I loved biology in high school. I had one of the most boring teachers ever, and literally slept through class half the time, but then I would go home and read the text book for homework assignments and I found it totally fascinating. It was kind of running gag that the teacher could wake me up and ask me a question at any time and I always knew the answer, to the amusement of the other students. But my secret was just that I found it interesting and easy to absorb.
I don’t really like the idea of blaming others for one’s lack of curiosity about a subject. There are a lot of factors that determine how receptive we are to learning something - current interests, life experience, how developed our brains are, etc - beyond just the way it is taught. I have a much deeper appreciation for geology now than I did in school, for example, and I’m fairly certain that I’m the one who changed, not the way plate tectonics are taught.
> I don’t really like the idea of blaming others for one’s lack of curiosity about a subject. There are a lot of factors that determine how receptive we are to learning something - current interests, life experience, how developed our brains are, etc
I've met former classmates who got interested in a subject later in life and literally would not believe that the subject had been taught to us in an interesting way in high school. They insisted "I would have loved the subject if they had taught us topic X" or "I would have loved the subject if they had taught us from angle Y" when that is exactly the way our high school teacher taught us. I think when we think back to age 15 we have a hard time remembering how different we were, and we remember things in a way that makes our emotions at the time make sense through our current way of experiencing things.
> They insisted "I would have loved the subject if they had taught us topic X"
Just yesterday was a front page top comment along these lines, that teaching endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts would have made all the difference in grade school biology. But really it would be worth about 30-90 seconds of content in the lesson that day and gone barely noticed and probably not remembered.
Exactly, there is SO much cool stuff in biology that was already known 50+ years ago, even 100+ years ago, and when you're first learning biology, it's all new and fascinating. Unless you don't click with it! And then nothing helps, it's not like there's some magic angle that hooks everyone.
Even if you pin the "blame" directly on teachers, they have a difficult situation. They need to get 3-5 classes of 20-40 mostly obnoxious kids to learn a broad array of material prescribed by other people. They have to do this while also correcting behavioral issues and dealing with parents or admins.
They're mostly not domain experts knowledgeable enough to give individualized deep dives to each of their students, but even if they were it would make their already-difficult task impossible. It's a wonder that any sort of individualized instruction manages to exist at all.
>Even if you pin the "blame" directly on teachers, they have a difficult situation
In many countries, teaching is a government position that is pretty impossible to get fired from. Unfortunately, just like in any profession, there are those in teaching who find it that they dislike it but still trudge along because nice benefits (not talking about US), much to the detriment of their students.
We talk about 'passion' a lot in a number of fields, but imho teaching is the only profession where you _NEED_ it.
Bad management kills passion instantaneously. The best teacher, faced with administration which will constantly kowtow to parents and refuse to discipline bad students, will lose their passion rapidly.
I had a friend who left teaching because of this sort of thing. They had a terrible experience as a student teacher and decided to work a job that paid less money.
The policies didn't just crush the teachers. Many of the students didn't care at all. There were behavioral problems, of course. One major issue he saw was that the school just pushed kids through the grades. There was a policy of an automatic minimum grade of 50% if the kid just put their name on the test... and they still at least one kid who would refuse to put their name on the paper!
Another friend of mine also went into teaching, but they refuse to work for public schools because of the bureaucracy, even though that sometimes means taking a paycut.
"there are those in teaching who find it that they dislike it but still trudge along because nice benefits (not talking about US), much to the detriment of their students."
This definitely happens in the US too. There have been documentaries made which include things like teachers just reading the news or a book whole letting the class do whatever it wants. Then the lawsuits and fight over tenure when the administration tried to fire them. Maybe the pay and benefits aren't great in many areas, but they're better than nothing, especially considering if you can do other things during work hours.
Even in districts where there is a union issue with firing, you could not easily find good replacements anyways. The pool of passionate teachers willing to take these roles is a small percentage of the total jobs, and they tend to self select into good higher paying districts with better behaved students.
When I was studying educational research, it seemed that most sources agreed that - apart from individualized tutoring - decreasing class size was one key to better learning. IIRC, the magic 'threshold) was 12. (Mob vs. seminar?)
Of course, teacher's real engagement with their subject and students, and teaching experiences (if they're in tune with what works, and also trying new methods) are important. As is whether their districts encourage (and can afford) innovation (in learning materials and media for example).
Regardless, teachers have to begin at the level of their average student (TBD); if the spread is too wide, some will be bored, some challenged. All of this is a lot to ask, moreso for teachers with outside lives to live and grow themselves also.
One thing to keep in mind is teaching is a psychologically demanding job. A good manager will provide the tools needed to succeed professionally and may provide you with the tools to deal with personal issues, but they ultimately have the option to cut an employee loose if they cannot make positive contributions to the workplace. Contrast that to teaching. The measure of success of a teacher is the success of the students who they teach. They often learn details of a student's life that few managers would ever learn of their employees. A well functioning adult would have difficulty dealing with these things, never mind a child or teenager. These are things like children who have had a parent who committed suicide, teenagers who are aging out of the foster care system, students with psychological conditions that would preclude them from most workplaces. These, and many more things, leave teachers working in an environment where a portion of the students are not ready to learn no matter how skilled the teacher is at motivating and delivering the curriculum.
Teachers have to do much more than that. While maintaining their own mental health, which is challenging given the environment they are frequently working in. (Even more so since most teachers enter the profession with optimism and compassion.)
Who has the financial ability to switch careers like that on a dime? The only place that such a move is feasible would be a state that doesn't require a degree to teach.
So...Arizona, California, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas, and Wisconsin. Otherwise, pony up the cash for another degree and probably put your other career on hold.
Anyone in the US with a CS degree, or anything technical where they took enough math, would easily be able to get a teaching license in most states. I have a CS degree and was able to get qualified to teach while getting paid as a full time teacher. That was in 2006, and they're even more desperate for teachers today.
That was Colorado. Anyone with a degree can get certified in New Hampshire and then you can easily transfer to other states.
Health coverage is only worth a few thousand dollars. It's not a $50k bonus. They earn well below a typical developer salary. It's not like our cushy jobs. Yes they have extra vacation time but have to use a lot of that on unpaid planning time or additional study for ongoing certification requirements.
I agree with you. That's why I replied to a person that said they get paid below average as 1) they get paid around average as you say, and 2) they have a bunch of additional job perks that make it harder to calculate exactly.
The bureau of labor statistics is clear about the fact they are not paid less than average. Elementary and High school teachers make $73,890 mean wage compared to $65,470 for "all occupations":
You can make this more complex and say that people with equivalent training get paid more, and they do, but then they don't have the perks I mentioned, like huge vacations, having the pleasure of teaching (there's a reason so many people want to teach and supply of teachers doesn't dwindle), pension after you retire, healthcare, and so on.
"Ballpark Figure" means roughly or approximately. It is roughly around the average income. Within a standard deviation, therefore within the average salary range. A few dollars of benefits doesn't make a significant difference. Salaries have a distribution. It would be overly pedantic to say a salary is 1 cent higher than the exact average salary figure, therefore it is above average. That is not meaningful in the context of salary distribution.
The pay is pretty fair. They're teaching material that every high school graduate should theoretically be able to teach, so the barrier to entry is low. Most of the prep work can be reused for the next year. Their hours are OK, and they line up with when their kids are in school. Plus they get summers off. It's a shitty job if you actually care, but pretty cushy if you check out and just do what's required.
Teachers don't actually get a 3 month vacation in summer, they just do a shitton of unpaid labor to prep for the next school year while being told they should be grateful
A guide who loves the subject matter can make an incredible difference - I had a physics teacher who had a contagious love for it, and those who were naturally curious about the subject learned a lot while even the reluctant students couldn't help but be sucked in to his demonstrations and experiments.
I was fascinated by biology right up until I took 2 high school classes on it, and then it took years for me to recover. It had nothing to do with a lack of curiosity. In my classes, at least, the focus was on memorization of names of things. No time for wonder and amazement, what's important is that you can write labels on that diagram of endoplasmic reticulum! :)
I didn't take the article so much as the blame game but more saying that the subject of biology generally could be taught in a much, much better way. That certainly rings true for me and, from your comments, seems to ring true for you as well: you loved the subject despite how poorly it was presented to you.
> I don’t really like the idea of blaming others for one’s lack of curiosity about a subject… I’m the one who changed, not the way plate tectonics are taught.
100% agree.
The author seems to be arguing that it’s someone else’s duty to point out what’s interesting. I suppose a essayist or columnist needs to believe something along those lines.
I would say the reverse is true though - great teachers are able to spark interest on a subject that students may otherwise not care about. But I agree that that expectation shouldn't be the baseline.
Except making a subject interesting, at least for K-12, should be a baseline, no? (With success in early years making it easier to maintain high interest in later years.)
The most important thing you can teach about anything is an interest in it - otherwise what is retention going to be?
Or to turn it around, introducing subject after subject that students find boring, confusing, stressful or frustrating is a fantastic way to ensure they avoid anything to do with the fields, knowledge and skills we deem most important for a well prepared life.
I do agree that this isn’t a baseline to apply to each teacher in isolation, without the rest of the ecosystem supporting them. Textbooks, other materials and class aids, all supporting the emotional highs of learning, not just prioritizing a material to be covered on a test, etc.
At the university level, professors should be able to expect an opt-in self-selected and self-motivated level of interest for subjects.
Especially if grade school has prepared highly curious excited to learn students. As apposed to subject avoidance or apathy.
I agree, and I may have downplayed the importance a pedagogy a bit too much. I’ve experienced first hand, and also see with my kids, the profound difference that a great teacher or coach can have on the pupils.
But a great teacher is not necessary to find a topic interesting, nor sufficient to spark interest in everyone who lacks interest.
The thing that got me interested in biology and geology later in life was finding out / realising that there is a continuum between them and also with chemistry and physics (both of which I loved at school).
I don't fully understand why they are separated and taught as separate things, I wonder what the rationale is, apart from expediency.
Textbooks are generally way more carefully made in terms of their presentation, the order of information, their examples. At least in uni, classes that follow a textbook where much nicer to get into for me personally. Why listen to an unmotivated professor reading his notes that he made in 3h for a one time audience of 300 when I could read a textbook that was made in the span of multiple years for an audience of hundreds of thousands?
>I don’t really like the idea of blaming others for one’s lack of curiosity about a subject
I agree, you can't blame an instructor for your lack of interest. Sometimes a subject is portrayed so abusively, you must declare war against it's convolution to protect any potential for curiosity and wonder.
There's more ways of learning now. Things I found interesting but taught fairly dryly, with even drier textbooks for self learning, I can now engage properly by watchign lectures/ listening at 2x speed. Find communities that meme about plate tectonics that makes me want to explore further etc.
I don’t really like the idea of blaming others for one’s lack of curiosity about a subject. There are a lot of factors that determine how receptive we are to learning something - current interests, life experience, how developed our brains are, etc - beyond just the way it is taught. I have a much deeper appreciation for geology now than I did in school, for example, and I’m fairly certain that I’m the one who changed, not the way plate tectonics are taught.