Hacker News Reader

Comment by fecklessyouth | Hacker News Reader

I don't see why there isn't a bigger push to move all these jobless PhDs to high school teaching positions. They'll make more money and get better benefits than what they get as an adjunct. They won't necessarily get much time to "research," but with their own knowledge and experience, lesson planning should be a breeze.

More importantly, they'll be bringing something vitally important to high school education: instructors who are passionate about their subject, and well-equipped to improve students' skills. They'll still get exposure to their beloved subject, but also spread that exposure to those who need it.

View on HN

I hear you, and I think you make a very good point. But from my own experience failing to do so, I can say that teaching high school well is spectacularly difficult. And if you are not good at the underlying classroom management and people skills, your subject-matter expertise will go largely wasted.

Well, one would hope that classroom management and people skills are imparted by a 5+ years of TA'ing.

I don't see why there isn't a bigger push to move all these underemployed programmers to careers as cashiers. They'll make more money and get better benefits than what they get as an underemployed programmer. They won't necessarily get much time to "solve problems," but with their typing and math skills, cashiering should be a breeze!

Where are all these underemployed programmers?

I think he was drawing a sarcastic comparison, not making an actual suggestion. The former doesn't require that there actually _be_ underemployed programmers

And that was also my point. There's no economic reality requiring programmers look at less-ideal employment right now. Anecdotally, I did work retail for a couple years after the first dot-com crash. It was very eye-opening and educational in a lot of ways; no regrets, would do it again if I had to.

Many PhD's would probably teach high school, except for the ridiculous credentialing programs / teacher licensing requirements. Basically you have to get a 1.5 year education degree to "qualify" to teach a subject; yes, you can have a PhD in math from Princeton and be unqualified to teach 9th grade math in Trenton. Makes me want to vomit.

In terms of math skills, sure. But a senior in high school should have enough mastery of the material to explain things to a 9th grader, so that's a bad argument. As anyone who's taken an undergraduate class in the hard sciences knows, a PhD does not indicate anything about teaching ability (in my experience, it's anti-correlated with it if anything).

I'm sure the credentialing process has its own unique failings, but it is trying to act as a real value add.

It is trying to act as a value add, but it failing consistently and pointlessly. The data, I think, are in. It is a waste of time and limits the number of possible good teachers.

I wanted to teach high school at one point but couldn't. I was an adjunct lecturer at a college.

High school teaching also pays miserably in many places.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com