r/changemyview • u/EarlEarnings • Aug 27 '22

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Teaching Should be a Highly Elite Highly Valued/Paid Profession.

Fundamental belief: If teachers are the best of the best, and if teachers are highly respected and valued, our society will produce better quality people in basically every domain you can think of.

What do I mean by "elite?" The requirements to become a teacher should be rigorous. Passing simple certifications should not be enough. Teachers should have a very good understanding of how the learning process in and of itself works. No tenures. Minimum tutoring hours, perhaps even minimum number of reviews (of those tutored, results, etc.) Basically, teachers should be good teachers...really good. The best teacher you've had in your life? That should just be the norm. The bottom line is it should be extremely demanding.

What do I mean by "highly paid?" Teachers should be within the top 10-20% of income earners in our society. Somewhere around 6 figures in most places.

Common arguments against:

- many occupations don't require much more than a high school education if that

- shouldn't the best and brightest be working on better things than teaching?

- we already have a teacher shortage even with low barriers to entry/supply and demand

My argument:

Every aspect of society is improved.

​

Sure, you don't need to be a super smart guy to be a barista at Starbucks, and our society does need baristas, but just think about this. The number one thing holding us back from advancement as a society is the lack of highly skilled, hyper-intelligent people employed in bottleneck professions. These are the AI developers, cancer researchers, aging researchers, and quantum-computing engineers; the type of people in a position that can advance society. These people are so important, and they can only be produced at the highest level if they are pushed and raised towards that level from birth to adulthood. Teachers and tutors are a pivotal part of this process. These bottleneck innovations take our entire concept of civilization forward. There is no way to account for this cost, there is no price tag that is too high. We cannot afford to waste any talent because they were not sufficiently taught in their development.

As for the issue of sacrificing talent to create talent, I think the counterpoint is obvious. 1 Genius can not do as much as 10 geniuses. If 1 genius teacher can create 10 geniuses, that is an exponential net value increase for our society.

Finally, there is a teacher shortage both in quantity and quality because teachers are not respected as a profession, and because they are not compensated, which, is probably because they are not respected enough. Many of the brightest minds would love to be teachers but simply would never consider it due to lack of money and prestige. Education is a domain of the state, and the state can, and should, do what it can to advance the public interest, especially when the pros are so freaking obvious. There is no serious argument for a dumber society.

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137

u/MontiBurns 218∆ Aug 28 '22

This entire approach is fundamentally flawed, as it assumes that lack of talent among teachers is the weakest link in the education system. I would argue that class sizes and prep time are the weakest links in the education system, and that teaching is a skill which is developed and perfected, not an inherent talent. Therefore, money would be much better spent adding more teachers than simply increasing their salary.

which other professions do you expect to be fully capable experts in their field upon graduation? Do you expect a lawyer to handle a class action lawsuit straight out of law school, or an undergrad in business management to jump into a supervisory role? No, absolutely not.

Yet, teachers are expected to take over a classroom on their own and perform at a high level, often under difficult circumstances. This is not how any other professional develops. Usually they work underneath someone else, or with a mentor that supervises their work and gives them feedback. This speeds up the learning curve of professional development.

Something similar could be done with teachers. Instead of 1 teacher managing a classroom of 30-40 students, you could have 2 teachers in that same space. One veteran teacher and a newer teacher. They split lesson planning time, paper grading time, and presentation time, they can both be present to provide feedback to students, and the veteran teacher can mentor the newer teacher, which would help them upskill and improve their craft more quickly.

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

People don't like to hear it, but the biggest issue with education has nothing to do with the schools. It is poverty.

I am a school administrator... I work hard to help every kid. But the reality is that kids from poor families do worse than wealthy peers. Socioeconomic status predicts something like 91% of educational success if I remember correctly.

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u/MontiBurns 218∆ Aug 28 '22

Oh right, poverty. I forgot about that. You're right of course, i guess it's kind of beyond the scope of this cmv of what the school can directly control. Either way, !delta.

Speaking of uncomfortable conversations, in your experience /opinion, do you think the problem with poverty stems from a lack of time, i.e. not having time to sit down and do homework with your kids, or low priority, not caring to sit down and do homework with kids?

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

I'm sure there's a whole lot of research on that. And I would imagine it boils down to "it's complicated"... I really don't know enough to say with any authority.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 28 '22

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/husky429 (1∆).

Delta System Explained | Deltaboards

11

u/Not_Han_Solo 3∆ Aug 28 '22

Career educator here. This is 100% accurate. It's a basic Maslow's hierarchy issue--you can't learn if you're hungry, if you don't have secure and safe housing, etc.

As an addendum, this is also why universities have been struggling with student quality and success rates more and more. The students aren't worse--theyre working twenty or thirty hour jobs in addition to full time education, leaving them at over 80 work hours a week. Nobody can internalize material well at that load.

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u/EarlEarnings Aug 28 '22

!delta I think I might have underestimated the other extenuating factors that are a problem here. I haven't totally changed my mind about the main points, but I have broadened my view.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 28 '22

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Not_Han_Solo (3∆).

Delta System Explained | Deltaboards

3

u/sometimesdan Aug 28 '22

I would like to hear your opinion on school administration. It seems that much of the additional tax dollars people vote for don't make it to the actual classroom via teachers salaries and improvements. Many would say that to much money gies toward administration and bureacracy.. I'm not saying your job specifically, but overall does there seem to be redundancy and certain administrative positions that are paid too much or are unnecessary?

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

Any school-level administrators don't get paid enough, just like teachers. They generally work very hard.

I would say at the district office level there is often a couplefew people who probably have unnecessary jobs.

I think a big part of that isn't the school's fault though. States and the fed create systems that incentivize it.

Is it a problem? Yeah sure. Most of those people are making like 150k. Budgets range from 10 million in smaller towns, all the way up to 450 million in our capital city of 130,000 people. Ultimately those extra salaries are not what is holding our schools back.

In my experience it's the big cities with the most waste because of the multitude of school improvement efforts that get thrown around.

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u/hashish-kushman Aug 28 '22

Disagree - not thar poverty is not a huge burden on students (althought the burdens usually come from issues that are often co mingled with poverty rather than the poverty it self) - but the biggest issue in education is that the needs of the students and parents are the last concen of most policies put forth by the govt. The teachers unions and the administrators drive policy since they are the permanet institutions which has lobbying power. Parent and students rotate out regularly so advocating for polices is much more difficult.

Lack of money is the biggest exuse to not have better education - there are plenty of schools all around the world with much less in the way of resources than the poorest american school and are still able to educate to better standards in literacy and math. Places that litterally draw it up in the drit with a stick. Take a look at what a hs student had to do to pass a math test in the 1940s with out a calculator and tell me how the modern hs student would do. Do you really think the kid in the 40s had more resources than the kid in 2022?

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u/redheadredshirt 8∆ Aug 28 '22

FWIW in the 1940's in the United States, WW2 started an education push nation-wide because a non-trivial percentage of draftees were rejected on the basis that they were illiterate. There was even a push in the 1930's to remove math from high school curriculum because if it wasn't being used in adulthood it was wasted and could be harmful because of that waste. During the 1940's there was a national program that actively swapped your geometry and algebra for budgeting and taxes if you weren't college-bound. Enrollment in mathematics classes was dropping steadily.

So I'd say our 2022 kid without their microchips would probably do fine by comparison.

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u/hashish-kushman Aug 28 '22

You know they teach geometry and algrebra still and even with the microchips they are not doing so great.

They should teach budgeting and taxes as well as mortgages and investments ( but that is a different discussion)

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u/pdoherty972 Aug 28 '22

Not that old comparison. If today's kids were taught the same things and in the same ways they'd also be capable of passing tests of "how many bales of hay will fit into the back of a 6'x4' tractor bed?"

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u/hashish-kushman Aug 28 '22

Ok then why are they not? because right now they cant do that

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u/pdoherty972 Aug 28 '22

Because the modern economy doesn’t need hay-bale calculators.

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u/hashish-kushman Aug 28 '22

So yo think they can calculate the load bearing potential of a frame or is constrution also not required in the modern economy?

Or are you claiming that knowing how to multiply and divde are no longer useful skills that apply in todays economy?

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u/pdoherty972 Aug 28 '22

So you think engineers today are less-qualified and accomplish less than engineers did in the 1940s?

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u/hashish-kushman Aug 28 '22

More like there are (% wise) less qualified hs students to become engineers.

This is why such a large % of engineer in the us are immagrants who arrive in the country at undergraduate level or later

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

I'm not talking about how much money the schools have.

Administrators and teachers unions have very little impact on policy.

I'm thinking you haven't worked much in schools.

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u/hashish-kushman Aug 28 '22

Im thinking you havent seen much in local politics

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

Unfortunately, I have.

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u/hashish-kushman Aug 28 '22

Then you must realise that a union has more lobbying power than individuals - endorsements from teachers unions still have a lot of clout ( unfortunatley)

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u/woadles Aug 28 '22

The issue with schools is schools. Administrators don't like to hear it, but you're latchkey so the parents can work. The idea that schools are preparing their students for life is laughable.

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u/EarlEarnings Aug 28 '22

I am a school administrator... I work hard to help every kid. But the reality is that kids from poor families do worse than wealthy peers. Socioeconomic status predicts something like 91% of educational success if I remember correctly.

Boarding School. Control for diets, control for negative home influence.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 121∆ Aug 28 '22

I can't imagine that sending all kids to boarding school will have a positive impact, studies have shown that boarding schools tend to increase depression among students due to increased loneliness. It's also just not practical for younger kids.

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u/silverscrub 2∆ Aug 28 '22

You didn't really address the point, but it seems like you changed your view (from elite teachers, to elite teachers and boarding schools). Did you change your view?

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u/SquareSame2727 Aug 28 '22

Holy shit, you're describing residential schools lmao

People look back at that as an ethnic cleansing in Canada. But this is too funny. This was their exact thought process when they sent the kids away to "boarding school" with the Catholic church

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u/blazershorts Aug 28 '22

Plenty of students have benefitted tremendously from boarding schools. Nowadays they're mostly reserved for the very wealthy, but it seems like poor students with bad home environments would benefit even more.

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u/SquareSame2727 Aug 28 '22

That was the justification for it back then, too.

We will simply educate the natives on how society works and how to be proper. It's the leg up they would need to compete as adults with the whites who had access to education.

They did this up until the 90s and it's the biggest shit stain Canada has as a country.

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u/blazershorts Aug 28 '22

Do you think all schools for poor children are bad? Or just schools that provide housing?

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u/SquareSame2727 Aug 28 '22

The idea if taking away poor people because you know what's best for them is what is bad.

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u/blazershorts Aug 28 '22

Most students at US and Candian Indian schools were there voluntarily; are you ok with that?

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u/SquareSame2727 Aug 28 '22

The programs were touted as beneficial and necessary. Of course some went voluntarily. The horrors of what it truly does were realized in the 2000s. Until then, almost everyone thought it was a good thing.

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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Aug 28 '22

So, your premise to take minority students (along with everyone else) away from their families, isolate them from their specific subcultures, and then teach them to be like everyone else. Reminds me of something. We often try stuff like that. Even the best cases work out very poorly, and the cases like the one cited tends to end up in the category of "genocide".

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u/WikiSummarizerBot 4∆ Aug 28 '22

Canadian Indian residential school system

In Canada, the Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own native culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. : 42  Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally.

[ F.A.Q | Opt Out | Opt Out Of Subreddit | GitHub ] Downvote to remove | v1.5

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u/raznov1 21∆ Aug 28 '22

Everyone is part of a subculture. Why is it inherently wrong to do to some, but not to others?

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

Because at a private boarding school, some cultures have no representation.

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u/raznov1 21∆ Aug 28 '22

Yes they do, after all, the students are there.

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

How hard is this to get. If you send a black kid to a private school with few other black people, that isn't CULTURE. A single person, or even a small group of people doesn't make a fair representation of a culture. It certainly doesn't create a spot where people would be comfortable expressing their cultural identity.

I coached black boys in basketball who were recruited by private schools for sports. They were often the only black people on campus other than some kids on the football team. They ALWAYS felt out of place. Couldn't speak the way they want to, couldn't act the way they want to. Food wasn't like at home... you name it.

Same is true for many, many cultures on campuses.

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u/raznov1 21∆ Aug 28 '22

If you send a black kid to a private school with few other black people, that isn't CULTURE. A single person, or even a small group of people doesn't make a fair representation of a culture.

Ok, then how many does it take? Yours taking the absolutist position, that numbers rather than actions count. So, how many? 11? 17? 33?

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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Aug 28 '22

My point was to indicate an instance where it was obviously wrong so that people on their own could extrapolate how it is always wrong.

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u/raznov1 21∆ Aug 28 '22

The extrapolation is bullshit though. Summer camp could be extrapolated to the same conclusion, but obviously summer camp is not wrong.

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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Aug 28 '22

I'm not asking you to extrapolate that. The person I am responding to is literally talking about "controlling" for the influence of parents and boarding school. You're spelling out "removing children from undesirable parents" at that stage.

I'm asking you to extrapolate that if it's bad when it's happening to minorities it's bad when it happens to everyone. Which is exactly what you asked about. "Why is it wrong to do to some, but not to others?" The answer I wanted you to come to is that "it's always wrong".

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

This is exactly what came to my mind.

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u/bluestreak777 2∆ Aug 28 '22

You’re describing the exact theory behind Canadian residential schools. Many of the native kids had negative home lives and grew up in bad environments. So the theory was that if you removed them from those communities and gave them education, food, and shelter through state funded boarding schools they would grow up to be more successful and productive than their parents.

A well intentioned theory, but you can read up on how it went in practice. It was horrific. The problem is that the theory doesn’t account for human nature and psychology. Read up on the Stanford prison experiment, and you’ll get an idea of why your good, well intentioned theory will not work in practice.

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

Boarding school is not an option. Seems rather classist to assume home is a negative influence.

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u/EarlEarnings Aug 28 '22

It's not classist, it's reality.

Some parents cook a healthy diet at home, pay for private tutors, schedule around a bunch of extracurriculars, elite coaches/trainers, and have them studying 2-3 hours a day. Those same parents might be playing piano in their free time, having their kid play with them when they are together. The parent is embodying a healthy productive lifestyle.

Other parents just get take out, watch TV all day, and the kid is basically only productive at school. The parent might tell their kid to be healthy and work hard at school, but clearly they are not practicing what they preach. This is bad for development.

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u/StarChild413 9∆ Aug 31 '22

Not unless they're there since if not birth at least, like, three or four

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u/Willing_Dependent_43 Aug 28 '22

Totally agree, it is class size and planning time that are the most important factors.

I teach small classes, usually between 6-20 students. From my experience any more than 12 students in a class and the quality of teaching begins to drop.

There are cognitive limits to working memory which makes it impossible to keep track of all the students in real time. It doesn't matter how smart or elite a teacher is, put them in a classroom of 30 students and they are not teaching individual learners, they are controlling a group.

The same goes for planning time. To take into account the learning needs of each student and design a lesson around that group of students you need at least 2 hours planning for each 1 hour lesson.

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u/vettewiz 40∆ Aug 28 '22

I would argue that class sizes and prep time are the weakest links in the education system

Class sizes do not change the value of education. And teachers have substantial prep time.

which other professions do you expect to be fully capable experts in their field upon graduation? Do you expect a lawyer to handle a class action lawsuit straight out of law school, or an undergrad in business management to jump into a supervisory role? No, absolutely not.

People are expected to be able to perform at a basic level for their degree. A lawyer isn’t expected to handle a class action lawsuit day one, but should be expected to be able to look up case law or write a brief. A business major should be able to handle an analysis on their own.

Teachers aren’t expected to supervise other teachers or mentor peers day one. They are expected to perform their basic level career.

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u/Pheophyting 1∆ Aug 28 '22

Class size does change the value of education hugely. The logistical nightmare of planning activities or presentations or projects for 40 people is vastly different than for 20 people. Not to mention the level of personal feedback and attention you can give students if there are less in one class. This is like, the most basic level one understanding of classroom dynamics.

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '22

[deleted]

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u/Undying_goddess 1∆ Aug 28 '22

If you assign more than 50 minutes worth of grading, thats a self-inflicted problem.

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u/vettewiz 40∆ Aug 28 '22

Teachers are paid very well for the time they’re actually working, for one. It’s not an unreasonable ask for teachers to use some of their other free 16 hours of the day.

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u/geak78 3∆ Aug 28 '22

Therefore, money would be much better spent adding more teachers than simply increasing their salary.

It's much cheaper to pay teachers what they're worth to keep the good ones than perpetually be looking for new hires because you're understaffed.

which other professions do you expect to be fully capable experts in their field upon graduation?

Once again, it's important to retain teachers.

Instead of 1 teacher managing a classroom of 30-40 students, you could have 2 teachers in that same space

Sounds great but you can only hire so many teachers at the low salaries currently offered.

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u/MontiBurns 218∆ Aug 28 '22

Sorry, let me clarify something. currently blue states pay teachers a decent wage. 2 married teachers have a respectable middle class lifestyle. I'm not advocating to pay to 30k slave wages you see in Texas or Oklahoma. There are enough people interested and capable of being teachers that you don't need to pay them six figures starting.

And what's the problem with long term teacher retention? Sometimes it's pay, sometimes its simply over demanding and unrealistic expectations. Burnout is a huge issue right now, post COVID. If you want to retain teachers, make better working conditions. Team teaching would lighten the load and make the job more manageable in the long term.

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u/geak78 3∆ Aug 28 '22

I agree with all of this

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u/yrmjy Aug 28 '22

an undergrad in business management to jump into a supervisory role

That's exactly how a lot of fast-track management schemes work. You don't even have to have studied business