than to have it be taught IN A BORING WAY WITHOUT CONTEXT
Learning my multiplication tables was fun when it was turned into a race with my friends.
Memorizing the state capitals and abbreviations was fun when it was turned into a game.
You can turn most anything into a fun way of learning it with just a modicum of effort. One problem is too many teachers get beat down to only teach what they are told to teach through some ready-made commercial curriculum. We have a huge number of teachers who are poorly paid. Too many run-ins with difficulty and admins who want things done their way, and that teacher's lifelong career gets sapped of any joy and they default to just teaching as they're told to teach.
If education was better funded in order to pay teachers very competitive wages, you'd attract more can-do teachers to the field instead of bright eyed young college graduates who end up leaving the profession within the first 5 years because of how stifling the bureaucracy of it all is.
Pay the job well to attract and retain the best and brightest and you'll get amazing results through creativity and mastery of the art of education.
We don't do that, so you often get what you pay for.
It is the intolerable conditions that need fixing.
You make a tired stereotypical argument that better pay attracts and retains better people: the idea that money can fix all problems is a thoughtless crutch.
Better pay retains those people that despite the intolerable working conditions, people who slavishly force themselves to remain. Why presume there is a correlation between teaching ability and slavishness?
The argument that better pay attracts better people makes little sense for jobs that people desire regardless of pay: becoming a teacher is often a calling. the great teachers I know are not necessarily academic (high GPA) achievers, instead they have a passion for teaching children, and they learn skills that are not testable by written exams.
You yourself even point out that money is not the issue: “young college graduates [leave] the profession within the first five years because of how stifling the bureaucracy [is]”.
Most private preschool teachers in New Zealand work for nearly minimum wage, and I have friends who are teaching preschoolers (under 5 year old). These are smart, motivated, dedicated women working long hours and they remain in the profession earning little: even those that move up the preschool career ladder earn well below equivalent jobs in other industries.
In New Zealand teachers of 5+ year olds get paid a more reasonable salary. I have many friends that remain teachers for decades mostly because of the joy and satisfaction they get from the job, not because they are tied to the job by money or lack of opportunity.
>Is fixing the stifling bureaucracy is out of the question?
I mean no but the issue is the system has to be changed as to not encourage stifling bureaucracy. Unfortunately a monopolized school system with a captive customer ('pay up to this exact single school district or you know just sell your house and uproot yourself and move') is anti-thetical to the kind of free-market competition that aids in rooting out inefficient bureaucracy.
I love the responses I often get when suggesting to let the parents use their own discretion to pay directly for their children's education using the per-child tax allocation. Somehow striking teachers are simultaneously people we're supposed to listen to as people who know how to fix the system when things go wrong, but god forbid we allow a system that allows the parent to pay the teachers directly and privately to bypass the broken public school administrators.
Somehow teachers are simultaneously the source we can listen to about how to fix things when they strike, but suddenly become distrustful evil capitalists if we're allowed to let them privately educate on the free market in lieu of public school system. I wish the public would make up their mind.
> If education was better funded in order to pay teachers very competitive wages
I see it as a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Are teachers paid less because they suck, or do they suck because they're not paid well?
Putting aside wages, does education really need more funding? What exactly is more expensive about teaching the fundamentals now than 50 years ago?
> you'd attract more can-do teachers
That would be possible not by merely increasing teacher pay. One of the biggest complaints by most teachers is that they are not allowed to deviate from the state sponsored lesson plan. Why would anyone who is qualified to be teaching children be inspired to be a mouthpiece for the state and nothing more? Teachers shouldn't be getting lesson plans from the state. Their students should either pass the exams or the teachers get fired. Yes, I'm using the word fired here, because I don't believe in teachers being protected from fucking up the minds of children. Maybe teachers who are actually qualified to teach children will find that inspiration in having their prestige be on the line, and the truly evil teachers out there wouldn't last as long if they weren't effective at educating.
Who were the best teachers you had? I bet they weren't the ones who just read out of a textbook and did whatever the state guidelines told them to do. Usually the best teachers and professors are so interested in their subject matter that they can effectively convey information and its importance without reading notes verbatim. We need more teachers like that, but when I was growing up there might have been one of those in every 10. Hopefully it's better than that now, but I don't see why it would be.
As long as the system itself is rotten, it really doesn't matter what pay teachers. The way the that the education system in America is constructed does not attract virtue. It attracts those who can fit well into bureaucracy and do what they're told in exchange for protection. There are still good teachers within that system, but I need more than one hand to count how many lazy, stupid, and sadistic teachers I've encountered.
Yes. I think the first time I learned about proportions is when me and my buddy applied formula we learned in chemistry class and we used it to estimate speed % increase of CPU OC from 100 to 120. It was something I really wanted to know so even though it was math, I wanted to understand it ( edit: obviously it was a rough estimate, but for our purposes it was sufficient ).
That said, some things have to be boring. The fun comes later with application:>
than to have it be taught IN A BORING WAY WITHOUT CONTEXT
Learning my multiplication tables was fun when it was turned into a race with my friends. Memorizing the state capitals and abbreviations was fun when it was turned into a game.
You can turn most anything into a fun way of learning it with just a modicum of effort. One problem is too many teachers get beat down to only teach what they are told to teach through some ready-made commercial curriculum. We have a huge number of teachers who are poorly paid. Too many run-ins with difficulty and admins who want things done their way, and that teacher's lifelong career gets sapped of any joy and they default to just teaching as they're told to teach.
If education was better funded in order to pay teachers very competitive wages, you'd attract more can-do teachers to the field instead of bright eyed young college graduates who end up leaving the profession within the first 5 years because of how stifling the bureaucracy of it all is. Pay the job well to attract and retain the best and brightest and you'll get amazing results through creativity and mastery of the art of education.
We don't do that, so you often get what you pay for.