This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Teacher's certificates are already not required to teach in private schools, or charter schools in some states. In some states, it's quite easy to get a teaching certificate -- people with a BA can attend night school while teaching full time (and the classes aren't all that hard). Difficult while raising young kids, but otherwise not too bad.
These states do not have better test scores. These states still have teacher shortages.
It's fine with me to let people with a Bachelor's in something, anything, teach in their area of competence. The teaching programs I've participated in were not particularly grounded in reality. But this is extremely unlikely to make things significantly better, because the cushy jobs for smart slackers (which is to say, the jobs where the main job is communicating information, rather than "community building and classroom management") already have adequate teachers. And that community building and classroom management is not particularly about intelligence. It's basically orthogonal to academic ability.
Those states aren't taking my suggestion -- night school to get a teaching certificate may seem like a trivial inconvenience, but it's a quite a bit higher bar than "submit a resume, criminal record check, and interview".
So which jobs are contributing to the teacher shortage? (real question, idk -- but if they are not focused around "communicating information" (aka "teaching") my instinct would be to eliminate those jobs -- et voila, shortage eliminated!
I would personally be fine with that, but unfortunately, "willing to put up with BS administrative tasks, which are often long and dull" is actually part of the job. Working in public schools is a long procession of trivial inconveniences.
Special education, bus drivers, custodians, less than full time positions, bilingual positions, educational assistants who make ~$20,000, normal teaching positions in the sort of school where the "students" are getting into knife fights, yelling down the teachers, throwing furniture at teachers, and the administrators are yelling at teachers in the hallway. Also some of the schools where the "students" can't speak English, but the teacher is teaching entirely in English. Maybe also some math and science, though the last time I've seen those positions going unfilled was quite some time.
I suspect that the deal with things like bus drivers and custodians is that they still have to pass a background check and be proven safe with kids, but there's no status, and they don't pay well. Educational assistant jobs also pay terribly, and they can be transferred to super unpleasant and sometimes dangerous one on one behavioral special education positions.
You might naively think "I am not a special education teacher, and so I would not have to teach special education students, about whom I know very little." This is not true. More than half the elementary classrooms have a couple of children in them who have pretty high support needs, need a great deal of individual attention, but won't get it, because there are also at least 20 other kids, simultaneously learning normal kid stuff. I'm not going to describe the people in question in too much detail here, but it can get rough. Especially since everybody has to be super vague about the situation.There are also a lot of "BIPs" now -- behavior action plans, which mean that every time the child acts badly, the teacher is punished by having to fill out a lot of forms (while they are "teaching" -- elementary teachers do not necessarily get a prep period every day), and the child is sent to the counselor for a doughnut or something.
The aggressive classrooms are self evident. I knew someone who became a professional dancer after having a desk thrown at here, and the district did not do anything about it, and the offender came right back. I knew a shop teacher who quit mid-year after a young person was running around with sharp tools and propane torches, but could not be removed from the class.
In one sense, there is a clear and obvious route to correcting these situations: perhaps it was unwise to make public schools the childcare/detention facility of last resort. Perhaps that shouldn't be the job of schools. Yet here we are. And the legislature could probably go ahead and say "anyone who can pas this fairly difficult test is free to teach," and that might be a good idea, but it will still not improve conditions, so it would still be a pretty hard sell outside of a couple years of idealism for most people who aren't committed enough to at least take a couple of night school classes while applying.
Edit: also, this https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/difference-between-tech-hiring-and-teacher-hiring/
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link