Teachers and parents will say goodbye to public schools in 2022?
In LinkedIn's 29 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2022, released today, they say "Teachers (and parents) will say goodbye to public schools". What do people think? Do you agree? Disagree?
80 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadIt was a very painful decision for my family as we largely believe in public school as a policy directive but submitting my kid to the idiocy for another year, and asking me to deal with it as well, was just untenable.
The final straw was the school districts covid protocols for the 2021/2022 school year which made it obvious that they weren’t optimizing for student health, student learning or parent convenience. Instead it was some mix of federal guidelines, school district convenience & teachers union edict.
Those things might be the most important thing for public policy but as a privileged participant I could opt out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/us/schools-closed-fridays...
As a sidenote, teachers in my state start at $35k... for a profession that requires a degree and special training, that is pathetic and deserves to be a national shame.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-student... [1]https://apps.urban.org/features/education-funding-trends/
https://www.econlib.org/emergency-homeschooling-a-how-to-gui...
As Caplan mentions in the above post, he's troubled by unschoolers' subpar math skills, linking to a post citing a study. I don't think the blog post you cited addresses that point (among other points).
is it childcare, a fear that you don't know how to teach, how to get started, worries about social learning? A lot of families are doing homeschooling, modular learning, microschooling...
Also as someone who has taught in public and private schools, I will tell you that even the most elite private schools are not that much better. It's still a group of kids in one class doing way too much homework and very little freedom to pursue their own interests.
Just as public school students are being indoctrinated, so are private school students. Indoctrinated, perhaps into different systems. The elite want to keep their kids elite, so maybe they are being indoctrinated into becoming the future leaders of wall Street and tech companies - and the government wants to control its citizens (there are some good reasons of course, for that, but a lot of bad reasons). Oddly, a lot of public school systems like bells and desks are designed to prepare kids to work for jobs in factories, so I'm not even sure this indoctrination is successful because it's a bit antiquated. Just hard to change.
I work full time and my wife uses the time the kids are at school to manage activities, the home, etc.
Home school would be explored if we had a live in nanny and perhaps someone to help design a curriculum.
I'm a teacher. I really don't want to catch COVID from a kid and bring it to my immunocompromised dad. So, irrespective of the risk to students (which is not high but I would not characterize it as low either), there are additionally risks to students' families and faculty.
And, anecdote: I'm at a school with windows open & masking. We have a fair amount of mandated testing, and there's been no transmission at school detected despite several primary cases. Compare to other schools with a lot of transmission detected.
I don't financially need to work. I find teaching rewarding, but I'm not willing to kill my dad for it, kthx. I'm glad to be at a school which is making a reasonable compromise in this area.
Re: risk, I think that is a completely reasonable position for you to take. I also think it is reasonable for parents to prefer an environment that they feel is optimized for their kids needs.
[1] https://www.sfusd.edu/covid-19-response-updates-and-resource...
That just says those supplies will be available. They're available at my workplace, too.
This is the one thing that we've de-emphasized this year:
> Staff will clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces like door handles, desks, countertops, phones, keyboards, light switches, handles, toilets and faucets at least once daily.
OTOH, I do run a lab and now wipe down the frequently used tools a couple of times per day. It may or may not make a difference for COVID, but it probably will reduce the transmission of stomach bugs and influenza.
Welp, students in my classes wearing their masks is a big part of how I'm still able to see my dad and not kill him.
> Instead, everyone has to wear some kind of cloth mask to show that "wearing is caring".
Because it's one of the most effective measures we have. Research (both observational and based on aerosol modeling) implies that surgical/cloth masks and getting windows open each reduces risk of infection about 4-5x, and they stack on top of each other for a ~20x total reduction. That's enough, with vaccination, to make me comfortable seeing my dad (masked).
> The risk to children is absurdly low.
About 70k kids hospitalized in the US so far-- so that's not absurdly low. And, again, the risk to children's families and faculty (and faculty families) counts too.
Rachel says, "research shows we downplay long-term effects of Covid on children" https://twitter.com/math_rachel/status/1454242957259800578 https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1420981223535517696
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01935-7
My personal belief is that COVID-19 and influenza are probably similar in children. But even that is more risk than people generally realize: a whole lot of permanent impact happens from influenza in children, but we just accept it and shrug it off as inevitable.
And, of course, while the average risk to kids may be moderate, there's also the much higher risk of cases communicated by children to their family, faculty, and the community at large.
Yes, the risk to kids is low, but they are unvaccinated so outbreaks can and do happen. Substitutes are hard to get right now in most school districts and if you have an outbreak and even 5 percent of the teachers are home sick it is a very real possibility there won’t be a substitute to cover. In my local school district principals and administrators are covering classrooms for sick teachers because there are not enough subs. Teachers would traditionally just go to school sick, because they don’t get much sick time and even if they are sick they have to write a lesson plan for the sub, but now what do you do? Do you go to school even though you have a cold that could be covid? Do you write sub plans for a sub that might not be there?
Bus drivers are also opting out because many are elderly and at high risk and the pay sucks so the risk reward isn’t there even if they are vaccinated. Same with lunch ladies, janitors, you name it. There is a staffing crisis in education right now. Teachers are burned out and those that can retire are at a higher rate than before. It is a mess.
So no, children, even unvaccinated, aren’t likely to have complications from Covid, but wearing masks in schools might help just enough to keep schools open and operating.
> wearing masks in schools might help just enough to keep schools open and operating
I think those are great points and I often try to look at it from the perspective of my child's teacher, not to mention the regulatory nightmares the administration goes through. I am friends and family with many public school teachers. I also think that's the point of the article though. It's hard to get a sub because teachers are quitting, not because of being out sick.
The US Teachers union causes a LOT of problems. But mask, distancing, and sanitation are not one of them.
You wouldn’t like living in Asia. Here it’s the norm. The only people who get upset are westerners. But atleast I feel like my daughter is safe, and my in laws are safe.
- Children don't need enforced injections for COVID (or anything else, for that matter).
- Children don't need to be indoctrinated into the religion of Critical Race Theory.
- Children don't need to spend cumulative years in a classroom reading trashy, heart-jerking melodramas and stage plays in ancient English. They can discover important touchstones like Orwell, Heinlein, and Bradbury for themselves.
- They don't need any subjects other than math, which is the only discipline they will carry with them into adult occupations in the skilled trades (or college, for the few who are intellectually and attitudinally suited for it).
The things I see are stuff like asking students to gather data, fit lines, and derive Hooke's law from scratch before talking about it. Or giving students a pile of LEDs and a breadboard and asking them to figure out how to measure voltage before talking about electrical circuits in depth. Or giving lenses and figuring out how to raytrace before talking about optics. Or playing with adding and subtracting colors and trying to intuit the laws that apply before talking in depth about light.
The idea is to building systemic process of observing and figuring out the rules that seem to apply. Does every lab and every unit reach this standard? No, but it's common enough.
When I was teaching Earth Science (as a substitute) last year, we read Science News (journal articles summarized at an 8th grade level) articles about current controversies about whether rainfall in the Hawaiian Islands was precipitating volcanic activity, and I had the students argue about the different views and evidence. 6th graders find it hugely entertaining to have a "science fight" about the evidence and then ultimately suggest their ideas for what types of research might be helpful next.
After discovering the basics of laws in a subject area and the processes by which we evaluate information, they move on to "memorizing factoids"--- after all, most of them will be consumers of science rather than academic scientists, and there's some basic knowledge about how the world works that it's beneficial for everyone to know.
I agree that science is far too often presented as a body of knowledge in education than a process.
Yes! I know about aerobic and anaerobic respiration. I know about the different ways things break down as a result. I can understand why getting a deep puncture wound is dangerous as a result. I can read scientific journals about related topics. I have an understanding of basic metabolism, so that when I'm confronted by having a metabolic disorder I can know what it means. When people talk about keto, I can draw on this knowledge. When we discuss lactic acid fermentation in tissues, and the controversy about whether this is a primary cause of muscle soreness, I understand that too!
> whether schist is igneous or metamorphic?
I enjoy knowing about the basics of geology, but it's not been of too much utility to me other than recreation. On the other hand, basic geological knowledge is helpful to a fair number of occupations.
But the whole point is to expose people to many things so they can find what interests them and that they're good at.
https://www.amazon.com/Building-Foundations-Scientific-Under... https://www.touchpress.com/ https://mysteryscience.com/ https://pbskids.org/apps/play-and-learn-science-.html https://www.pandiapress.com/real-science-odyssey/ https://www.terminaleleven.com/skyview/iphone/ https://www.tappityapp.com/ https://tinybop.com/apps/the-human-body https://www.wildkratts.com/
Not what the parent said. The question is whether they are inclined to learn independently.
It doesn't seem wise to stare at a community of unusual, self-selected people (Hacker News) and try to draw conclusions about the population at large from it.
I think this shows a gross misunderstanding of both the makeup/demographics of the workforce and of the amount of education needed to do various kinds of jobs. You think you don't need literacy to do TPM? https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm
Actually, I think the "TPM" at the end is just evidence that you're trolling. Have a nice day.
However... Being able to communicate effectively and work with groups is a hell of a lot more important to modern life than mathematics. Being able to organize oneself and complete projects and assigned work is important. Being able to peruse written material and absorb information is a critical skill.
These are things students learn in school. Yes, they come naturally to some students, the way mathematics comes naturally to others.
Practice under instructor guidance helps. I teach robotics and other STEM classes. The robotics league that my teams participate in measures teams with both objective and subjective measures: presentation skills matter.
Over a term, I see the less technically students develop a lot of hands-on knowledge about mechanics, electronics, and problem solving. I see the one who are already technically inclined build a lot of presentation and communication skills. And everyone learns a lot more about project management and organization. There's a massive apparent difference in abilities at the end of the term and the beginning.
Curiosity varies, and all the areas where it's applied are not of equal value. Some kids would far rather learn everything there is to learn about Minecraft and mindlessly play it instead of developing literacy skills. Having schooling establishes a baseline: we try and bring up every student to some fundamental level of competence in each subject.
My daughter (2nd grade) managed to memorize literally every capital city and flag. When I asked her who her geography teacher was, she said "We didn't have geography this year. I learned it from YouTube." Ironically, no classes made her more interested in the topic.
But you have to have class to have no classes. The kids were begging to go to school by the end of 2021, but didn't want to go early on. The absence of school made them want to learn even more. So I'm not sure if full home schooling is effective.
When deciding where to live find a neighborhood that values education and takes pride in its school district. Unfortunately this may come at the cost of higher real estate values, but fundamentally the school your child attends will be one of the most defining aspects of their childhood. The local public schools here compensate their teachers significantly more than the private schools in the area. Furthermore, their average test scores are about a percentage less across all standardized tests while allowing of all backgrounds instead of having the ability to choose their student body like the private schools.
I attended a public school but had many close friends in some of the private schools around me. In terms of college outcomes my friends from school and friends from the private schools attended similar pretentious schools. However, I feel that had I attended a private school I would have spent all my formative years in the same bubble of snobby traditions and deciding where to summer. My high school had plenty of astonishingly wealthy students but our culture was much more actively unimpressed when peers bought an s-class for their 16th or took their race car to school.
* First, there's enormous variation in private schools. A whole lot of sectarian schools are utter crap and worse than public schools when you control for the neighborhoods they're in.
* But there are also a lot of private schools with significant structural advantages: students who want to be there with systemic support from all families and faculty who just want to see how far they can run in a supportive environment.
* I teach in a crazily idyllic environment. There's been no fights in literally decades. It's cool to be a nerd or a jock. It's happy and green. I am sad that this is such an exception and not the rule.
* I have the utmost respect for public school teachers. I'm well aware, in many ways, that my job is "easy mode" for education. I think it's great that we have a diverse system, and having the public system exist and able to provide a quality education to people of all backgrounds is an essential public good.
* My children are mathy, somewhat introverted kids. Being able to pick an educational environment where they're expected to present often, do drama and the arts, etc, has made them grow into much broader individuals than they would in other places. This kind of choice doesn't often exist in the public school system.
In high school I described my public school as faux-public given that the school district was dependent on local property values (yes, definition of public school) while support from the state was negligible to the overall budget.
In the four years I was there we had maybe a fight (more of a tussle) about once a year, our football team won a game about every two years, and our science olympiad or other extra curriculum program placed nationally every year. If students were working on projects it wasn't surprising if the teacher left to make photocopies or do other things while we worked. In terms of outcomes, in my math/hard sciences about 75% attended ivies. There are many great private schools in the area but given that they have the same test scores (while being able to choose their student body) and same college outcomes I would not recommend discrediting a school simply because it is public
https://www.brookings.edu/research/housing-costs-zoning-and-... https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/propert...
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/realestate/your-address-a...
Where is this list of big ideas?
Maryland has one school system per county. In Montgomery County the schools are very different between the more prosperous and less prosperous areas. Years ago there was an eye-opening chart of the percentage grade needed get an A in algebra at various high schools.