Esmeralda
Diamond Member
You give your employer 35 hours a week. So you only work 7 hours a day. Are you actually dense enough to imagine that a teacher just walks into a classroom and 'teaches' for 6 hours and goes home? Teachers spend about half their time with the class teaching the students the other half of their job is preparing lessons, marking papers, taking several hours plus of homework home every week, keeping track of grades, tracking student behavior and progress, working with parents, working on committees, keeping up with current practices in education, for American teachers taking professional development courses which are required to keep their certificates current, supervising after school and extra-curricular activities, etc. Teachers do not work 7 or 8 hour days, they work 10+ hour days, often work on weekends and often work over the summer vacation. Teachers don't work 6 hours a day; that's ludicrous. At the very least, if you average it out over a year, they work an average of ten hours a day with preparation, meeting and committee time, working with parents time, preparation time, marking time, taking professiional development courses, and supervising extra-curricular and after school activies, they work an average of 10 hours per day, which is, for an 180 day school year, 1800 hours per year. That's a very conservative estimate.Another viewpoint, perhaps?
Why is it unreasonable for me to expect that if I send my kid to a school for - I don't know - 35 hours a week(?), for which I personally pay more than $7,000 per year, in perpetuity (my son is 31 years old now), that that school can't deliver all of the "education" that my child requires within those 35 hours?
Why is it that the school system can demand that my child (and I) spend an additional, say, 10-12 hours a week in supplementary activities (independent study and homework), in order to get the education I'm paying for?
At this cost ($7,000 per year until I die), why can't I demand that the school system figure out a way to spend that 35 hours a week productively enough that my child and I don't have to supplement their efforts so generously?
I mean, seriously, I give my employer about 35 hours a week (I'm being kind to myself here), and if they had to take an additional 10-12 hours each week to supplement my work product to make it usable, I'd be on the street in no time. And deservedly so.
You can't tell me that with 35 hours a week it is NOT POSSIBLE to provide a good education with no supplementation. If the kid has to read other assignments, or do problems independently, or practice something outside the classroom, or compose an essay, IT COULD BE DONE within those thirty-five hours. Hell, I'd be willing to give my kid to them for 40 hours. Honest.
With all the "solutions" one hears about in the public dialog, why is no one addressing the elephant in the room: June, July, and August, and the time between quitting time and, say, 5pm? An American work year is 2080 hours less a couple weeks vacation, but a school year is (180 x 6 = ) 1,080 hours. Come on. Get serious. Teachers unions are always telling us that teaching is a "full-time job." Let's give them a chance to prove it.The basic teaching paradigm is flawed, and needs updating. Professional training (seminars, workshops, etc) are much more time-efficient, and don't require that you prepare in advance or do evening work (usually) to accomplish their training objectives. This is mainly because the instructors are great communicators, the training materials are relevant and helpful, and the seminars (or whatever) are thoroughly planned in advance.
There is no doubt that UNDER THE CURRENT REGIME, the parents are the weak link in the public educational system. They don't motivate the kids, they don't work with the kids, and they don't take a vested interest in the outcomes - blaming any failures on "someone else," mainly the teachers.
But "The Main Problem with Education," is that it is administered according to a hundred-year-old paradigm (hell, even the calendar is based on the kids having to work on the farm in Summer!), and no one in power has had the balls to step back and re-examine the basic delivery system to see if it makes sense with the culture and technological tools we have available in 2014(!). It is as though the car makers were still designing cars with wooden-spoke wheels and complaining that they couldn't achieve more than .35g's in cornering acceleration.
I have seen the enemy and it is us.
The idea that teachers work less over the course of a year than others is a complete myth. I wonder if people think teaching is such an easy job, so well paid, and such a lark, why they don't do it themselves. Teachers are not martyrs. It is the negative attitude toward teachers, the nearly total lack of respect for the profession which is one of the main problems with American education. In other countries, teachers are respected and valued. In the countries which everyone wants to hold up as good examples of education, all of those countries have teacher unions. It is not unions that is the problem, it is the lack of respect and value for the profession that is the problem and why unions are needed.
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