Teachers Should Be Paid More

[CAMP]

Well this is such an interesting thread with many angles to it. In my opinion teachers are paid more than well enough. It is a lovely profession that has been trampled into the ground by both non teachers and self-serving teachers who are greedy. This is the plight of a profession that has become unionized. I have no use for unions as I have lived through working in one and discovered they have run their course. They generally protect incompetent people who are lazy. Unions also create jobs for those people as union leaders and the underlings who command salaries to be Seymore Doolittles. Unions were necessary many years ago due to oppressive management which has gone the way of the dodo bird as the workers’ rights through government legislation have matured. Any organisation that is unionized in the private sector generally will kill their own jobs by costing them out of existence as the world competes with no boundaries. Teachers are essentially a monopoly in Ontario and many other provinces. I believe charter schools where by parents can direct their tax money to the most competent school of their choice is the answer. Competition kills unions and that is what needs to be done. Good teachers will always exist with a union or none. Those good teachers who want to be teachers will thrive, while bad teachers will move on fast when there is no union to cover their backside. All teachers lose respect when they hold our children hostage by withholding extracurricular activities. At some point all this will change as they play that card. Either school boards will finally wise up and remove this responsibility from teachers and farm it out to a third party either paid or volunteer. Perhaps reduce the teacher’s salary and use it to pay for a third party to look after extracurricular activities. I can go on and on but I can predict at some point teachers will push the envelope to the point where many more will go the private school route as I did. My children received a way better education that was never held up by strikes, withholding or other work to rule situations. Money was never an issue for me fortunately so the first sign of teacher unrest was when I moved my children out. It is surprising the number of people who are doing this now. Surely politicians will eventually address the public school monopoly one way or another.

[Michael Hardner]

I disagree, MH. People ultimately teach themselves, and I suspect that robots can help people do this.

To be honest, MH, I don't know exactly how people learn something new. But I reckon that the way we teach people now is very inefficient.

People teach themselves, but it's facilitated by people. Children are too individually different to have a designed technology teach them.

As I have said - they thought TV would do this too, and it didn't.

[August1991]

In my opinion teachers are paid more than well enough.

In my opinion, good teachers are badly paid.

In the future, we will teach children in a far more efficient/better manner than we do now.

(Imagine how quickly Western or Indian/Chinese kids have learned how to use a smartphone. That's true education.)

Edited April 27, 2013 by August1991

[Bonam]

People teach themselves, but it's facilitated by people. Children are too individually different to have a designed technology teach them.

As I have said - they thought TV would do this too, and it didn't.

Where one technology may have failed in the past, another may succeed in the future. And yes, children are very individually different, and yet many teachers are often just as bad as than machines at recognizing said individuality and optimizing around it. Good teachers are super valuable and likely contribute far more benefit to our society than even the highest teacher salaries could possibly reflect, but good teachers are also few and far between.

[Michael Hardner]

Where one technology may have failed in the past, another may succeed in the future. And yes, children are very individually different, and yet many teachers are often just as bad as than machines at recognizing said individuality and optimizing around it. Good teachers are super valuable and likely contribute far more benefit to our society than even the highest teacher salaries could possibly reflect, but good teachers are also few and far between.

You're right. A technology may indeed replace teachers, I suppose. By that time, we'll all have been replaced though.

Books are probably the technology that has come the closest so far, and really it just changed what the teachers' roles are. With any technology, problems aren't solved, they are changed.

Our entire economy will have to move beyond capitalism when we're at the point where all jobs are automated. We can't even recognize what our society will look like.

As regards to your comment about 'Good Teachers' and specifically how easy one is to find:

Without any objective way to measure the performance of teachers, we're all at the mercy of the hyper-praisings and hyper-condemnings of teacher lovers and haters on MLW. There's no way to move forward with that discussion IMO.

[hitops]

In my opinion, good teachers are badly paid.

In the future, we will teach children in a far more efficient/better manner than we do now.

(Imagine how quickly Western or Indian/Chinese kids have learned how to use a smartphone. That's true education.)

I like your general position, but this is a terrible argument. Smartphones are largely entertainment devices and specifically designed to be as absolutely easy to use as possible. Facility with smartphone is not in any way a marker of a successful or productive person.

Learning something common is no remarkable. Learning something hard is.

[Mighty AC]

Motivation is the key. Kids will take the time to learn how to use every feature of a new device or get insanely good at COD because they want to. It's the job of the modern teacher to create as many authentic, project based, self motivating learning experiences as possible. In the past education was closer to a 'one size fits all' model, but now it is quickly becoming student centered and student directed with teachers acting as expert facilitators. Technology and the new skill demands of of evolving economy are simply changing the role of teachers and the education system.

[CliffStir]

Imagine how quickly Western or Indian/Chinese kids have learned how to use a smartphone. That's true education.

I have to strongly disagree with you on that one.

True education provides the skill sets and ability to survive when the smartphone isn't available.

Those skills and abilities are blatantly missing from today's generation.

Without their smartphone, all too many people today are hopelessly lost.

[August1991]

I like your general position, but this is a terrible argument. Smartphones are largely entertainment devices and specifically designed to be as absolutely easy to use as possible. Facility with smartphone is not in any way a marker of a successful or productive person.

Learning something common is no remarkable. Learning something hard is.

And I strongly disagree. Smartphones are "entertainment devices" in the same way that calculators are easier to use than slide rules.

Or, written words are a more sophisticated way to communicate than spoken words.

-----

Hitops, you and I would not communicate now if we both had to understand every step in the process.

IOW, I suspect that there are better ways to transmit knowledge from generation to generation than the way we do now.

True education provides the skill sets and ability to survive when the smartphone isn't available.

Those skills and abilities are blatantly missing from today's generation.

Without their smartphone, all too many people today are hopelessly lost.

So if you, CliffStir, were sent back several millions year to the "Origin of Man", or a billion or two years to the "Origin of Life" on Earth, you wouldn't "be hopelessly lost".

=====

Hitops & CliffStir, I too admire this American reflex of "one guy should be able to survive".

But that's not how life exists on this planet.

Edited May 1, 2013 by August1991

[Bonam]

You're right. A technology may indeed replace teachers, I suppose. By that time, we'll all have been replaced though.

Books are probably the technology that has come the closest so far, and really it just changed what the teachers' roles are. With any technology, problems aren't solved, they are changed.

Our entire economy will have to move beyond capitalism when we're at the point where all jobs are automated. We can't even recognize what our society will look like.

As regards to your comment about 'Good Teachers' and specifically how easy one is to find:

Without any objective way to measure the performance of teachers, we're all at the mercy of the hyper-praisings and hyper-condemnings of teacher lovers and haters on MLW. There's no way to move forward with that discussion IMO.

I don't know if there is a good objective way to measure the performance of teachers. As you said, kids are different individuals, and respond differently to varying teaching methods and environments than their peers. I know that some teachers that most of my peers in school loved, I disliked, and vice versa. It is perhaps a matter of how a student's attitudes, tendencies, learning strengths, etc, match (or don't match) with the attitudes and teaching methods of a teacher. If we had a far more sophisticated education system, perhaps students could be analyzed to determine their strengths and preferences and matched with teachers whose methods would be most effective with that particular student, and have classes filled up on that basis rather than being randomly assigned. Of course, that would be difficult/impossible to achieve in practice in the context of our public education system (after all, our system doesn't even take the most basic steps to properly challenge kids who are more advanced than the average). Just brainstorming here...

Edited May 1, 2013 by Bonam

[TimG]

I don't know if there is a good objective way to measure the performance of teachers. As you said, kids are different individuals, and respond differently to varying teaching methods and environments than their peers.

Test kids at the beginning of the year. Test kids at the end of the year. Compare the rolling five year average increase in capabilities to other teachers. Obviously not perfect but it eliminates 'like-ability' as a factor.

[CliffStir]

So if you, CliffStir, were sent back several millions year to the "Origin of Man", or a billion or two years to the "Origin of Life" on Earth, you wouldn't "be hopelessly lost".

There's a huge gap between functioning in the contemporary world without a smart phone as opposed to going back in time to a totally unfamiliar world before when even the animals and plants of today have yet to evolve.

But that being said, I would probably have a better than even chance based on the wide variety of skills I have picked up since my years as a scout leader.

In today's reality though, it has come to light that a lot of basic skills are missing from today's generation. One recent article I read talks about how even something as simple as replacing a faucet washer is beyond the ken of today's young adults.

So my point really was that today's kid's rely on a high tech world to do their thinking for them, and when the entire eastern seabord's power goes off again for three days, or the next pandemic or massive earthquake hits, or the next asteroid that intersects our planet's orbit occurs, there will be those with a reliance on hi-tech, and those with the ability to think a problem through using the good ol' mark 2 human brain.

I know what group I'd be investing in.