checking a box on a list of requirements that was developed 150+ years ago.

Ultimately, I decided to tutor rather than to teach in a classroom. I consider this a personal disappointment, although I learned a lot from the educational experience. I wish there could be a “town hall” type of discussion to consider ways to improve the situation.

Former HS math teacher here. It was the hardest job I’ve ever had. I still have nightmares about being back in the classroom 18 years later. I was easily working 12+ hours a day doing class planning, grading, etc. not to mention the actual teaching. Returning to programming my pay doubled and my stress level dropped profoundly. Teacher pay should easily be double what it is.

(And about that summers off—with the exception of teachers who had non-teaching spouses or those in the back third of their career, everyone worked summer jobs to make ends meet.)

> Nobody wants to teach

Counterpoint: the internet is full of people who want to teach. The first school of YouTube is overflowing with educational content on everything from merge sort to patching dry-wall. A large portion of my social circle hold teaching/mentorship as a career goal. I don't think this is pedantic. When I look around, I see a surplus of people that want to learn and want to teach.

What I don't see is people storming the gates for a horribly broken system that robs many humans of their best years while inflicting lifelong trauma. A position that is horribly underpaid relative to the demands of the job (so you aren't doing it for money) and isn't allowed to meaningfully improve things (so you aren't doing it to "make a difference" unless you think putting on a smile is going to substantially change the outcome, which it sometimes does.)

I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. If you can provide a service at any standard of quality, list jobs at any standard of quality and pay, and the demand never dries up; there really is no incentive to fix things. At some point the education system in its current form needs to collapse.

> Demoralization is what happens when you spend years becoming an expert in a subject area, and nobody cares. They’d rather hire another MBA to make all the important decisions, while they stick us on committees writing reports for ghosts. That’s when teachers start to withdraw from their jobs, when we realize it doesn’t matter what we think, and it definitely doesn’t matter how amazing we are at what we do.

This was really well put, and applies to any profession, not just teaching. Consider software security experts, who know all the ins and outs of making systems secure. They advise, the offer guidance and best practices on very complex material.

And yet at the end of the day all that work gets thrown out by some PM’s that think it only adds complexity, or worse yet users simply don’t use the more secure features of an application.

I realize this piece is more of a rant, and I won't hold it to a data accuracy standard it never pretended to have, but they pay issue is really misconstrued. Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median, and when accounting for benefits and pension, quite impressive. In South Dakota and a number of states in the south and rural districts, yes it is another story, and it is bad. Also, teachers NEVER want to discuss pay differentials by anything but years of service. I'm sorry, but most qualified high school physics teachers have way differently valued skillsets in the labor force by alternate employers than most kindergarten teachers.

The US has always experienced relentless political activism against public education. This creates a climate where teachers, and the institution they work in, are actively hated by a wide swath of the public. This is due in no small part to proponents of religious education.

It's true that teachers receive an above-average salary, but that can be both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that your wages are a matter of public record, and more than half of voters earn less then you, though teaching their precious children should be a privilege.

A second thing is that schools are the repository of social problems that they can't solve, including poverty, racism, the proliferation of firearms, and rise of violent rhetoric.

My state outlawed the teachers' union several years ago, and a lot of senior teachers took early retirement or went into other jobs. Most were old enough that they had settled into their lifestyle, and weren't going to get rich by changing careers. The word they used the most was "respect." My neighbor, one of the best teachers in the district, is now working as an engineer. His spouse is a mid six figure executive.

> It’s definitely about the money.

This. It's all about the money. I left the classroom and literally shed a tear in front of my principal. She asked what she could do for me to stay and I said "I need more money. I have bills to pay." You can't pay a mortgage with thank you notes, certificates of appreciation, and hugs.

I taught high school Computer Science, a needed subject area with countless CS training initiatives and resources, but the pay still wasn't (and still isn't) there. I have a family and can't afford to stay in the classroom if I want to stay in my house, own a car, have a cell phone and internet, and pay off student loans.

I clicked the article because it says nobody wants to teach; I want to teach, I just can't afford to.

1. This is not about America. I'm from Eastern Europe and we have the very same problems.

2. This is not about money. Yes, being underpaid is part of a problem how teachers feel, but no money compensates humiliation and bullying teachers are experiencing.

3. It's not a rant. This EXACTLY how I feel after spending three years at school. I was a math teacher in classes of my kids because a school couldn't find any. Yes, nobody wants to teach any more.

Teaching/training is quite difficult. I've done quite a bit of training (but not true teaching -there's a difference), over the years.

My family is full of teachers. I have many friends that are teachers.

It's amazing how "solutions" never seem to actually get around to simply paying teachers more, and maybe not expecting them to be child-rearers, in lieu of parents.

As a European, it has always been perplexing to me how little the US invests in teachers and schools, given that we know how huge the benefits are down the road (educational attainment, income, pro-social behavior, life satisfaction).

Watching how large parts of the political spectrum embrace hardship as a societal teaching tool, I begin to understand that the expectation may always have been that kids ought to figure it out by themselves. It's almost as if our "invention of childhood" (as a protected phase in life) is being rolled back.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe kids can until they are quite old. On the contrary, I expect the emotional and psychological scars to demand a significant toll in the future.

[edit] PS: There have been quite a few very heated recent discussions where dang sternly warned against incisive political scorn. I agree, and my comment is intentionally worded carefully and as objectively as possible.

The same problem is happening in NL, it's a downwards spiral really that concerns me a lot. The government is trying to improve the situation by increasing pay a little, but with the current inflation it is probably too little, too late.

A relative of mine became a teacher after a career switch, and while she likes the work, there are many frustrations:

- Parents have a 'the customer is always right'-attitude, and complain about everything, but their kids are perfect of course.

- Some years ago NL decided to cut down on schools for kids with special needs, so every class now has a few very disruptive kids who have nowhere else to go. This is a very frustrating situation for everyone: the disruptive kids don't get proper guidance, the 'normal' kids get lower quality classes, and teachers have to deal with problematic behaviour.

- The shortage of teachers makes it hard to find replacements when calling in sick, plenty of teachers feel pressure to work when sick. This is of course a bad combo with the whole Corona situation.

- Teachers spend a lot of (unpaid) time grading and other administrative BS.

- Management is out of touch, they don't listen to their staff and think up time-consuming plans that are doomed to fail. (well, this is not specific to education) - Management is very unstable. The schools my kids go to had a different director pretty much each year.

It sounds like there are a great many people who want to teach.

The real headline should be, "Nobody wants to teach in public schools anymore."

And do you blame them? The people (politicians, mostly, in dialogue with union leaders) who make the big decisions about public schools are so many levels removed from the students or the teachers that the best-case scenario for these decisions is to be woefully out of touch.

At this point, it seems like the entire world recognizes the American public school system is messed up beyond repair. So why are we spending so much time, energy, and effort trying to save it instead of trying to reimagine the whole thing?

Who's successfully teaching these days? As in, who are the examples of people who are actually being successful at putting ideas into other people's heads?

If what you want is to teach, learn from them.

(If you have a hundred other goals, like providing childcare and increasing character through athletic competition and whatever else you want to do, those are fine things too, but quit trying to lump it all together and do it at once. Find the people who are succeeding at those goals and learn from them as well.)

I know a few teachers who have quit or want to quit. It isn't a money issue, at least for them.

My high-school computer science teacher (many moons ago) taught advanced high-school math. He quit because the administrative requirements became too burdensome. He loved teaching, but every year the administrivia got worse until he finally quit.

Another teacher was a special-ed reading instructor; that's what she was trained for. But the school lost their funding for her category, so they made her a kindergarten teacher. As if that wasn't bad enough, the principal scheduled so many meetings that the teachers effectively lost their planning period and had to do that at home. Parents had direct access to teachers via email, and parents' complaints had to be addressed by the teachers every day - also outside of school hours.

Another teacher was in a poorer school district (elementary) and quit because the teaching environment was just too difficult.

More money won't fix any of these problems.

The problem with teaching is that the role has expanded way beyond what it used to be and teachers are expected to do FAR too much in the classroom and they get minimal support from admin who are more worried about their careers than supporting teachers.

I just had this conversation last week with a couple teachers. If this matters to you, I suggest you find some older teachers who have been around long enough to actually see how the job has changed and ask them what they think.

It has become an impossible job for any amount of money.

"Teachers are underpaid, so let's spend more on education!" right?

Wrong, or at least, a grade of Incomplete.

http://usedbyeducatorsblog.com/education-spending-vs-teacher...

Colorado has enjoyed a 15 percent increase in spending per student from 1992 to 2014 when adjusted for inflation. Put another way, in 2014 Colorado public school students had 15 percent more real resources spent on their education compared to students in 1992. During that same period, however, the average Colorado teacher’s salary has gone down by 11 percent when adjusted for inflation

This is fairly universal, I'd surmise. Most commenters seem to assume that if we wanted to spend, let's say, $100M more on teachers' salaries, we'd have to increase the public education budget by $100M. More like $300M, I'd guess.

My wife teaches elementary school ESL and Spanish as needed.

The school day is 8 hours of solid work, plus 2 hours of grading and two hours of planning. The minimum number of hours for most teachers is 60 hours, plus extra time for maybe coaching, or being and advisor for an extra-curricular (which are a dying bread of program in many schools). This is for doing the same thing you do year after year. Changes in academic guidelines, school policies, textbooks, academic fashion, technology and student aptitude variance from year to year force you to re-invent everything, every year.

It's a horrible job not because teaching is horrible, but because we've turned our schools into the intersection of social engineering and politics. For every child there's at least one highly protective parent, with some political hot button. It's just a nightmare. For example, my wife teaches ESL and Spanish and had to go to meetings with a parent that thought her class was part of a "critical race theory" conspiracy. Another parent wanted my wife to teach Spanish without gender in the language. Still another was upset about having first graders sing, because the kinds might be "too judgey."

> States banned math books for being too woke.

> being asked to breathe children’s germs

Ok.

This article is basically a long rant, and this kind of teacher is exactly what contributed to the burning out of my wife as a teacher. She wanted to teach math, but was being asked to teach social justice math.

> I mean, they’re letting anyone in the classroom now. I’m surprised they haven’t started recruiting the homeless.

Is this a dig at the latest Desantis bill to fast track veterans into teaching roles?

Another complaint, my wife went to one of the highest ranked schools in the country, and was just shy of the minimum gpa requirement to go into the public school system right out of college. Instead she went and taught at charter schools, and her students regularly outperformed other schools in the network with math scores. But she wasn't qualified to teach math until she did a graduate program that had nothing to do with math. She quit the graduate school program because she was being graded on her ability to be inclusive in the classroom and it was a rubric designed for pushing equity and social justice, when again...she was trying to teach math. She would have been just "anyone" being allowed to teach in a classroom.

In Canada each province has a fairly strong teacher union. In Manitoba for example a teacher with 10 years experience will earn approximately $95K CAD (more than most software developers here). This with strong pension benefits that can be collected at 55. I know teachers that retired in their late 50s, and will continuing making 70% of their inflation adjust salaries until they die.

Relatively speaking this salary/benefits has higher expected lifetime earnings than a software developer.

One negative is that the unions are also strong enough that teachers can't be fired/replaced for performance (this is similar to Police...etc). As with any profession the worst of the bunch is very bad, and unfortunately they keep doing it until their fifties at the cost of the children.

Because the old way of teaching has been broken for decades now - by broken I mean not applicable to todays world.

One good thing about C19 is that it forced us to re-examine how we taught and what we taught.

And I think we clearly see that we are spending too many hours in classrooms with boring teachers.

Looking back many years at my schooling I can see that much of it was impractical and unnecessary.

Things like math were not tied into the real world so I was never really taken with it.

It Was very boring and when I became a teacher years later, I burned out after a year of following the curriculum.

I could not really grok chemistry and physics in high school because it was mostly just theory completely divorced from the normal word.

On the other hand our biology teacher gave me a lifelong start in that subject because she really tied it into our daily lives and we could relate.

And I was not the only one.

There are very very few teachers who teach like that - and so, most people just finish school and promptly forget everything they learned.

Can this be fixed?

Not now. We are more focused on culture wars that improving the way how we teach.

It would take a really serious event (not any politician) to make changes.

And that’s why as more parents wake up, home schooling has increased from about 50,000 to well over 500,000 as of last year in the USA.

The problem/solution is YouTube. There is prestige in being a YouTube super-teacher like 3B1B, teaching millions of people. There is no prestige in teaching kids at a local high school who don't even want to learn.

The smart people who once might have found their vocation in teaching, now prefer to set up YouTube channels.

The role of teacher is splitting into content makers and babysitters.

One thing I wonder is if teachers are in such high demand, why do they put up with crap from their administrators and politicians saying that this is what they have to teach and how they have to teach it. Why don’t they just teach whatever they want to teach and do it however they want to do it? The worst that can happen is they will be fired, but they can probably find a new teaching position easily since there is such a high demand.

People do want to teach and get paid to do it. It’s called private schools. They charge what the market will bear for their quality and location, and they pay what the market rate is for teachers of the requisite quality that let them charge the rates they need.

What confuddles people in education is the same thing that causes endless articles about housing, healthcare, inflation… it’s called “basic economics”. Just because education is heavily regulated by the government and full of people ideologically predisposed to pretending economic rules don’t apply, doesn’t mean supply and demand is false and the normal rules of gravity are suspended.

I myself have children and live in Boston, Massachusetts. The per-student funding here is $25,000 per year. Yet excluding a few meritocratic public schools that you have to test into (which they are making ever harder for my Asian children to get into as they reduce the seats allocated to tests and give away to “underprivileged” races, aka not Asians or whites) the schools are dog shit and anyone with a few bucks avoids them like the plague. So money is not the problem in Boston, it’s the horrible nature of the public school system.

I'd like to introduce a sensitive subject as neutrally as possible.

For root causes, the morale environment is largely politically induced in a coordinated attack on public education that goes back to the 80's. For some examples...

* cuts on school lunches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup_as_a_vegetable

* voucher programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_voucher

* vast finanical aid cuts http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N2/budget.02n.html

These policies have persisted off and on since then.

This blog post touches on a lot of topics. I'm laying in bed and groggy, so I'm just going to highlight one thing:

>They’re lucky if they have air conditioning.

LKY: "Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency."

You can't think properly if you're hot. This isn't my opinion, it's measurable. E.g.

https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/ijerph/ijerph-18-07698/art...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02656736.2017.13...

"Findings indicate that academic achievement is linked to building condition mediated by the social climate and student attendance. The model accounted for 70 percent of the variance in the outcome measures."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02724...

Teaching is complicated. Politics is complicated. Parent-school interactions are very complicated. Air conditioning, by comparison, is drop-dead simple. The inability of school districts to do the simplest and most obvious thing to address the problem underscores the degree to which meaningful information is driven out of the education dialogue by pet-issue squabbling.

Cut the administrative overhead, cut a lot of the federal requirements that drive up costs and put that money into classrooms directly.

This is the stuff that advocates for vouchers and private schools have been saying for years. It’s impossible to change things in public schools due to the channels involved.

Private schools, on the other hand, can operate and adapt much more efficiently. My kids go to one. They love it, we love it, their teachers are happy and well respected. Because by sending our kids to that school we made a choice. We evaluated our options and decided this was the best place for them.

When kids are forced into a school due to zoning or because their parents can’t afford either a private or home school option, or moving to a house with different options, the parents have no recourse but to grumble about everything that they don’t like. It wasn’t their decision.

Is money part of the problem? Sure. But it’s not just the teacher pay it’s the money for options that parents can choose.

So much of this goes away if a school can simply tell an unhappy parent, “Maybe this isn’t the best school for your family?”

When parents make a choice themselves, they own it.

This person is all over the map--it's the kind of rambling for which the awful five paragraph essay was designed to correct.

Anyway, I am assuming that she is a public teacher and her job is to some extent supported by that fact (with respect to working conditions, salary, etc) as well as by a union. Many private schools, especially religious schools, actually do pay a "pittance" which probably more closely reflects the market rate. Such teachers often do depend on a spouse's salary, or live in real poverty. Public teachers benefits are usually much, much better.

Of course, the big disadvantage of a public school: You get what you get. Only the very, very worst students are expelled so classroom behavior can be wretched, with correspondingly wretched parents (if any). The administration is politically motivated and the teachers get the short end there, too.

Good districts have no trouble getting teachers, and never have.

I think it depends upon what US State the teachers are in.

Some states, if a teacher says some phrases they could, get fined, loose their job or maybe in rare cases face jail time. This may even spread across the Teacher's life style. Not to mention in many places the pay is not worth it.

Forgot to mention, some states also require a Masters Degree even to teach very young children, the expense of getting that degree is not worth it.

I taught science for a few years.

> "Teachers ... leave the kids alone." - The Wall

Administrators ... leave the teachers alone.

Many admistrators have no education experience or credentials. The 'experience' of my superintendent was being a colonel in the military. Spent much of his time getting a return on the district's investment funds.

> "It's about the money."

Yep, you get what you pay for.

If only full-time teachers were paid be the hour, like substitude teachers.

I didn't get paid enough to get home at 7pm tired-out with a stack of papers to grade, eat supper and fall asleep instead. "Oh, and we need you to take admissions at the football game Friday night, and to stay afterwards to help count the money."

I've always found the media coverage around this topic strange. You will hear almost nothing about it for months, then a huge wave of Unhappy Teachers articles, videos, news items, etc. will rise up, then it all evaporates away into nothing as quickly as it began.

And little ever gets done. I feel like very few politicians want to touch the education beast out of fear, perhaps because last time they did ('member Common Core?) it went nuclear-FUBAR.

I'm not sure if anyone has already linked it, but CNBC just released a new piece on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlnspY2wOVw

A teacher should know better than making blanket statements every 2 lines with "Americans think..".

What a bad article.

Here in NJ we invest a lot in education. Most school districts spend 20-30k per student. Senior teachers earn over 100k. The results are good, low income students have far higher grades that most of the country. It is expensive though, both our income taxes and property taxes are famously high. Lots of people leave the state because of this.

Pay them more. Then while you're at it, pay police more as well. The two pillars that should keep our systems together are disgustingly underpaid...

High School Teachers earned an average salary of $67,340 in 2020. Comparable jobs earned the following average salary in 2020: Elementary School Teachers made $65,420, Middle School Teachers made $64,990, School Counselors made $62,320, and Sports Coaches made $47,100.

Then we haven't even mentioned the massive debt students rake up to be able to pay for their education and sustain their lives while studying. It's one big mess.

> Americans think it’s great that some dude like Joe Rogan or Elon Musk can make a fortune off being an asshole.

Could've done without this pathetic personal attack on two of the most successful people in their domains. Joe Rogan bringing an outstanding format, guests, and great conversation that people are willing to pay for, and Musk bringing intelligence and obsessive drive and courage to bear on multiple industries, resulting in world changing improvements. But sure, just call them assholes and somehow attribute their financial success to that. If that's all it took, there would be a lot more people with a net worth of nine or ten figures.

"Every single teacher I know has a second or third source of income, even professors. They’re either married to a banker, or they work a conventional second job. They have side hustles."

My anecdote: My sister is a professor and my partner a 3rd grade teacher. Neither ever worked summer jobs but it sounds like they're outliers.

I will say that having a classroom full of kids whose parents want to apply their individual moral philosophy on everyone is a challenge.

Part of it definitely has to deal with the country where you're teaching, the kind of school (public vs private), surrounding socioeconomic conditions, age group, etc.

I taught ESL overseas in elementary and junior high school in Taiwan for years. Compared to my experiences teaching in the United States, the children are just empirically better behaved. There is an ingrained culture of respect for teachers and it shows.

Our kids attend a hybrid school. Home 2/3 days at school 2/3 days. It’s technically a private school but it leans way more classical.

During orientation we learned a LOT of our new co-teachers were actually ex public school teachers. They were tired of the direction of the schools and didn’t want to subject their kids to the conditions they saw.

They want to teach. They love teaching. Just not in the public schools.

> Almost nobody respects teachers.

> They think schools exist in order to warehouse children while their parents do the real work,

Full disclosure: I'm not a teacher.

Three thoughts:

1) I wish I had $20 for everytime I've seen a social media meme along the lines of "kids should be taught _____ in school. Like/share if you agree" and 90% of the time it's something parents can and should be doing at home.

2) Ironically, anecdotally, it seems it's "too busy for their kids" parents who insist on outsourcing more and more to school systems. Some of this seems cultural (i.e., that belief has become normalized) but it also exist in the context of systemic issues (e.g., wages continue to lose ground to inflation...everyone needs to own more than they can afford).

3) The last couple of years there has been a lot of chatter about "threats to our democracy" imho most of it misguided hyperbolic media narrative. On the other hand, The Fourth Estate has erroded to become a toothless stuff animal. That's a legit threat. All that's needed now are less educated less thought-able masses.

Undervaluing education is another sign that society is shifting to rent seeking. Extracting short term wealth by burning the future.

It's clear everything is falling and people are trying to jack up the wages to compensate. Yet nobody mentions how to fix the horrific management that allowed this to happen in the first place and won't solve the crisis.

My last job wanted me to replace the existing management. They tried to sell this to me by complaining about all the different bosses they had to report to, how difficult the job was and how they want to retire and stop doing the job. Combined with all the other structural issues and tribalism within the workplace, having a management team that is happy to spell out their own doom is criminally incompetent.

You can pretty up the teacher or management role with money and pride, but it's still going to fall apart if you're hellbent on overworking your staff and killing the golden goose. Everyday the terrible management continues, the more and more relatable Anakin looks. Disappointment is a weekly reality.

Can confirm - my wife is a teacher and it seems every year is getting more difficult. I guess it's too soon to say how much of this is pandemic-related, either directly or indirectly, but it seems like testing, bureaucracy and parent madness (e.g. perception that the curriculum is too "woke" or not woke enough, etc.) have certainly been getting worse too.

But I'm also hearing (and experiencing) increased BS in other industries. Remote work spyware (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/14/business/work...) and flawed metrics-based performance measurement. So I don't know how much of it is teacher-specific and how much of it is general nonsense.

I’m frankly surprised schools haven’t collapsed. It seems like borderline abuse of teachers - low pay, undisciplined kids, have to buy your own supplies. Then this article also points out all the rules and people who think they know better than you.

When I have kids, I plan myself to be lead with respect of the teachers when I meet them

Anecdote time: In June, I left my position teaching high school English after about ten years. Within weeks, I have increased my TC from ~50k to ~80k. Admittedly, I will have fewer vacation days, but I will work fewer hours with no additional labor or responsibilities in the evening/weekends.

Teacher’s lives were taken over by bureaucrats and regulations that are updated yearly requiring new ‘training’.

Ever seen the pages long bullet points of sub-sub-sub topics supposed to be covered in kindergarten? Know how much stress that would add…

Most teachers are incredibly incompetent at their job. I am all up in rising the wages of teachers if they can keep up with their task. Wages and seniority should be based on data on teacher performance not in years.

Education is one of the most important things for human and economic development, yet teachers are severely underpaid. Quality and availability of education would improve dramatically if salaries were higher.

Well, that's a mixed bag.

My son just started his second year teaching kindergarten. I agree teaching is underappreciated and under paid.

I'm from South Dakota, I have a different view of the event she described. In my view, teachers were able to volunteer to score donated dollars by taking part in a light-hearted fund raiser. Accusing the organizers of being monsters assures there will be no further donated-money galas.

My wife also acts as a substitute teacher. From what I can gather, unruly kids who do not understand discipline are perhaps the biggest cause of unnecessary stress.

Increase the child tax credit and let schools compete on strategy. Having multiple strategies is actually super useful for preventing monocultures and increasing diversity of thought.

I "want" to teach. It's just that, teaching as a profession is not sustainable for me.

I am sure a lot of teachers are in the same boat as me.

It's called "class warfare." America isn't one nation: it's a hierarchy of classes. The managerial/administrative class is superior to the proletarian educator class in the hierarchy. They don't want to listen to what teachers have to say just like a baron didn't want to listen to what his peasants think. They are seen as a highly redundant exploitable resource, thus they are disposable.

The author feels all these things, but she can't properly interpret them because she's still under the spell that there's good faith at the top, that we are one nation trying to work together the best we can. She would have to believe this to maintain her self-worth as a pillar of the system. If she didn't, she would lose faith in the significance of her job. She would see herself as a conditioner of slaves, not as one who enlightens the lives of others with knowledge. Once she loses this faith, she'll either become a dead, dispirited teacher, or she'll quit. Right now, she's in the twilight zone between idealism and jaded realism.

The inequality and unfairness is not a bug: it's a feature of the class system. In order for the high to live like demigods, we must be trodden under foot to level the field for their opulent lives. They can't live as they live if we aren't forced to live as we live. It we weren't constantly in fear of losing our jobs and ending up on the street, to openly die as passersby mock us, reaffirming the value of compliance in their minds, we wouldn't endure the hardships we suffer. We wouldn't work for minimum wage. We wouldn't consent to clearly unfair exploitation. But since utter ruin and death is the consequence of refusal, we keep running along and comfort ourselves with a whole host of delusions and distractions that make us feel better about our servitude.

There will be no empathy from those who build their dreams upon our nightmares.

I am considering how the demografic development shapes this.

In the span of 40 years or so, we will from 6 / 1 working to non working to 2 / 1 conclusing in the mid 2030s.

I mean, indifferent to what means of redistribution schema we use, we simply won't get more labor, and issues might need to be solved along other axis. Not expecting the same level of service, etc.

If you want to help teach computer science to high schoolers for two hours a week (before your day job), look into TEALS [1]. It's a rewarding way to teach the next generation of technologists/citizens/people. I've been a TEALS volunteer for five years while working at Google in NYC. The students are fantastic - curious, hilarious, and wonderful to be around. It's the best part of my day. You assist students with their projects and lecture if you wish. You work with the teacher to improve assignments/projects and help them be better teachers; so you're teaching them to fish. Going in to school stabilizes my schedule and gets me into the office earlier than I would on my own. Absolutely recommend it. They also have remote teaching opportunities.

[1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/teals

One core issue with modern education is that people DO want to teach. They want it so badly they will accept shit wages and spend their own money subsidising schools. The result is ever dwindling resources as teachers are viewed as sheep to be sheered and all cuts as tacitly excused as "they'll just have to make it work"...

False. I want to teach, I just don't want to teach in the environment we've created for teachers to exist in.

Great, let's move forward with some real online learning initiatives. The current system is antiquated and no longer makes sense from a purely educational perspective. For too long the US has used the school system as a baby-sitting service while both parents (or single parents) are at work.

Increase salaries, which will transitively increase the respect and prestige that teachers get in an actionable manner. Thanking them isn’t enough.

An alternative is to automate the teacher away. But I think most people would agree that there’s still immense value in having a human being in the picture here.

The title makes it sound like the fault or some problem lies with teachers, and that doesn't help in spreading the issue. Similar to "nobody wants to work anymore" sounds like a fault with workers, but actually is a symptom.

Title should be, nobody wants to support teachers anymore.

As a father of 3 kids, one thing that gets lost in these discussions is the fact that some teachers are great and some are bad, like really bad. We need to give the good ones more money and freedom and the bad ones means and incentive to improve or find a new profession.

Nobody should want to teach at the current pay rate offered and the lack of f*cks given for their mental and physical health, workload, student counts and support. My wife taught for 12-13 years and now coordinates for special education kids in her district, but her pay is tied to the teachers pay scale. Her district gave out 2% raises this year, in a record inflation year, she's making less than she did 3 years ago at this rate. I'm on the side of letting our education system collapse and get rebooted, teachers need to be treated better, way better. Kids should value education, and if they don't want to be there, kick them out. Teachers are not day care.

The same could be said about the UK. Anecdotally, every single teacher I know has either quit or moved into the private sector, with the exception of those with partners in a better paid profession. I'm genuinely surprised that anyone will do the job.

Lot of sympathy here for teachers, which is very understandable. I am sure many of them, especially those early in their career, have a very miserable existence. But on the flip side I know several teachers that “stuck it out” and are making well over 100k annually working 9 months a year in low cost of living Ohio. In fact two of them are married, so they have a household income approaching 250k per year in an area where median household income is well under 100k. Teachers are very good at “putting on the poor mouth”, but many of them are living very comfortable lifestyles. And the administrators even more so. Their salaries would make some engineers blush.

The problem is lack of perceived benefit. You drop off and pick up kids for 10 years, at inconvenient times that do not really solve the problem of childcare while you work. After all that they often end up as obnoxious teenagers with no marketable skills.

Imagine if we had schools that at younger age emphasized good manners, being respectful and helpful to parents and allowing for full work days in 2 job households. And then at some point shifted towards practical skills best suited for each individual child - someone is a budding nuclear scientist, someone is better of training as an electrician. I bet parents would love those teachers and not begrudge them good pay.

Superb article. Perhaps covid has let people learn that they could survive without doing something they didn’t like just to get some money. There’s many ways to make or get money, and the hassle level is quite variable. But when people choose, say, an Amazon warehouse over their former position ya gotta wonder about what they gave up.

If they know stem at all, why teach? If they can handle foreign languages or wield words, why teach? If they can work with their hands, there are trades and the like dying for people…. The buzz from a success has to be balanced against all of the issues discussed here in, and now the risk of physical harm is quite high.

The very same problem exists in other countries. We have been having an outrageously similar situation in France for years already, so much that this article does a really good job at depainting the situation here in France too.

FTA: "When you call someone burned out, it implies a personal moral failing on their part. The phrase shifts the conversation away from work conditions to a teacher’s individual personal choices."

So true... In other jobs too...

Great opinion piece. Much agree. My wife works as a middle and high school substitute teacher across 6 districts in a large metro. All schools need subs so badly. But only 1 even raised their sub pay rate this year. Some try to offer higher rates for working more days in their district. But when one district pays $25 more a day than the others, they still don’t increase it. Teachers deserve more money. Also boggles my mind that the teachers unions are supposedly so powerful in this country, but if so then why are they paid so poorly?

Why would they? Super hard job, terrible pay, horrible disrespect by parents and politicians. It's an awful situation that makes me very worried about my kids' ability to get an education.

Situation is similar in France. Teachers are underpaid and in some fields (e.g. maths), it gets hard to fill open positions. The gvt tries to improve slightly the entry level salary to make the job more attractive, while betting that senior teachers are stuck there with no other job alternatives. And they compensate by hiring under qualified, short term, teachers. To some extent, it's similar in higher education.

The relative freedom enjoyed in academic jobs isn't enough to compensate an increasing salary gap between public/private sectors. In expensive cities, it can even be hard to live decently with a teacher/lecturer salary, and certainly not possible to save for your retirement. If you can't rely on external sources of income, I think it's not reasonable to engage in these activities if more lucrative alternatives exist.

And considering France increasing public debt, I don't see how the situation is going to improve.

As the husband of a college teacher who has been perpetually on the tenure track, it really is true that they’re not paid enough. My wife has put in more hours than anyone I know, is more qualified than almost everyone I know. And yet I made way more than her in a single year than she did in a decade because I happened to venture into a field VCs love (and which has zero positive impact on society - web3).

Its cruel and a gross symptom late stage capitalism and its completely misaligned capital allocation.

I'm not fond of public schools in my district which is rural and poorer. I wrote a response in which I believe teachers don't deserve its students as opposed to the article's "America doesn't deserve its teachers": https://abovenorm.co/a-personal-anecdote-on-public-school-te...

A reasonably prolific teacher Quoran on this topic: https://www.quora.com/The-number-of-public-teachers-in-the-U...

> "...asked to breathe children’s germs and fling our bodies toward gunfire."

These problems are above and beyond the community's reach to be resolved.

There is a certain group of people who want to dismantle public education and replace it with a for-profit system.

All of this going on right now is to support that goal.

As a former high school teacher, it is also no mystery to me why people are leaving the profession. It's by far the hardest job I've ever done. I journaled my experience here, for anyone who cares to read: https://acjay.com/a-former-teachers-story/

Counterpoint: someone I know went from practicing medicine ("part time", meaning actually more than 40hrs/wk) to teaching (in a unionized system) HS, and only makes a little less, works less, and has way more job satisfaction.

This is probably more of an indictment of the state of some corners of american medicine than a paean to the public teaching system though

I wanted to be a teacher when I was in high school (and I still do; I like teaching people new things). Then I found out brand new engineering graduates made more than any adult employed by the school district except for the superintendent and high school head principal.

I still want to teach, but taking the 70% pay cut required to do it does not make sense.

And teachers here in San Francisco refused to teach for one full year. I do not blame them: it is really a crappy job.

And as result of that only very bad are still teaching: the ones that hate the job, hate the kids and, in general, not nice people.

I think the only way we can sole this is the following:

- clamp down on union: it should easier to fire bad teachers

- class size should be less than 10. Expensive yeah…

nobody can afford to teach anymore.

That said, I couldn’t have installed solar on my home, built a deck, replumbed my house, etc. without Youtube.

At the same time everyone wants to teach and sell courses, no one want to actually do things they're supposedly a guru at.

Currently turnover is high for many jobs with great working conditions, so it shouldn't be news that people don't want a stressful job with relatively mediocre pay.

I don't have the data to back it up, but I would expect a few European countries to be the only exception, and only those that have moved on from older educational models.

Lack of autonomy and abysmal pay is why I don't teach. I would love to do so, but it literally requires you to sacrifice your lifetime and lifestyle.

It's pretty simple: increase taxes on the wealthy and megacorps and pay teachers more. Also, get rid of the bureaucrats who infest education administration.

Change a few details and this is what it's like being a doctor too (at least in Sweden) from what I've heard.

Autonomy. That's the thing. We have to let people do their damn jobs. Don't micro manage, don't second guess, don't interfere. Let people do their job.

Let them.

Our school district just raised teacher salary significantly. Guess what? Applications are up 300%.

The United States seems hellbent on sabotaging education. This is not going to help future generations, and is going to put the likelihood of ongoing hegemony into question - over time, how can that compete with nations that continually invest in their population?

s/to Teach/to be treated like shit for crap wages/g

Not exactly news, these days.

In much of America, local school districts still have quite a bit of autonomy. As thing keep getting worse, there might be a district or few, here & there, where a different approach gets an honest try.

Might.

Is there any evidence that teachers are experiencing a labor shortage out of line with any other industry? My kids' teachers are awesome, and they're quite good at their jobs. My district also pays quite a bit more than the state average in Texas.

Never trust an article with no numbers in it.

Median teacher pay in NJ is $73K in 2020, and they get summer off.

The lack of respect for education and the teaching profession will be the downfall of the West, IMO. It’s not like that everywhere.

My father was a teacher and I am very proud of that. However, I grew up thinking “my goodness, I never want to do this”. It’s a real shame.

Pay teachers more and more people will teach. On a website so dedicated to discussion of free market principles, the amount of rationalization people put themselves through to avoid this simple conclusion is both funny and tragic.

Though many want to educate. teachers seem to be a new breed these days.

Partly because nobody wants to learn. Its all about getting a grade.

Which math books were banned for being too woke? Are they good?

Why isn't education highly automated? Why do teachers across the country teach the same way we did before we had high-powered computers and information networks?

Teachers having second jobs is nothing new. Most of my teachers from the 60s-70s had second jobs in the summer - the canning factory, retail clerks, you name it.

I've known former teachers who have turned to software engineering simply because the pay is better. People are going to go where the money is.

The entirety of the edifice of public education is rotten. Nobody likes building software for clueless business types, running deathmarch after deathmarch. I don't blame teachers for seeing problems.

Time to rework the system. More likely, blow it up and start over as it's politically impossible to make the structural changes required. Just like since companies can't be salvaged, this one is done.

This isn't surprising at all.

Crony-capitalism is a zero-sum game. It literally rewards value extraction at the expense of value creation. Teaching creates value and it's terrible at capturing value because it offers very little negotiating power; teachers are fully reliant on big, powerful institutions for employment.

Why would the big corporations with market monopolies (which control our governments) want to educate the masses? The big corporations don't want their competitors to be educated and they certainly don't want more free thinkers in society who can learn about our dysfunctional monetary system.

Elite colleges churn out just enough graduates to keep the big corporate monopolies running. Graduates of all other schools and colleges are just fuel for the competition; they're a nuisance for big corporations; these individuals need to be kept incompetent so that they do not pose a threat to the existing order. Financially, it makes sense to dumb down the masses, pack them into tiny living spaces, feed them crickets, connect them to virtual reality and make sure that they don't have any children.

Our monetary system ensures that our economy always caters to capital and the sources of capital (reserve bank money printers), not to people. It doesn't even allow for parallel economies to form when people can't afford to participate in the mainstream economy. It keeps everyone hooked until death.

>Everywhere you look, states have banned almost every aspect of education that’s worth teaching. States banned math books for being too woke. They’re passing bills that don’t let you teach history.

Critical race/gender theory =/= history. The 1619 project book is also not history, but a reinterpretation of it to empower today's neo-Marxist race grifters (i.e. Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DeAngelo, Nikole Hanna Jones, among others).

I sometimes wonder if I would make a good teacher. Teaching others is something I enjoy, I've worked with kids a few different times in my life and it seemed positive for everyone, and a college professor I admired said multiple times that I would make a good teacher.

I have several teachers in my family, and while they feel fulfilled teaching children (and I envy that fulfillment) , the pay is disrespectful. Furthermore, the administration above them seems like a special kind of hell that could only be spawned by public-private partnerships that neoliberalism loves. The past few years have been particularly rough, as bizarre alt-right politics from parents has to be constantly addressed (ranging anger about masks to anger about CRT to anger). Mix in the lingering anxiety of school shootings (and the its constant reminder by the presence of SROs, aka cops), and it really seems miserable.

I think teaching is one of the most important vocations in constructing and maintaining a healthy and vibrant society. But the invisible hand of the market has determined that I will make more money and have less stress by answering customer support emails. Seems whack

Teachers are rockstars that need to find agents that make sure they get paid well.

Unrelated, but when did Medium become broken in Reader mode in Safari? Reader only shows the first paragraph now, with an ellipsis after, which seems intentional on Medium’s part.

It’s unfortunate because this seems like an interesting article but I don’t want to subject myself to their website in order to read it.

It's not money. Everyone is afraid to say the quiet part out loud. 90% of the kids in urban schools simply don't want to be there and make life hell for teachers, administration, and the other 10% with actual potential. Half measures dont work!

... in the United States.

Nobody in their right mind would become a teacher today. John Q. Public, just because he's paying "some taxes" that's "contributing to your pay" think he's your boss and can order you around like they're Donald Trump acting on The Apprentice. Everyone feels entitled to tell you why education sucks so much today and why it was so wonderful 50 years ago. Why would anyone of sound mind go into the profession? I've thought about it from time to time, but there's simply no way I'm subjecting myself to that crap! It's not so much as "nobody wants to teach anymore" as it is the general public simply sucks and having to interact with them, with them thinking they're your boss, is more of a soul-suck than spending a weekend with a Dementor!

This is the case in many countries not just USA but also EU.

Tons of people teaching on youtube every subject imaginable.

I'm sympathetic to what I guess are these issues but the article was like WAT?

> The shortages have started hitting colleges

> They’ve never paid us a living wage

Google's average college teacher's salary. Looks like a living wage to me. I see $73k to $250k

I guess the author meant public K-12 schools in which case it's probably right? Though the first Google says average in California is $82k (not sure that is or is not a living wage)

> When I tell someone I’m a teacher, they don’t say anything along the lines of “thank you for your service.” No, they usually talk about how much they hated school. They complain about your summers off.

Really? I've never heard anyone disparage teachers but maybe I'm out of the loop

> Most Americans don’t think teaching is a real job. They think schools exist in order to warehouse children while their parents do the real work, and to keep them out of trouble.

I've never heard this. I've heard people complain that's all they're allowed to do in some schools because discipline is disallowed but I've never heard anyone say teaching wasn't a real job. In fact I've only ever heard the opposite. It's one of the toughest jobs there is, in part because it's more than 40hrs a week

> Burnout is just victim blaming.

I've never heard that ever

Am I supposed to read between the lines of the hyperbole?

> Every single teacher I know has a second or third source of income,

This I do know. Even long decades ago my teachers all had second jobs.

> what really drives teachers out of the profession... is lack of autonomy.

Yes, i've heard that at least

I guess I'm just ranting that the post seems kind of incoherent. I don't have a solution. Move to Norway or some other place where they value teachers. The USA seem over in so many ways and I see no possible way it's going to get better.

I don’t want teachers anymore either because I see them as an institution of racially motivated anti-white hate. From CRT to the Minneapolis teachers’ union all I see is hate.

From growing up watching my mother struggling with the daft administration she dealt with as a teacher, I pretty much agree with the overall thrust of this article.

I personally enjoy teaching and have discussed many times with my wife that I should teach in my retirement from tech, but we both understand the pay is so little it doesn’t provide a realistic career option until after we’ve hit FIRE.

We truly do treat teachers horribly in this country. That said, I think this article would have been better without irrelevant jabs at favored left-wing punching bags who have nothing to do with the main point.

if there is a shortage, shoudn't the wages go up? Or has the invisible hand failed?

This title is absolutely false, at least where I live. My wife and many of my friends and family are teachers. There is a ton of competition and all of them have had a hard time getting a stable job teaching something they don't hate. Most of them have either moved across the country, feigned religious practice, or accepted positions nobody else would take with little opportunity for advancement just to get their feet in the door.

My wife went the "positions nobody else would take with little opportunity for advancement" route and even amidst the so-called "shortages" she has been struggling and failing at finding a normal teaching position - both in her current district and nearby metro districts - even though she has a stunning reputation and 6 years of in-classroom teaching experience.

There is no shortage. Teaching is an overcrowded job market and has been for a while, despite the poor pay and miserable conditions. I blame the education system itself for giving would-be teachers such unrealistic expectations for occupational outlook and work environment. The author said "Everyone secretly thinks they can teach because they watched Mr. Holland’s Opus" and she's right, but one of my biggest frustrations is how the post-secondary education system does nothing to address that mentality.

But there's more to this than just the title, so let's take a look at the other headers.

> Almost nobody respects teachers.

Also false. The majority of people respect teachers. When my wife wears anything indicating she's a teacher outside of work, she often gets compliments on her position, words of encouragement, and general appreciation from random passerbys. I've never once heard anyone make a snide remark about teachers to her.

The difficulty my wife seems to have is with parents and admins. The admins love to micromanage and usually end up wasting time and making things worse. Most parents are fine (some are even great), but there's always a few that have unreasonable expectations and would rather blame teachers for their child's misbehavior than hold their child responsible. Those are the ones she talks about, but she admits they are a minority.

> Teachers are beyond burned out.

Absolutely.

> Americans think it’s “not about the money.”

Is that really true though? I've never met anyone who has outwardly expressed that. You have to have some passion for teaching to bear with it, but I think most Americans realize that money is pretty important for getting by in life and teachers are no exception.

> Teaching has become truly miserable.

Yup.

> It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I don't really understand this one. The author talks about how schools are accepting worse and worse teachers, but she doesn't really elaborate on how that is a "self-fulfilling prophecy".

> America doesn’t deserve its teachers.

Don't we, though? I think we deserve exactly what the monstrous system we've created has given us - both the good and bad.

I think there's a lot that can be done to fix the US education system. I think funding is part of it, but I also think starting there is a grave mistake. Putting more money into a bad system just produces more bad results. Fix the system, then invest more into it. I have lots of ideas on how to "fix" it, but this comment has gone on long enough.

We probably should have elected Bernie Sanders.

https://berniesanders.com/issues/reinvest-in-public-educatio...

Some professions simply can't do capitalism. I always joke with people at work that a hundred years ago doctors could charge whatever they wanted and sexually harass their patients.

Now we just want to help people.

Yet the teachers union is extremely powerful

The fix for this by the way is to pay for school with federal funds instead of state and local. That way rich and poor children receive the same funding.

This is also the reason to ban private school vouchers. That way rich children get taught alongside poor children, which prevents disparities in education quality. It also allows people with the means to afford private schooling to pay for an underprivileged child to still get an education via those tax dollars.

If what I'm saying doesn't sound right to you, then we have an opportunity for a teachable moment. Don't feel bad, I just learned this yesterday. Let me introduce you to horizontal and vertical philosophy:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-horizontal-issue-in-the-cont...

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/to-unite-a-divided-nation...

Horizontal ethics/politics/philosophy is concerned with the overall well being of the whole. It tends to focus on stuff like justice.

Vertical ethics/politics/philosophy is concerned with doing right within a hierarchy. It tends to focus on stuff like liberty.

Both are required for a society to function. But the US has experienced mostly vertical politics since before the Reagan revolution. So quite candidly, the problems we experience today will most likely be solved through horizontal policies.

HN and most major news sources tend to track with vertical philosophies IMHO. So I tend to have the minority viewpoint here. But that appears to be changing, and I suspect that the world will go more horizontal over the next 10-20 years. A related concept is how generations tend to oppose the policies of their parents, as covered in the book The Fourth Turning:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/670089.The_Fourth_Turnin...

I wish I could say that I've read it, but I hear good things.

Gen Z is coming online now as we enter what I like to think will be a new progressive era. It's facing tremendous opposition from entrenched interests on both the left and right though. So there will likely be deadlock for the next election or two until the last of the Baby Boomers finally retire and relinquish control.

> Americans think it’s great that some dude like Joe Rogan or Elon Musk can make a fortune off being an asshole.

Thank you for your service.

A few random thoughts:

1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go?

2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others.

3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated school rather than “thank you”?

4. Many school problems are caused by disruptive children.

Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just don’t give a shit. Throwing more money into schools won’t ever fix this problem.

5. Schools are just too darn big. Thousands of kids in a big prison-shaped building and we wonder why everyone is alienated, miserable and dehumanized?

Judging from this thread, my opinion on this is not going to be popular, please don't massacre me for it, just discuss it with me if you want, I won't be mean (unless you are) but I will be candid.

Good. I'm glad nobody wants to teach anymore. The less teachers we have the better. That's for everyone, including the teachers. A surefire way to get paid more is a shortage of professionals. If you are so important as to be indispensable to society, maybe prove it by withholding your services. If you're so indispensable they'll pay you to get you to come back, and if they don't, fine, they'll find out just how indispensable you are.

Teachers, at least in the US, are in fact glorified babysitters. The amount of stuff a kid in public school learns in 13 years that they actually use could be taught in 5. Public school is subsidized daycare so that the US could double it's labor force. This is not how I want it to be, I want kids to actually learn things, and only go to school to learn and not to be herded. I want overworked teachers to work less, much, much less.

I have no doubt many of them are overworked, treated badly, and go into it at least because they care about children learning. But maybe it's like that because it's the only way an economy and society can justify the expense. Maybe the role they play is not worth as much as they think it is. Maybe they should stop teaching.

I think most teachers have an overinflated sense of their contribution. Ask yourself, if they'll hire anyone off the street, that means anyone off the street wants to teach. That should tell you something about teaching, and if they really wouldn't last a week then don't sweat it, they're no threat to you, they'll be gone in a week.

My big problem with education is not the teachers, it's the giant all encompassing bureaucracy that teachers and students have to constantly navigate. It seems to me like teachers by and large aren't that interested in simplifying that bureaucracy, even though from their complaints it's the largest source of their problems. I wonder why they don't attack it directly? I'm curious why they haven't all quit too. I want most of them to quit.

Put your money where your mouth is. Show us what we all stand to lose without you. Don't tolerate this bullshit anymore. Quit. Find a profession where you're treated better. If you're right, we will beg you to come back. Make us beg. Make us grovel. Show us what it feels like. Rub our faces in it.

I don't think teachers are "essential workers." I think that they don't quit because if they did, we (and they) would find out that we don't actually need them as much as they tell us we do.

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, it wouldn't be the first time. You're wrong until you learn, right? Educate me.

i have always said it: teachers don't know how to teach, students don't know how to learn, school admin don't know how to manage. Append a "most" for each (I love Ruby).

The fundamental problem is one of teacher education and an understanding of what it means to impart knowledge. Nobody knows anything about this anymore, certainly not even edu psychologists (50% of their papers are statistically invalid, the other 50% are too lab-centric to have any classroom value).

A good solution is to produce a highly-paid, highly-autonomous batch of properly-trained and highly-educated teachers who should have the biggest say in how they do their job--don't do that and pretty soon you won't have an educated class.

> Well, I’m a teacher so let me tell you:

> > It’s definitely about the money.

If that's the case, you choose so poorly and your judgment is so questionable I'm not sure you should be teaching our children.

You're trying to get milk from a stone. You get milk from a teat.

You get money from where the money is, you get money from the private sector.

"old system in modern day doesn't work, in other news water is wet.". Teachers leave overwhelmingly because of the school office politics. Admins want things to stay the same forever, pushing classes that we don't need for people that don't want them.

High schools are prisons. Universities are scams. The good teachers recognize this and left. If we want to fix it, we need to wipe the system and create a new one that focuses upon what's necessary and not what ivy league people think is needed.

Schools are just a place for warehousing kids; even people who take no interest in education know this from personal experience back from when they were a kid.

Exactly 0 of 627 college students can answer simple questions like 'What is the name of the mountain range that separates Europe from Asia?' or 'What is the last name of the author of The Brothers Karamazov?'.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2013/09/10/...

The striking thing is that the dismal career prospects hasn't stopped bright ambitious people trying to get into academia. Whereas In Australia you can just look at entry-scores for teaching degrees to see that only people who did poorly in school go into teaching nowadays.

So sure, pay and conditions have some influence but it's not a sufficient condition to explain what's happened in teaching. Pretty sure if researchers could get the job security and entitlements of teachers we'd have no problem finding bright people trying to get into research. But that's because research is more intrinsically rewarding and higher status.

Child-minding just fundamentally isn't a job which requires much talent, the job is steadily degrading to the status and pay which one would expect for a semi-skilled occupation. The teachers' unions are doing a valiant job fighting a rear-guard action to prevent that decline, through rampant credentialism to buttress the 'professional' status of the job. But it's an uphill fight, politicians aren't going to push for tax hikes to fund teacher salaries when every voter knows full-well that regardless they're still going to have to teach their kids themselves or get tutoring if they want their kid to actually learn anything.

That's a great thing happening. No one knows how to teach anyway anyhow. It's a lost art, a forgotten knowledge, which have given way to formatting, somewhere in the last Century. Preparing young souls for Life: _teaching_ is very different from telling people how to do things and stuff: _formatting_.

We are forced to go full circle now. Throwing out garbage, as we can't keep up. That's a good thing.

I'd like to offer a contrarian view. Note I'm a former tech enterpreneur, switched late in life to teaching CS in college 5 years ago, several members in my family are HS teachers.

1. Teacher aren't respected any more. True. The main reason: outcome quality is dropping. Reading/math proficiency has been dropping for tens of years. The general public knows this.

2. Disorderly classrooms. Due to changing norms and morals, setups where kids don't face the teacher but each other or even the back of the back wall it's become impossible to keep everyone focused. Everybody suffers.

3. Endless new teaching methods, experiments. Misconceptions like: 'kids nowadays need 21st century skills', 'knowledge can be acquired from the internet', 'almost nobody needs algebra later on in life', 'kids can decide for themselves what they need to learn'. No.

4. Smaller families lead to more attention per child, princes and princesses, helicopter parents. School admin also bend the knee towards this.

5. Kids with special needs get way more attention, which is a time sink. More and more kids are getting a label.

6. Most contentious opinion: men teach differently from women. We need more men in the classroom. Women try to treat boys like girls. But boys have more energy and need more playtime outside. After they get rid of that energy they'll pay more attention in class. All this leads to boys dropping out way more often.

7. Education standards for becoming a teacher are too low. Many teachers can't even to math properly, or can't spell themselves.

I deliberately have been blunt while writing the above list. Take that into account.