HN Explorer

Ask HN: Are teachers too influential to have them promote their subjects in K12?

2 points by amichail ↗ HN
Students are too trusting of teachers when it comes to deciding which areas of study they should be interested in.

Maybe it should be illegal for teachers in K-12 education to promote their own subjects to students?

9 comments

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verdverm
Why do you see it as "promoting" vs "sharing interest and joy" in a subject?

What problems come from this?

amichail
The problem is that K-12 students are too young to be independent thinkers, to understand what jobs in various fields are like, and to be fully aware of their own strengths and weaknesses.

As a result, they might pursue a career path that is not ideal for them.

verdverm
> The problem is that K-12 students are too young to be independent thinkers

In many ways they are more independent, devoid of the cultural bigotries that are taught, or the taming of imagination and creation of artificial limitations. Going all the way back to K is absurd, and saying that teens who are able to drive, vote, and hold jobs are not independent thinkers... really?

Sounds like your thesis comes back to the "people are getting screwed over by Big University"? Do you know what degrees and jobs are going to be valuable in 10, 20, or 40 years?

You're idea to make it illegal will have 1A issues and would also be too much Big Gov coming in and being to0 handy with education. How would you even define "promotion" vs "encouraging students' interests"?

jrflowers
How do you teach something without “promoting” it?
amichail
You could keep saying that this subject is not for everyone, don't worry if you find it boring, etc.

As long as they say things like this to the whole class and not to particular students, I think it would be ok.

jrflowers
That sounds like a teacher going out of their way to undermine the goal of teaching. Why would a student learn something if the instructor not only fails to demonstrate its value but actively downplays it?

The only way to avoid this “influence” would be to not teach things altogether.

sgbeal
This is a non-problem. If you believe it's a genuine problem, please show us some data which demonstrates that.

i never once had a teacher in K-12 tell their students "you should study for a job in Field X." i had a handful of teachers of who obviously loved the fields they were teaching (but not practicing) and that enthusiasm is certainly contagious to students who have an inherent interest in the field, but if a teenage student isn't interested in a field, they're not going to make a career path out of something a teacher of that field has said.

Note that i say teenager because in the K-5(ish) range, we all want to grow up to be fire(wo)men and astronauts and police(wo)men and doctors and unicorns. What a child that age "wants to be when they grow up" has very little, if any, bearing on what they will end up becoming. As far as time in K-12 school goes, only the later teenage years have any real influence on that eventual decision.

> As a result, they might pursue a career path that is not ideal for them.

Most people, i opine, do that just fine on their own without any prompting from their teachers.

PS for the non-US'ians: K-12 means "kindergarten thru 12th grade," i.e. the 13 school years most US'ians go through.

epc
The curriculum that the typical American public school teacher teaches to is set in near–stone by the local school board and the local state education department. In turn that curriculum has to meet certain dates and targets for the myriad tests that students have to endure which are set by state and Federal education departments.

The notion that teachers have much flexibility to inject or promote their own subjects does not reflect the reality in most classrooms.