My wife is a primary public school teacher in the U.S. I read to her your comment, and she said to me, "We have 21 teachers at our school, and only one of them resembles what that comment describes."

As an anecdote, I was a math major. I took an elective course on the history of mathematics, which must have been a requirement for math education majors, who were under a separate department and even college (i.e., not the math department or college of the arts and sciences). I was the only math major, and I'm pretty sure the only male in a class of about 20 or so. The professor was one of the easiest and most straightforward professors, basically giving out a study guide of homework problems that directly reflected what was to be on the exams. I am fairly certain I got 100% on all exams.

I have never witnessed more complaining and moaning from students than I did in that class. The education majors (i.e., everyone else) complained about absolutely everything, from the book to the professor to the material itself to "difficulty" of the course. It was unbelievable that these people were supposedly wanting to be math teachers but were complaining endlessly about a history of mathematics course. I experienced basically the same from the education majors in the introduction to proofs class.

My mom was a teacher, but those experiences forever tainted the picture of a modern day teacher. In fact, one of the primary reasons my mom retired early was due to her fellow teachers and requirements from the school. She was mandated to use PowerPoint and share lesson plans. But the lesson plans received from the younger teachers weren't up to her standards, so my mom usually had to redo the others' lesson plans, on top of her assigned lesson plan material. Additionally, the kids with the lowest test scores and behavioral problems were usually transferred to my mom's homeroom class for her to help turnaround, which she usually did. What an absolute nightmare.

The root problem with the US education system is the same thing with the rest of US government programs:

There is no bankruptcy mechanism for government agencies.

Bankruptcy removes poorly run private companies from the marketplace. There is no such mechanism for government agencies... so poorly run agencies remain in place a hundred years after they lost their effectiveness.

Why does a public school classroom still look the same today as it did 150 years ago? Ridiculous. Remove the education government agency and you will see hundreds of better options spring up.

Also - bring back corporal punishment. Sure, it was misused in 1% of cases, but it has led to 1000x the problems from students who have no respect for teachers.

Education programs are the cash cows of universities. They are universally, intentionally subpar compared to the other colleges.

How so? Do schools underfund these programs yet heavily promote them?

They lower their admission and graduation standards. Mark em up, shop em on.

Any articles or posts on this? I'd like to read further.

Google it. It's a racket. Teacher's unions have negotiated automatic pay raises for certain educational attainments. Those attainments are certified by the Ed Schools. It's basically the certification program scam.

Maybe teachers in the minority gender experience less positive interactions with certain colleagues than teachers in the majority gender?

My parents were both teachers.

A significant trunk of my classmates went into teaching after college. We keep in touch.

The above comment is accurate.

Clarifying my ambiguous response: "Above comment" refers to "most teachers are jobsworths that don't care about their students".

Not a nice day to be your parents or friend :D

They agree with me.

Which "above comment"?

"Above" typically means above in thread, i.e. "parent", i.e. the post/comment one replies to.

The previous comments are not logically equivalent, (bitwise AND) have the same truth value.

I agree it is fully ambiguous as to which above refers in this case.

yes.

That the high school teaching experience is vastly different from your wife's experiences teaching primary school children... seems to make sense?

I’m sure your experience sucked, but having a bunch of crappy coworkers doesn’t mean 100s of thousands of teachers across the nation are likely to be “the worst, most power hungry, little-napoleon office manager you’ve ever had”.

Yeah, but this is Hacker news. Blaming individual teachers validates the idea that there aren't major systemic problems in the country. It's not that teachers are underpaid and class sizes are exploding, it's simply the case that the existing crop of teachers aren't egalitarian enough to handle the job

I honestly don’t follow. Doesn’t paying more money or reducing class size (by hiring more teachers) directly imply the existing crop of teachers can’t handle the job? Or are you saying we pay the exact same people more money? And reduce class sizes how? Requiring students take fewer classes?

> Doesn’t paying more money or reducing class size (by hiring more teachers) directly imply the existing crop of teachers can’t handle the job?

Yes. Then the question becomes, is the job reasonable? I think the article author, as well as the person you replied to, would say No. Not to mention tens of thousands of recently former teachers across the US.

> Or are you saying we pay the exact same people more money?

I won’t speak for the person you’re replying to, but I’m saying that, as is the article author.

> And reduce class sizes how?

See “pay the exact same people more money”.

Even when they can handle it as best as you can expect from someone, it's still not going to be enough.

You can reduce class sizes by hiring more teachers. Their salaries aren't actually a huge fraction of education spending (only around ~15% if you assume one teacher for every 30 fulltime students and 80k TC per fulltime teacher, both of which are deliberate overestimates).

Hire 30% more teachers, give them a 30% pay bump, and reduce unneeded spending such as excessive sports spending beyond what is useful to the students. Remove unnecessary administrative load from the teachers. Reduce school hours that are very often lengthened for babysitting reasons.

You can even cut the last year of education and tack it into community college while making it optional.

I like a lot of what you say, but

> Reduce school hours that are very often lengthened for babysitting reasons.

This babysitting is vital for many families, most of whom are low income and can’t afford alternatives. If we reduce class hours we should provide something to keep children positively occupied.

I agree, we should, but we don't necessarily need teachers to do that. At my school we had an after hours service where the monitors would have kids play outside, play/learn boardgames, watch educationalish movies, learn to cook, etc.., for an extra 3-5$ a day for up to 4 hours. The class sizes were much larger of course and there is no correction or study plan involved. I think that's a good and economical solution to this very real problem. Of course it should be free for lower income households if not for everyone.

Personally my parents just made me walk around, though ;)

We had this as well... OSHC (Out of School Hours Care). It was mostly staffed by volunteer parents with one or two school employees (since it was on school grounds and presumably needed trusted persons to lock up / have a first aid and/or fire warden available / etc.

That said, I'm curious as to what age this care would be required? Back In My Day ™ I was entrusted with a house key at a relatively young age (10? 11? it was a while ago...) and would walk myself home / prepare food / generally take care of myself until an adult came home. But these days you hear about police being called for kids playing without an adult present in a fenced-in front yard (and the fact that as I understand the USA is far less walkable than where I live) which makes me wonder what age is considered suitable over there?

I was handling all my own meals except dinner and had a house key at around the same age in the US. I'm not sure how drastically things have changed in the ensuing 20 years, but I still see kids walking and playing without adults, so I suspect it's both exaggerated and regional or class-based.

Sports have a huge amount of value for young people, your perspective on this is not dearly as reasonable as you make it seem.

They absolutely do. I benefitted a lot from sports as a kid. You just don't need to put as much money into them as many schools do. For example many schools nowadays have their own pool, or multiple stadiums, dozens of teams with multiple long distance travel a year, and so on, while a lot of that could be using shared infrastructure or done outside of the school.

And often the vast majority of the money in sports is concentrated towards a very small fraction of the student population, often for regional pride above their self-actualisation. A lot of high school athletes are quite miserable or do it out of social pressure.

I'm not saying we need less sports, we can just do it with less money that is better allocated.

Your last paragraph reminds me of what my wife calls “one of your favorite sayings.”

“It’s difficult to respect someone that doesn’t respect themselves.”

Of course that doesn’t mean treat people in a disrespectful manner, but I don’t understand why anyone would wish to be a teacher in the US.

It’s not a pleasant experience. And the money isn’t enough for most people.

Education is a bit like healthcare. If you want to make money in healthcare, you don’t become a doctor. You become an administrator. Same goes for education.

> 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 can't be sure those "jobsworths" are writing screeds online to rationalize their present (and future!) lack of respect towards teachers, based on nothing but a wild extrapolation from a personal anecdote at a private school.

However, I can be sure you are.

If you really want to get their goats, why not try this: stop doing it. Bam: taint instantly removed. What could be a more passive aggressive solution than that? :)

I taught at a code school. It was absolutely crazy. I’d never do it again, but I totally loved the teaching and mentoring aspect of it.

The business and sales aspect pushed me away. That, and a particular SJW fellow teacher. I have a fairly high tolerance for that sort of thing, but they were insufferable beyond words.

"a particular SJW fellow teacher. I have a fairly high tolerance for that sort of thing, but they were insufferable beyond words."'

I wonder how many decent teachers were bitten by this

'

Every industry has good and bad workplaces, with good and bad cultures. Maybe 30 years ago it was a fine workplace and then two of the curmudgeons joined, drove out a lot of people who weren't curmudgeons, and 30 years later you've ended up with a bad culture filled with curmudgeons.

I don't know anything about teaching in the US, but I don't think one experience like that really says much about the industry as a whole: it just says something about that particular workplace.

I deeply resent the fact that your comment is the top comment as of this writing. Nowhere in it have you acknowledged that the reason one third of teaching staff you interacted with were bitter political players was actually the entire topic of the article: the system has made them that way.

I’m sorry I didn’t make it clearer that I couldn’t agree with you more.

No one goes into teaching to be a bad teacher. Some can deal with the negativity, some can’t. I couldn’t and while I would never have let it affect my work with the children, I could see myself becoming a shitty colleague. It was good that I got out when I did but I miss the children so much.

I think it perfectly illustrate and reinforce the article.

A supposedly passionate teacher which left the field since he could.

And at the same time it mainly read as an anecdote to allow you to hate teachers after all 30% of them are : "Never have I met such a cantankerous downtrodden passive aggressive bunch of backstabbing political jobsworths" as if it justify ignoring all the grievance of the article. Which perfectly cycle back to "Almost nobody respects teachers".

I don't think that's an accurate description nor representation of every teacher. Most of the teachers I know are in the profession because they love to teach - so much so that it outweighs all the negatives you've presented here.

My experience is only at the college level and the environment is not much better (again, anecdotal experience, not representative of all universities). There's a huge amount of infighting and drama - primarily between professors/faculty and the administration. Mostly centered around power and control.

It's quite remarkable how folks can have such ego and hubris in any job let alone in places of education.

Anecdote leading the comments that is basically labor/victim blaming. One where you admit 1/3 of the teachers were the problem in a profession that burns out and makes people cynical. I also believe private school teachers are paid less than public school teachers in general, and often its a religious school so there is that litmus test that further degrades the pool.

Teaching is a difficult job. I've never heard anyone say its easy. It doesn't seem to be well paid. It's gotten harder over the years with the steady collapse in social services and prevalence of two income households. Standards and micromanagement increase year by year as part of the war on public education by the far right, functioning exactly as designed. It's rewarding for a time but wears you down.

>>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.

This correlates with whatever I've seen over the years with various teachers, and then experiences with teachers outside my own case(teachers of nieces, nephews and other younger cousins). The most theme is Never outshine the master problems, the teacher's seem to be pissed that their students might win above them in life and went to actively hurt the students with whatever power they have.

Most successful teachers I've seen were also the opposite, finding their success by helping students win.

So which point are you making? Are you claiming

- “I’ve been there on the front lines for a whole long two years, and I’ve seen what the article is talking about! It’s even worse than you realize! If you treat these teachers like we have for a sustained period over this many years, the constant negative shit turns a sizeable amount of the teachers themselves to be crappy?”

Or is it

- “I don’t buy it. I did a stint for two years. That’s as good as those with 30 years. It’s their own fault because they’re mean and nasty.”

You didn’t make clear whether you were offering your exhibit of suffering as a commiserate symptom or an accusatory cause. Could you clarify please?

I don’t know how the negative feedback cycle started but it definitely exists — teachers are treated with contempt by both management and parents which creates a selection pressure that either favors or develops a certain kind of negative character trait in the job.

My school was very poorly funded. The shiny new facilities that everyone associated with the private sector were only ever provided as vanity projects by wealthy parents. The day to day funding for repairs, painting, food, resources, staff etc was rock bottom. Another reason to see how a bitter sentiment can accumulate over time.

So I guess the first of your two options? There is a constant influx of people who want to be good teachers. We squander it but passively knocking them down and it is very sad.