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Suicide is Painless

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DrFrylock, Jan 26, 2011.

  1. Rhysma

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    You can pick all you want but it was more of an "I don't care if my spelling is correct on TiB" than my inability to use spell check. Councilor is also a perfectly acceptable word.

    I totally agree with your point of weeding out the "low performers" but at some point you have to admit that it isn't the teacher's fault if the students are failing when the parents at home let them play XBOX all night instead of doing their homework. I also have no recourse for misbehavior or to help with classroom management because my hands are very tied. The students know we are powerless and take every advantage. I have also worked with teachers that really didn't care, didn't do the work and still managed to keep their job for a few years before administration got around to firing them. It's a joke around here that it takes an act of Congress to get anyone removed. Those of us who care and are working our asses off out here are getting the shaft.

    This is my 5th year with my school. I don't think you can equate what one teacher does at one school in a different state that could be a completely different environment to another that works inner-city in a high-need school. Pay should not be flat for "Teachers" because the work is definitely not the same. It is a load of crap that our salaries are set and we have no room for negotiation. Most of us take the job knowing the pay is going to be shit but we know we are needed and are making a difference. Some of my students are homeless or don't have permanent homes and they are trying to come to school and get their work done.

    To put a number on it, if I could double my salary that would at least give me a chance to one day pay off the student loans I had to get to get my teaching degree and allow me to pay the bills with a level of comfort each month. I don't think that 60K a year is too much to ask for what we do. I am required to have a Masters degree so that is a great deal of debt to take on for the salary we get paid.

    As for my babysitter, maybe where you live it is easy to find someone to work the hours I need but it isn't for me. I keep hiring her because she is all I have at the moment, not that I think she is worth it for the work that she performs. Another year and I won’t need her at all, for which I am thankful.
     
  2. ParkerBro

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    Underpaid: Teacher

    Anyone who has actually worked as a full-time teacher or personally knows someone who has worked as a teacher knows this. The work is a lot tougher than any typical white-collar office job and frequently involves 10 hours a day before you go home to work some more.

    Just because you've had a shitty, bitchy teacher does not mean they should all be paid peanuts. I've seen shitty cops, but I'm not suggesting we pay everyone on the force 30k a year.

    Overpaid: Politicians, senators, representatives, governors

    Maybe we'll stop attracting as many fuck-ups if this wasn't the case.
     
  3. Bryan

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    You have the cause and effect flipped. If the teaching profession were restricted to more intelligent, dedicated people, or people who have proxies for intelligence and dedication***. pay would be higher due to higher barriers of entry. The pay for teachers is low compared to white collar jobs such as institutional finance* is due to the lack of a pre-requisite for a proxy for an elite level of intelligence and competence (e.g., top-ranked school, good grades, extracurriculars) before even getting your foot through the door** or for say, medical doctors, extensive schooling + residency (after having already been filtered for school, grades, and MCATs). Supply and demand.

    A burger flipper could bitch about he is underpaid because he works hard and long hours, but he is underpaid because almost anyone has the qualifications to be a burger flipper. Low barriers to entry, high supply.

    *Snide counter-"arguments" invoking the financial crisis or the trope greedy immoral bankers would be missing the point entirely.
    **I'm aware of nepotism and networking.
    ***Obviously I'm not saying that all teachers are not intelligent and dedicated, but rather they tend to lack signals for such traits, and signals/proxies for traits correlate with the traits themselves.
     
  4. Frank

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    This is the thing though, is a high level of intelligence really a necessary or even helpful trait for a teacher? Honestly I think a completely average level of intelligence is fine, a teacher that's too smart will just get annoyed with the kids that can't grasp concepts they think are common sense, whereas a teacher who isn't as talented will be able to better relate to children that need more help in grasping the material.

    Being a good teacher boils down much more to being able to read people, be motivated and be authoritative yet compassionate. Intelligence and academic credentials don't make great teachers, hard work and ability to interact do. Unfortunately this can't be taught, nor can it be objectively measured.
     
  5. Bryan

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    I disagree somewhat, as intelligence markedly above average would be helpful teaching HS kids things like the STEM subjects, but that's besides the point.

    If all of a sudden burger joints decided that they wanted the smartest people possible to be burger flippers because smart people tend to be better burger flippers at a loose correlation even though burger flipping itself "requires" very little intelligence, and they higher only the best students from top schools, the new de facto barrier to entry will cause a rise in wages of said burger flippers.
     
  6. Frank

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    I agree that above average intelligence would help teachers of seniors and maybe juniors in high school, but that's about it, pretty much anyone with average intelligence and a good work ethic can teach anything else just as effectively as someone with a PHD. Remember, it's not about how much you know about the subject, it's about how effectively you are able to make children learn it.

    Obviously... but what's your point? In reality more intelligent people don't tend to be better burger flippers than average people, so creating that barrier for entry would would just force you to pay more for the same quality workers. I think the same holds true for teachers, academic accomplishment is nowhere near as important as effective communication and patience, you would just be hiring people who have WAY more education than necessary for the job but aren't necessarily more effective at teaching the material, and have to pay them more for it.
     
  7. D26

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    Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, this thread has turned into "teachers are overpaid assholes who don't deserve shit" versus "teachers are underpaid saints who work harder than anyone else on the planet!"

    Few things need to be cleared up:

    1) If you're a teacher, and you're going to try to defend teachers on TiB, use spell check. It takes all of five seconds, and not doing it makes you look like a lazy jackass, and only hurts your case. "Teachers work hard. What? Oh, I have a lot of spelling errors? That's because I am lazy, but I am a hard working teacher! No, I don't know the definition of cognitive dissonance, why do you ask?"

    2) What should the salary range for teachers be? Starting around 40K and working your way up with experience and proven results seems fair to me. In some states this is the case. In others, it isn't (for example, in Indiana, when I start teaching I'll make in the range of 25K a year). A McDonalds manager makes more a year in Indiana than an average teacher does. If you can honestly look at that and say it isn't bullshit, your priorities are fucked.

    3) There are shitty teachers and good teachers. Shitty teachers prepare all of their lesson plans straight from the book, use tests given to them by the people who make the book, have students grade each others' work, and in general work as little as possible. Good teachers tend to stick around after school and make their own tests and lesson plans, and have fewer multiple choice, scan-tron tests and more essay or short answer based tests. They also tweak their lesson plans to accommodate the differences in their students every single year, instead of simply reusing the exact same lesson plans and teaching the exact same way every single year. To elaborate:

    4) If a teacher isn't updating his or her lesson plans every single year, they're doing it wrong. You can use the same lesson plans every year, but you absolutely must tweak and change them, because you don't have the same kids every year. Every class is made up differently, and every kid learns differently. A truly good teacher knows how to teach the same thing in multiple ways so that everyone in the class gets it. This is a skill that some teachers don't have, and others aren't willing to put the time into. One year, you may have all general education kids. The next, you may have some special education inclusion kids in your class, and they require some adjustments to your lesson plans.

    5) As funding is cut, classrooms are getting more and more crowded. It isn't rare to find high school teachers with classes of 30+ students. The ideal number is between 20 and 25, maybe even less. Imagine trying to customize high school lesson plans for 30+ individual, unique students. Now multiply that by 4 or 5 classes a day (depending on the teacher), meaning in the range of 120 to 150 students, maybe more. If you want to know why some teachers get frustrated and stop trying, just look at class sizes.

    6) I agree that teachers unions protect shitty teachers. At the same time, there is more to it than that. A simple fact:
    --Low income districts (where more students are on free/reduced lunch) generally score much lower on standardized testing

    The government knows this fact. The reality is, no matter how great a teacher is, you put them in a classroom with kids who are more concerned about where their next meal is coming from than reading To Kill a Mockingbird, or how to multiply fractions, and it is going to be real tough to get good standardized test scores out of those kids. And EVERYTHING is based on standardized test scores now.

    The interesting fact is that the government (in Indiana, and there is a push for this nation wide) wants to start a tracking program for teachers in terms of standardized tests, as well as where they received their education. For example, a teacher gives their students the ISTEP test (the Indiana standardized test). When the results come back, they are used not only to judge the school a teacher works at, but also the teachers themselves, AND the college that educated the teacher, with the goal of making the colleges that are educating teachers more accountable for sending shitty, unprepared teachers into the workforce.

    Do I disagree with this? No, not necessarily. I agree that there needs to be accountability for teachers, and that lazy, shitty, worthless teachers should go. At the same time, you can't judge teachers based entirely on standardized test scores. Standardized tests can be biased, and there are too many environmental factors that a standardized test just can't capture to properly judge a teacher.

    Teachers should be judged based on a combination standardized test scores, and tracking their students and their grades, and maybe even a system of pre- and post-tests for students in a given class. For example, in a math class, students are given a standard pre-test at the start of a semester, with questions about everything they might learn that semester. At the end, they are given their comprehensive final exam. How the students do on the final compared to the pre-test can be an indicator of how well the students learned throughout the semester, and show how effective the teacher was.

    This isn't a black and white issue, so don't treat it as such. Some teachers are overpaid, while some are underpaid. All states are different. Some states pay more, others pay less. Just because YOU know a teacher that gets paid 55 grand a year, doesn't mean that is what all teachers in all states are making. Indiana pays dick to its teachers, and in this state, I personally feel they're underpaid here. Other states are different. Again, not black-and-white.
     
  8. KIMaster

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    Okay. Why do you think this? Personally, I have never met or know anything about the daily schedule of either Mike Duke or Rex Tillerson. Do you? I just read the latter's Wikipedia page, and he was born into a middle-class family, started out as a simple engineer at Exxon Mobil in 1975, finally made vice president in 1998, and then became chairman in 2004. Hardly a man with a silver spoon.

    Also, let's put a name and a face on these people, instead of copping to the "multi-national" buzzword bullshit.

    What are you basing this claim from? On the subject of Microsoft, I believe you're wrong; while virtually every computer has Windows, they are, like any other software company, very volatile to changes in their market, and constantly have to adapt.

    I don't know anything about the business of either Walmart or Lockheed and the challenges they face. But what is your source on their position being so secure?

    I honestly don't know? It's a very silly and incorrect quantification, though.

    Kobe Bryant might only be "1.5 times better" than some NBA scrub, but he makes $30+ million a year while the other guy makes $1 million. Is he overpaid, and the scrub not? According to NBA statistics that measure this stuff, no. In fact, it's the precise opposite; the scrub only adds about $300,000 of value to the team, while Kobe brings in about $80+ million a year.

    This is just blatantly wrong! The position of many Fortune 500 companies is anything but "secure", as we have seen in the last few years. And why do you think so many high-profile CEOs only last a few years?

    I knew of some famous CEOs that, while hard-working and intelligent, were not competent enough to grapple with their company's challenges, or simply made several wrong decisions. (For instance, failed Republican senate candidate Carly Fiorina) Guess what? They're no longer working there.

    I mentioned this in the same post, in the next sentence after the one you quoted.
     
  9. KIMaster

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    I've mostly said my piece about teachers, but there were a couple of points D26 made I want to reply to;

    Mad props to you for doing this.

    However, among the great teachers I had, the ones that were excellent, knew their material wonderfully, and really cared about the students and what they learned...none of them did what you described above.

    And I'm far from certain they needed to; too much is made of the method via which students learn, when in reality, it's a very small part of the effectiveness of teaching. (Special needs kids aside, obviously) Usually, an effective lesson plan can continue being successful for many years, if not decades.

    I've never understood why class size is cited as such a crucial problem.

    In China, South Korea, and back in the old days of the USSR, all countries where standardized testing and the average public education were far superior to what it is here, there are/were classes of at least 40 students.

    Yet, strangely, this didn't affect performance all that much. And if you've ever been to college, there are packed lecture halls of 250+ students for certain classes. I never felt like I missed out on anything in the class because it didn't have only 20 people.

    People even asked questions after class, and received well thought-out replies. (Sometimes from the TA, not the prof, but still, 250 is slightly more than 30...)

    I'm sure on some level it is a factor, but not to the point where it makes quality teaching impossible.
     
  10. Jimmy James

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    Have a room of 250 college students. Have a room of 250 10 year olds. See what room full of people makes you want to kill yourself first. And that's why classroom size is important.
     
  11. Volo

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    Not to mention the fact that children ages 6-18 are in school by law. University students are there of their own free will, and a large part of what they learn has to do with how actively they pursue it.

    The university kids aren't going to need their hands held.
     
  12. KIMaster

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    Heh. In the USSR, and in many Asian schools, it was/is the exact opposite; a class of 40 10 year-olds would be respectful and silent towards their teacher. (Probably for fear of getting hit, but still) Meanwhile, the college students, especially in those countries, would openly talk shit to their professor if they felt they were under-qualified, or just felt like fucking with them.

    But even here, I've known students carrying on loud conversations in lecture halls, which is something that very rarely happened at the public schools I attended.

    Also, I was thinking more of high school teachers, but if a fourth grade teacher can't establish order over 30 students, I don't see why they would do so over 25 of them.

    Edit-

    It's a whole different topic, but in the USSR, you could terminate one's education at the age of 14 if you wanted to. (High school was only until 16, then university, but you could forgo the last two years) While I realize that most students here are probably less mature at that age, it's not an altogether bad idea; by the end of high school, many students who don't want to be there are just biding their time until they can work/commit crimes full time. And that's obviously a distraction for those that do want to learn.
     
  13. D26

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    I'm trying to be surprised that KIMaster thinks foreign countries do things better than Americans. Movies, education, what else now?

    As for class sizes, 5 little kids can make a difference, especially of 1 or 2 of them are inclusion special education students, which is being pushed hard, so it wouldn't surprise me.

    The other thing is that, in the United States, the teachers have little recourse to keep a class under control. Make no mistake, teachers can do very little to keep students in line. In China and Russia, however, things were (and are) significantly different. Respect is a major issue. In US classrooms, students wonder around, text, and generally ignore teachers, and the worst thing that can happen to them is either a detention or suspension, maybe a poor grade. Their parents likely won't punish them, and even if the parents do, maybe they'll get grounded. Over there, they can get in all kinds of trouble for acting disrespectful towards an adult, because it is a MUCH bigger issue over there. It'd be much worse than "you can't leave the house for the night, but you can still text/e-mail, play video games, talk on the phone, and generally do everything you do anyway."
     
  14. Nettdata

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    And with this, you fail.

    EVERY good teacher I've had has inspired and motivated us, and THAT is how they kept us interested and "under control". It was the boring, shitty teachers that would lose our interest and have things spin out of control.

    Respect is something to be earned, not demanded. It was the same in the military; some leaders you would walk through fire willingly, others you despised and wanted nothing to do with.


    There is more to teaching than presenting a classroom with material. A large part of that is being able to connect with that class.

    If you have to rely on something else to keep your class in line, you fail as a teacher.

    And don't get me started on the effect that poor or nonexistent parenting is having on this type of thing.
     
  15. ghettoastronaut

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    Now I don't care to quibble about whether or not they've overpaid, but two things seem evident. Firstly, their high salaries aren't necessarily just to compensate them for hard work, but to provide an incentive to other people (vice presidents, lesser executives, executives from other companies) to work their asses off and hopefully get promoted / hired to the top job.

    Secondly,

    Pfizer's president Ian Read: <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Read" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Read</a>

    Read received his BSc in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London (then a college of the University of London) in 1974. He earned the Chartered Accountants certification from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales in 1978.

    Astra Zeneca's chairman was previously the chairman of Renault and an executive at a variety of other non-pharmaceutical companies.

    Astra Zeneca's CEO... <a class="postlink" href="http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=8051064&ticker=AZN:US" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://investing.businessweek.com/resea ... ker=AZN:US</a>

    The CEO of Wyeth...

    <a class="postlink" href="http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/12/best-boss-09_Bernard-J-Poussot_O85P.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/12/bes ... _O85P.html</a>
    Eli Lilly's CEO <a class="postlink" href="http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/12/best-boss-09_Bernard-J-Poussot_O85P.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/12/bes ... _O85P.html</a>
    Merck's CEO <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Frazier" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Frazier</a>
    I'm sure you notice a trend here. CEOs of large pharmaceutical corporations might have once been talented researchers (only one of them on the list seems to fit the bill) but what matters is their ability to manage and lead people (hell, the CEO of RIM isn't even an engineer). One may as well say that executives of engineering and construction firms have to be great electricians or stonemasons. You said that the two pharma CEOs you know have advanced technical qualifications, but you also said that they lead smaller biotech firms, which I think explains it - smaller companies have less space to hire lawyers and accountants and non-expert management positions, and senior executives would also be more likely to be involved with important research decisions, as they need to be able to decide, with their own expertise, which projects get funding from a (by comparison) limited pool of resources.
     
  16. Nettdata

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    Another huge thing that you may be missing is a CEO's Rolodex.

    A lot of times, CEO's are put into their position as a means of expanding a company's relationships and business opportunities. This could be worth millions or billions to a company's revenue.

    And not all CEO's have the same role.

    Some are figureheads, meant to make the shareholders happy while the VP's run the show, and others are the Captain at the helm of the ship..

    Take Larry Ellison, for example. I've met him, had dinner at his house, and worked closely with his company for quite a few years.

    The guy started his company and is leading it with a VERY hands-on approach.

    Sometimes, too much so. He's had his own pet-projects that have taken the company backwards in the past (his whole "the network is the computer" phase comes to mind), but they've persevered and survived and thrived.


    Hell, I have "CEO" on my business card.


    CEO's are all different, and to try and make generic statements about any of them without knowing the specific roles they're playing is silly.

    It's not a position that has clear cut requirements like someone working in the mail room.
     
  17. KIMaster

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    Hmm. I was trying to seriously discuss the question with you. Maybe you don't want to?

    With regards to education, it's not what I "think"; it's quantifiable stats not only from standardized testing, but also the results of international competitions in things like chemistry, physics, math, etc. Besides, I have been exposed to the Russian form of teaching through my father. Guess how it worked out for me?

    Despite being painfully lazy and frequently unmotivated, I got perfect grades and test scores, skipped several years in certain subjects, took advanced classes at Stanford in high school, got into a top school, etc. That's not to brag; because on the contrary, the things I could do were unexceptional for either the old USSR curriculum or many schools throughout Asia.

    And believe me, the top international students I have met from those countries are WAY smarter and more capable than I am.

    By the way, the USA team will typically do quite well in international academic competitions, finishing in the top 5 or 10. Except then you realize the team is composed of 4 Asians who weren't born here and 2 white guys, one of whom is home-schooled, and the other a recent European immigrant.

    So yeah, if you're seriously suggesting that other countries aren't well ahead of the US academically, I would stop right now.

    I'm sure this happens in certain classrooms, but let's not generalize to such a crazy extent, okay? I've never seen anything remotely like the above bedlam in the public schools I attended, and we had classes that would habitually make substitute teachers break down and cry.

    Your school doesn't have Saturday five? And I wouldn't call a detention anything light; I'm six years out of high school, but it was still a major fucking pain whenever I got it. And honestly, it was much worse than being slapped on the wrist at that point in my life.

    Look, you're absolutely right that teachers should have a little more authority than they presently do, but you're also exaggerating greatly to make your point. You're not all helpless victims facing an avalanche of insurmountable circumstances.

    Especially considering that shitty teaching goes on in public schools here with a 70% Asian demographic that are about as attentive and respectful as can be.

    Edit-

    Everything you wrote here is completely correct. I couldn't have put it better myself.

    I was just making a broader point that yes, these people are really REALLY smart, and the easiest way to do that was with their technical backgrounds. Since "take my word for it" didn't suit Nom Chompsky (otherwise a cool guy!), it was the only other thing I could fall back on.

    But yes, once they become a CEO, their primary skills are not the technical ones, and that's also true of the smaller firms I mentioned.
     
  18. Kampf Trinker

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    This is true, but only to an extent. Some kids just aren't going to give a fuck and punishment is the only thing they understand. Maybe it has to do with parenting, maybe they're just little bastards, but not everyone can be motivated to be interested and work hard.

    My high school cost $20k+ per year (absolutely absurd, but my family didn't have to pay for it) so I never had to deal with all the horror stories I've heard about in the public system. Most of the teachers knew their material well and made genuine efforts to help the kids learn. Still, the arrogance of some of the teachers was mind boggling. I had some that couldn't go a week without mentioning that this school only had the cream of the crop.

    For those that think teachers are underpaid, exactly how little do you think they should make? Most of them aren't exactly raking it in. Should they be getting less than minimum wage? Personally I think the pay is just about right once you throw in all the vacation time they get. Plus, a lot of them work over summer so that gets added to what they pull in every year.

    I'm not buying that teaching is all that difficult. Sure, you make adjustments each year, but you're still basically teaching the same thing and you get time off during your work day to do that as well. Take a math teacher for example. The material is never going to change, when you grade tests it can't be that time consuming when there's just one clear right or wrong answer, and it's the same shit year in year out. To me, the hardest part about teaching would be having to deal with all the bitchy students how complain incessantly about their grades. Every girl I was friends with in high school (with the exception of two who just didn't care about grades) did this on every fucking test/paper and had the most snotty condescending attitude I've ever seen. I would have choked a bitch.

    A quick note on tutoring: Look, I've tutored some kids as well and of course they learn faster when it's one on one and you can cater to their individual needs. I don't think this should be compared to teaching a classroom full of students.

    Overpaid: Professional athletes. Granted they have talents few others do, but the amount of money they make these days is staggering. Then, so many of them have the audacity to piss and moan about their contracts and/or hold out.
     
  19. KIMaster

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    I know this topic is already a mess of different debates (some quite interesting!), but goddamn it, I like this subject so much I can't resist;

    Based on the econometric findings from the sport of basketball, you're simultaneously right and wrong.

    A guy like LeBron James or Kobe Bryant gets paid a salary of $20 million a year because it's the max contract he can get, but meanwhile, they bring at least $80 million of yearly revenue to their team. You can argue that it's unfair all you like, but by the standard metric, they're underpaid.

    Meanwhile, some scrub on the end of the bench, who is getting paid a mere $3,000,000 a year? Absolutely and unquestionably overpaid. They are bringing nowhere near that much revenue to the team. Same goes for those making the NBA's "minimum wage" of $450,000 a year (not to mention the fanciest hotels, first-class jets, a princely per diem, top-notch food, trainers, awesome sluts, etc.).

    You're also correct in the sense that in certain sports, the players get too high a percentage of the league's yearly revenue, even when many teams are losing money.

    For instance, in the NBA, they presently make 57% of the total revenue (it's 47% in the NFL by comparison, a giant difference), which is a little high if you ask me. Meanwhile, some team owners are losing tens of millions a year.

    I don't know how true it is in the other sports like football, tennis, etc., but I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar.
     
  20. D26

    D26
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    Emotionally Jaded

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    Parenting is a huge issue, and I am well aware that the best way to keep a class from misbehaving is to engage them in something they enjoy.

    However, I'd venture to guess that you didn't exactly go to what could be described as a 'rough' school, where the majority of the students straight up don't want to be there (and apologies of this assumption is wrong).

    I'll give you an example that happened recently. A friend was student teaching in a class in a very low-income high school social studies class. On the day he got there, the teacher in charge told him that most of the students were failing, and didn't turn in anything. The student teacher was teaching one project: an oral history on the students' own culture. Basically, he said that they could interview parents, grandparents, and others to learn about themselves and their cultural heritage. Most of the class was African American or Hispanic, and on the first day, they all seemed really excited about the project. According to the student teacher, when he talked to the regular teacher later, the regular teacher said that most of the students were more excited about this project than they had been about anything in a long time. There were three major assignments: an interview, a 2 page paper, and a final oral presentation.

    Like I said, his first day went well. His second day, however, things started to slow down. He came in and showed his project that he'd completed, and talked about interviewing parents, and again tried to engage the students to learn about themselves. His goal was to show them that he wasn't having them do anything that he wasn't willing to do himself. Also, no part of this project was difficult in any way, shape, or form. One student told him to, and this is a quote (it is on tape, as he taped the classes he taught), "go fuck his own guido ass." (He is Italian and did his project on his Italian heritage). Things only went down hill from there. The teacher he was working with sent that student away, but from then on, no one in the class did shit for the student teacher. At the end of the unit, two kids completed their papers, no one completed an interview, and no one did a final oral presentation.

    Where did it go wrong? Well, one student didn't feel like doing the project, and he was vocal about this (hence the 'go fuck your guido ass' comment). That student got a whopping one day suspension, so he got a day out of school (where he doesn't want to be) for telling a teacher to go fuck himself. Yeah, that was punishment. After that, everyone else in the class, who up until then had been fairly excited about this project (again, this was on his videos that he showed us, you could tell a lot of the students liked the idea of the project), also stopped caring. Maybe it was too much work (even though they had 4 weeks to complete it), but there was a day and a half where he really seemed to connect, and it was all fucked by one student who had zero desire to be in the class, learn anything, or do anything, but was legally obligated to be in school.

    The point is this: even if you DO connect with the majority of your students, all it takes is one or two students who really don't give a fuck about anyone, and who are just biding their time until they are eighteen and can drop out, to turn a class against a teacher, especially in these low-income areas. Kids get badgered into thinking that caring about learning is stupid. Those schools are really rough to teach at, and reaching students who have either been shit on their whole lives, don't want to be reached, have non-existent parents, or have been passed along to high school despite not being able to read or write can be really, really difficult.

    Its easy to reach a bunch of suburban, middle or upper class kids and keep their attention. Reaching lower class kids, gang members, kids that teachers and parents and society gave up on long ago... it isn't as easy as "here is an assignment you'll enjoy!"

    I'm sorry to harp on the low-income schools thing, but the truth is, that is where most of the problems with the educational system lie. It is also where teachers (and students) get shit on the most. You take a group of kids, give them single parents or non-existent parents, the influence of street gangs telling them school is useless and stupid, and a society that basically tells them they aren't worth the air they breathe, and then you stick 30 of them together in a classroom with a single adult who is tasked with not only keeping them under some semblance of control, but attempting to actually teach them something. You think teachers at middle and upper-class schools, or private schools, have the same kind of classroom management issues that a teacher at a low-income school has? Fuck and no. Teachers at schools in more affluent neighborhoods have to worry about students texting during class. Teachers at low-income schools have to worry about enforcing dress codes so kids don't wear gang colors to school. They are two completely different worlds, and unfortunately even the best teacher can get bogged down and burnt out at a shitty school... not that it matters, as standardized test scores at low-income schools are usually so shitty that teachers there are fired within three to four years of starting there because they can't get the test scores high enough.

    Teaching some of those kids is like trying to feed a starving baby that doesn't want to eat. You keep pushing and pushing that spoon with the food towards their faces, and trying to make noises and other things to get them to take the food. Sometimes, you'll make a face and get them to open their mouths, and you'll pop some of that food in and they'll begrudgingly swallow it. It is made even tougher because you KNOW this baby needs to eat to survive, but the baby doesn't know it needs to eat to survive. Sometimes, though, if you're real good (and with a little luck), you'll get them to open their mouths and take some of the food by their own choice. And sometimes, if a teacher is really, really good (and with a little luck), you'll get them to open up and start learning on their own. Of course, more often than not, teachers don't last long at said schools.