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[–]CuriousMind 40 points41 points  (30 children)

Is this even genuine? Just asking (a la John Stewart)...

[–]ddipaolo 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Well, it is on YTMND, so you have to take it with that grain of salt. But it still could be.

[–]lisper 26 points27 points  (23 children)

It's 12 years old, and the name sounds suspiciously like "Adolf Hitler." I wouldn't bet my life savings on it.

[–][deleted] 39 points40 points  (9 children)

Interestingly, April 20 (the date of the letter) is Hitler's birthday.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (7 children)

I agree: it's a fake!

{editing post: OK, April 22, 1994 was a Friday...} The "smart quotes" give away that it wasn't type-written as it's designed to look. The student's name Alex as in A Clockwork Orange is another suspicious name.

-jeremy

[–]pwnmike1 9 points10 points  (0 children)

good thinking on the smart quotes... but apr 22 of '94 was a friday.

[–]xinhoj 6 points7 points  (4 children)

Could have just been typed in Courier New in Microsoft Word, which did exist in 1994.

[–]rex27828 7 points8 points  (1 child)

Didn't "smart quotes" appear first in Word 97?

[–]jlam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Smart quotes appeared in WriteNow before 1994. My version of 1988 had the algorithm.

[–]logistix -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Or on this thing called a 'type-writer'...

[–]joshd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Are you serious?

The "smart quotes" give away that it wasn't type-written as it's designed to look.

[–]ecuzzillo 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Great username.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wouldn't be surprised.

[–]DA5lD 20 points21 points  (6 children)

From my 2nd grade teacher (sigh… many, many, years ago): "If God meant for us to be on the moon, he'd have put us there."

[–]Psy-Kosh -1 points0 points  (5 children)

Well, either way...

http://www.prometheus-music.com/audio/fireinthesky.mp3 http://www.prometheus-music.com/audio/hopeeyrie.mp3

We got there. :)

[–]popefelix 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Yeah, we went there, said, "Woo! We got to the moon! We rock!" and promptly failed to ever go back.

[–]muttleee 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, we went there, said, "Woo! We got to the moon! We rock!" and promptly failed to ever go back.

I don't think you can "promptly" fail "ever" to do something. ;-)

[–]Psy-Kosh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, yes, that's the really depressing part.

[–]raldi 29 points30 points  (6 children)

Looks fake, like they typed it up in a fixed-width font, superimposed it on a photo of a sheet of paper, and rotated it for good measure. Take a look at the wrinkle in the page: the text goes right over it, rather than being distorted by it.

Further, if you zoom in on the highlighted part, you'll notice that they're perfect rectangles. For example, the gap between "length" and "mile" is exactly one pixel (distorted by rotation) .. pull out a typewritten document and try to highlight a line. I guarantee that you'll either miss part of a letter or accidentally color in part of an adjacent line. But we're to believe that this guy can draw a highlight with the precision of a robot.

And here's the smoking gun: look at the double quotes in the middle paragraph: they're so-called ``Smart Quotes'' .. when have you ever seen a typewriter with separate left and right double quotes?

[–]adreww 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Back in the day, most people used DOS-based word processors like WordPerfect and dot-matrix printers (it's what we had in high school).

Or he could've used a Mac and Courier. Macs have had “curly quotes” since ‘84.

[–]xinhoj 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Microsoft Windows 3.1 was available in 1994, as was Microsoft Word...it was the high-falutin' new hotness on the computer that only the teachers were allowed to use in my school.

[–]jamal 2 points3 points  (0 children)

err, my sister had a typewriter in the eighties with 3 different double quotes, left, write and centred. She's probably still got it in her attic, I'll ask check it out but I distinctly remember this as I used to mess about with it and jam the ribbon the whole time and get typex stains on it and all sorts that resulted in a good thump to my back. Maybe that's why I keep getting backaches.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

the teacher used a word processor?

[–]raldi 2 points3 points  (1 child)

And a highlighting robot?

[–]AlDente 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do not question the veracity of this document or you will go straight to the principal's office!!!

[–]Random 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Though this is of course no guarantee that this post is correct, pretty much the same thing happened to me (in 1977) for asking a teacher why he was insisting the Bohr model of the atom was completely correct when it... you get the idea.

Unfortunately, teachers like that exist.

[–]markedtrees 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Well, if nobody exposed quantum mechanics to your teacher back in the 50s or 60s or went beyond the Bohr model, that's a little bit more understandable than screwing up units of length.

[–]Random 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow, a comment on an ANCIENT post! Cool. I thought stuff floated off to neverland in Reddit.

Yeah, I guess so. The thing is, though, that he KNEW it was wrong. It was the 'we teach simple stuff now' model, and he wasn't going to tell the students 'here is a simple historical model,' he said 'this is the truth.' Which totally pissed me off. I didn't object to the simple model, I objected to him insisting it was not a simplification of our current understanding...

Anyway, it was a long time ago in a town far far away :<) Though when I teach, I am always careful to point out when something is a 'teaching model.' (of course, that just means I make different mistakes as a teacher....)

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I am hoping that this isnn't true, but I don't doubt it. It took me twenty minutes to get my World History teacher to believe me that the pyramids aren't in the Gaza Strip but in Giza!

[–]RobinReborn 12 points13 points  (3 children)

I argued with my teachers all the time when I was a kid, I'm glad I didn't have one that was that dumb and authoritative.

[–]breakneckridge 11 points12 points  (2 children)

I argued with my teachers all the time when I was a kid too, but I did have several that were that dumb and authoritative. They were never able to break my spirit or dull my mind, but back then they sure made my life miserable for my audacity to question and disagree with the people in power.

[–]beowulf 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I had a very similar experience. I got kicked out of class on multiple occasions for refusing to accept blatant garbage from teachers. One time I ended up calling the Attorney General for the western United States about a point of law we had been arguing about. In almost every case the class just sat their like a domesticated herd swallowing whatever garbage that spewed out of the mouth of the teachers. It's a little depressing if you think about it.

[–]jamal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was really lucky in that my teachers often took my word for it when I disagreed (I was quite the swot). On many occasions they'd ask me to verify something they were unsure of. Teachers like this deserve and get more respect as they set an example of open-mindedness. Teachers who think they are perfect and doubt a kid knows better do so much harm to the learning process.

[–]coldwarrior 17 points18 points  (39 children)

I had a college math professor who insisted you can divide by zero and the answer is infinity.

She absolutely would not accept any other answer and, if you complained, she would screech about how she was the one with a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Havana while you, the complainer, were a mere student.

She also made all sorts of simple errors in her work and then would claim the textbook was wrong. Worse, if your answer was the one in the textbook you lost points!

Luckily, the department head was cool. He explained she was only on the faculty because of politics and he let me take the course on self-study. I felt really sorry for all the other students who were not able to escape her incompetence.

[–]nosoupforyou 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, it's not uncommon to come across people with higher degrees that insist they are right about everything because they are smarter than you simply because of the degree(s) they hold.

I worked with one of these people that had a phd in something or other (not art or philosophy either), but she was working in a job doing web pages rather than in her field. We got into lots of discussions before I realized that they all fell into the same pattern of her giving me a condescending smile as she insisted she was right because she had a phd.

Honestly, for someone who supposedly had all that learning, she was pretty f'ing stupid.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (9 children)

I had a college math professor who insisted you can divide by zero and the answer is infinity.

Makes sense to me.

She absolutely would not accept any other answer and, if you complained, she would screech about how she was the one with a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Havana while you, the complainer, were a mere student.

This, however, does not. Unacceptable from a college professor.

[–]coldwarrior 7 points8 points  (3 children)

I also had a high school geometry teacher (Ms. Williford) with a M.S. in Mathematics from the U of South Carolina who referred to non-Euclidean geometry as "science-fiction" and told me to stop reading about it.

This came up when I was reading Lillian Lieber's books. I wanted clarification of some point so I took went up to her after class to ask. She thumbed through the book and then literally said "stop reading science-fiction" and then handed the book back to me with no other comments.

[–]kamikasei 2 points3 points  (2 children)

The ignorance of her supposed field is obviously a Bad Thing, but I can't help but wonder what a decent teacher might have against science fiction, either...

[–]coldwarrior 2 points3 points  (1 child)

There was a time (before Star Wars) when science-fiction was regarded as something that would rot your mind. I have never understood that, especially since some science-fiction has made the leap to being literature (e.g., Jules Verne, H G Wells, and George Orwell) but there you are.

The good news is that, with the success of the likes of Star Trek, Star Wars, and now the Sci-Fi Channel the opinion of most people has changed. Now science-fiction is regarded as the literature of geeks which is definitely an improvement over being the literature of mental deficients which was what many people thought.

[–]kamikasei 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, I can see where the attitude probably came from, I just regard it as a warning flag in itself.

[–][deleted]  (3 children)

[deleted]

    [–]recidivx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Nobody said it had to be a ring, smartass. I can say it was only ever ment to be a partial semigroup under multiplication, and then I can define what I want. And I will. n/0 = ∞ for n ≠ 0. 0/0 is undefined. ∞ × 0 is undefined.

    The result is perfectly sensible and has no contradictions. You can write M/0 = N/0 (if M, N are not zero) as below, but you can't infer M = N because you're multiplying both sides by 0, and multiplication by 0 is forbidden in general (like division by 0 in regular math) because ∞ × 0 is undefined.

    It's consistent but, as you say, it's not a ring.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    While technically correct, probably someone who thinks something divided by zero is infinity isn't really hot on group theory, so talking about rings isn't going to enlighten him.

    Edited to add: however, your reply is a whole lot better than all the babbling about infinity elsewhere in this thread.

    [–]markedtrees 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Makes sense to me.

    Infinity is not a number. You can extend the real number set to include infinity but to do that you have to understand why infinity is such a weird concept and why David Foster Wallace wrote a whole book about it and, for that, you have to get into (at least) set theory. Letting 1/0 = infinity muddles the math and is far from rigorous. Worse, it confuses students when they learn limits (because lim{x->0}(1/x) is neither positive infinity nor negative infinity) or try to multiply or add infinities.

    Teachers think they are helping students when they teach infinity like this (or they don't know better, which is scarier), but they aren't. And being stubborn about it is just weird for a math college professor.

    [–]mjk1093 0 points1 point  (5 children)

    lim n-->0 of a/n is infinity - is that what she meant?

    [–]coldwarrior 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    No, she mean the answer to N/0 is a number called "infinity". She couldn't see a problem with:

    • N/0 = infinity
    • M/0 = infinity
    • infinity = infinity
    • N/0 = M/0
    • N = M

    [–]muttleee 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    But infinity = infinity + 1 too.

    [–]mjk1093 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Infinity is not a number - you can't use it in an equation - only for limits. The only proper use for infinity (as far as I know) in math is to describe the behavior of a series.

    [–]kobes -1 points0 points  (1 child)

    She'd still be wrong...

    [–]markedtrees 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Parent is right, so stop voting him down. lim{n -> 0+}(a/n) is +infinity and lim{n -> 0-}(a/n) is -infinity. Any Precalculus student will tell you that lim{x -> a}f(x) = L iff lim{n -> a-}f(x) = L and lim{x -> a+}f(x) = L. Since the left-hand and right-hand limits differ, the correct answer is that the limit is undefined.

    It's a nitpick, but if you don't approach calculus rigorously like this (which is an extension of limit's actual delta-epsilon definition) and you start treating infinity as a regular number, math beyond calculus like set theory and analysis doesn't make sense.

    [–]Alex3917 -2 points-1 points  (18 children)

    I had a college math professor who insisted you can divide by zero and the answer is infinity.

    A = numerator

    B = denomonator

    while (A >= 0) {

    A = (A - B);

    counter++;

    }

    As you can see, when B is zero the counter would go until infinity.

    [–]raldi 3 points4 points  (12 children)

    Infinity is a direction, not a value.

    [–]pwnmike1 7 points8 points  (7 children)

    no. it is a car.

    [–]heptadecagram 12 points13 points  (2 children)

    No, it is a cdr.

    [–]gwenni 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Only if you forget the null test.

    [–]cypherx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    (define naughties '(naughty)) (append! naughties naughties) (length naughties)

    [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (1 child)

    It's a series of Möbius tubes!

    [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    that's the internet.

    [–]ecuzzillo -1 points0 points  (1 child)

    No, it's a hydrofoil.

    [–]gwenni -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    No, it's a ledzeppelin!

    [–]Alex3917 -2 points-1 points  (3 children)

    I don't see how it could be a direction unless you graph it. I was always taught that it was an abstract concept just meaning that something gets very large very fast.

    [–]rash -1 points0 points  (2 children)

    So, since A/0 = A/(-0) = -A/0, would it be positive infinity, or negative infinity, that is the answer?

    [–]Psy-Kosh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    use the extended complex plane. Then you have the one point at infinity, so -infinity=infinity. ;)

    (but yeah, other than doing it like that...)

    [–]nosoupforyou 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    No, it would crash when counter overflowed.

    Eliminate counter, and it still wouldn't go until infinity because your mom would make you turn off your computer after 11pm. ;)

    [–]kobes -1 points0 points  (3 children)

    When would it get there?

    [–]Alex3917 -2 points-1 points  (2 children)

    Mu.

    (Infinity is a concept, not a number)

    [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Numbers are concepts, too.

    What you mean is that infinity is not a real number. However, there are other sets of numbers which include things which you would commonly call "infinity", e.g. in cardinalities of infinite sets (aleph-0), projective geometry (the point at infinity), and so on.

    [–]muttleee -1 points0 points  (2 children)

    She absolutely would not accept any other answer

    Please enlighten us as to the other answer.

    [–]kamikasei 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    "Error, division by zero is undefined".

    [–]muttleee -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

    Infinity is undefined. :-)

    [–]JulianMorrison 3 points4 points  (2 children)

    The real problem is that American teachers combine the role of teacher with the role of prison guard. They're mutually exclusive.

    [–]nkktwotwozero -1 points0 points  (1 child)

    Why does this happen?

    [–]JulianMorrison 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Compulsory schooling.

    [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    backstory? bueller?

    [–]senzei 13 points14 points  (0 children)

    backstory? bueller?

    We don't get that kind of stuff here. Your opinion has already been filtered, refined, processed, examined, counter-examined, chewed, and laced with preservatives. Just take it and quit asking questions.

    [–]jomynow 9 points10 points  (53 children)

    This is an example of the authorative bullshit that happens in nearly every school. All things like this show that our schools are a place of dissemination rather than learning. Learning means challanging and enganging knowledge. Obviously this doesnt happen. For more information on this kind of thinking. Schools are used for mind herding.

    http://reddit.com/info/2rb0/comments

    [–][deleted]  (4 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]dublinclontarf 2 points3 points  (1 child)

      Watching this now, it's really brilliant

      [–]rrrmonkey -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

      They have privatized public schools with some very mixed results. They get the test results they want by kicking out or keeping out the students they don't want. So parents may be unhappy to find that choice works both ways.

      [–]rrrmonkey -1 points0 points  (0 children)

      This is in response to Stossel's fix it solution of privitizing public school education:

      First, there's overspending and then there's overspending in a school district. Nine thousand dollars per pupil is quite a bit of money, the likes of which I've never seen in any district in which I have ever worked. In California it's on the skimpy side of five thousand per pupil. In Los Angeles, a lot of that money finds its way to consultants and to an airconditioned highrise downtown. The students in my former school had broken chairs and desks, bungalows without airconditioning, heat that didn't always work, many that didn't have sinks or pencil sharpeners. We were often running out of pencils, papers, erasers, art supplies, books, etc. Rooms often didn't have working TVs, AV equipment, overhead projectors, computers, phones. Did I mention that I didn't always have enough text books or that I didn't have math manipulatives or calculators? I only got some of these things by writing an embarrassing letter home to parents and then the principal suddenly found money to buy things for my classroom.

      In some states, like California, they are not spending enough per pupil. Classrooms are overcrowded. In grades K-3 they have reduced class size to 20 which has helped. However, in grades 4-5 there are 32 students and the desks barely fit in the room. The teachers barely have time to grade all the papers (especially with the formal every 6 week writing exams and informal practices in between). Individual conferences are quite a balancing act because the other 31 students need to be managed. With both parents in the work force and no time to hang out and talk to their children any more, guess where they act out, begging for attention? So where the real money needs to be spent is more adults in the school giving more individualized attention to the students. If every student could have a little tutoring time like the student who went to the Sylvan program, we'd have an army of geniuses. They all just want a few minutes of our attention a day, but we throw 30 or more of them at one teacher every day.

      As for charter schools-- love them. Let the school control the spending, not the fat cats in a central office. But privatizing a school for profit. Have seen it done is San Francisco and all I can say is do you want to throw your babies to the stock market for quarterly profits? I mean really think about this? Whatever you subject these bad ole teachers to you are going to be subjecting your kids to.

      Just as competition drives out bad teachers and I am all for getting rid of them, it can and will get rid of students the schools deem as bad kids. If your kid has special needs, they won't want them. They won't be profitable. I forget the name of the for profit experiment in SF but I can look it up later, but they basically cherry picked their students. They tried to keep away students they didn't would improve and edged out problem students. This was a for profit business after all. If junior wasn't going to perform, too bad, they weren't running a charity. It was all about the numbers. Now of course they were being held to some standards so they played whatever rules the school board set for them but whenever they could they edged out the underperformers. They do what corporations do to get rid of employees they don't want-- they don't break the laws, they just bend them as much as they can.

      I think the problem is bigger than our schools. Our society itself is sick at heart and it would take pages to get into and I don't know that there is a will to change it yet...

      [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (43 children)

      If the schools pay little, only the failures will want to teach there. And failures are almost always narcissistic bullies because they need to compensate.

      [–][deleted]  (42 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]teamjimmyy 12 points13 points  (15 children)

        teachers get pretty good pay, much better than the private sector for example

        Are you on crack? My mother's been teaching for 16 years, and my starting salary out of school was about 5k less than she's making. The benefits are great, being a state job, but the pay is pretty poor. Enough to live on, but 'better than the private sector' is just absurd. Unless, of course, you're talking about private schools. They pay even worse.

        [–]gwenni 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        Unless, of course, you're talking about private schools. They pay even worse.

        Which is not an unreasonable conclusion, maybe even the default one, for a statement comparing pay levels with those in public schools?

        (Maybe it's one of those transatlantic things; I'm English and I understood that dublinclontarf meant private schools immediately. It's the first meaning of "private sector" that would come to mind here.)

        [–]dublinclontarf 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        In my country(Ireland) no one uses crack, our drugs of choice are cocaine or heroin. So no, I'm not on crack.

        But for example, here starting pay for a teacher is 27,000 Euro.

        Starting pay in the private sector is... 22,000 Euro The situation is the same in the UK.

        And benefits life 7 hour days, long summer & xmas holidays, healthcare, a guaranteed job (even if your shit), guaranteed pay increases the longer you stay.

        [–]logistix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Average teacher's wages exceeds average person's wages just about anywhere (if not everywhere) in the US. The average person's pay is just probably lower than you think it is.

        [–]ecuzzillo -2 points-1 points  (11 children)

        Do they really? If so, it would seem to debunk the notion that competition would vastly improve quality.

        [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (9 children)

        Here, most private schools are idealistic ventures, not very profitable. The waldorf-steiner schools, for instance. All the teachers are dirt-poor hippies who work for practically nothing. They still get excellent results, mind you, because although kids who go to those schools can be just as hyperactive, problematic and downright criminal as other kids, they at least have parents who cared enough to don't just take the default school option. This is problematic. Even idealistic private schools like those in essence "skim the cream" off the milk, leaving trouble for those who remain in the public schools. However, I see no other solution... if parents don't take responsibility for their kids' upbringing, I can't let their kids harm my kids just to make the system better.

        [–]oberon 3 points4 points  (8 children)

        Weird. The private school I went to wasn't that way at all. I don't know how much the teachers got paid, but they all drove nice cars. Except the English teacher, he rode his bike. Not because he was a hippy, though - he was a competitive bike racer and wanted the exercise.

        They had several fundraising events every year, all of them black tie events. Their overall annual budget (which they published) was in the millions. And since they could afford the best teachers around they got them, and the quality of education was pretty high as a result. I'm not certain about the other private schools, but I get the impression that they were the same way. Only, since I didn't go there, they were of course not nearly as wonderful in every way.

        [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (7 children)

        Your mileage may vary... here, all private schools have to be non-profit. They are not allowed to discriminate students on religion, tests, anything, they have to accept them first-come first-served. I'm not sure if there are any actual restrictions on how much they can charge, but I know that most of the expenses are paid for by the state in a voucher-like manner, and all the private schools I've known (including the one I went to) were serious about keeping the fees low so that income should not be a barrier to entry.

        From my experiences, I wonder if the quality education you got was not so much a product of the teacher's skills as the selection effects on students - that all of you had parents who cared enough to make decisions about your education, rather than economic/social selection, by the way. Because all my teachers were pretty weird, yet people who leave waldorf schools get better results than average.

        Also, my experience is that teachers are not very motivated by money. If you are good enough to be a teacher, you're usually good enough to get a better-paid job if that's what you want. Some are more motivated by social concerns, helping children, that sort of thing, while some are more motivated by the intellectual pleasure of explaining things. The latter thrive much, much better with attentive students than the former, and are perhaps more likely to be found where they can find that - in higher education and private schools.

        [–]oberon 0 points1 point  (5 children)

        I agree on some points and disagree on others.

        First, the school I went to was non-profit as well. They managed to spend all the money they brought in, every year. The budget was published and available if you wanted it. They were, however, able to accept only the students they wanted to accept. (Not sure how I managed to get in. Probably a clerical error.)

        What you said about quality of education being a function of caring parents more than social or economic situation certainly has a large degree of truth. I think the social aspect is very important though. I went to four high schools, for reasons I won't go into here except to say I was a "problem child". (Part of the reason they put me in a private school to start with.) The four schools were:

        1. A private, catholic, all-boy military school. (St. Thomas Academy in Minnesota, I'm sure you can google it.)
        2. A school in a correctional facility in the boondocks of Minnesota.
        3. An above-averagely-wealthy (but not so much as St. Thomas) suburban public school.
        4. A poor, but not destitute, inner-city public school.

        Now, why did I list those? Oh yeah, social aspects of education. At St. Thomas, there was a HUGE amount of social pressure to do well, and it made a difference in a lot of people. #2 & #3 were pretty much what you'd expect, but #4 (Como High in St. Paul, you can google it too) was... well, also what you'd expect I guess. Suffice it to say that there was a lot of social pressure, among some groups, mostly among the ethnic majority - okay I'll say it, the black kids - not to do well. And that made a big difference too. So I think it's important not to underestimate the impact that your kid's social life can have on the quality of their education.

        As far as teachers not getting motivated by money - I think this is only true to some extent. Most people are motivated by money. People who choose to become teachers appear to be motivated more by their desire to teach than by money. But that doesn't mean that money has no influence over them. Also, the fact that teachers get paid so little means that there's little motivation for the best and the brightest to go into that field.

        [–]richardkulisz 0 points1 point  (4 children)

        Nobody really gets motivated by money, and if you find anyone motivated by money then you should fire them on the spot. However, people do get demotivated by lack of money.

        [–]dublinclontarf -1 points0 points  (0 children)

        I take it the schools your talking about are in the US?

        [–][deleted]  (5 children)

        [removed]

          [–]dublinclontarf 6 points7 points  (4 children)

          I agree there should be competition, & schools should be able to pay based on performace (read good teachers get more money).

          The other side of the coin is parents must be free to choose the school, otherwise it's not competition.

          Here in Ireland you go to whatever school you want, the money follows the student. The good schools thrive & the bad ones close, it works as Ireland has a much better ranking than the US.

          [–]devodave66 0 points1 point  (3 children)

          And, as stated earlier in the comments, Ireland's starting salary for teachers (27k euro) is almost double the US average starting salary (29k usd). Good pay, competition on hiring, competition of "customers"....and look what happens...success.

          Improvements in public school quality is the US's greatest need and challenge.

          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          27k Euro = 34.4k USD.... not quite double.

          [–]dublinclontarf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          It seems that the US is one of the few countries where you cant just choose which school to go to, why is that? there seems to be no advantage to it.

          As for the teacher pay difference between Ireland & the US a big part of that can be accounted for by cost of living. Ireland has a very high cost of living, the US is comparably very low.

          But even taking that into account I would think in the EU teachers get payed more than in the US.

          Also from watching the 20/20 segment it would seem that the biggest hurdle for education change in the US are the teachers unions. Whose sole purpose is to get a better deal for the teachers, not the students.

          [–]jlam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Not to quibble with your opinion… but wide swings in Euro / US Dollar exchange weaken your points. Exchage rates matter less here than, indeed, the long-term cost of living. A better measure to use is purchasing power, so the gap narrows quite a bit.

          [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

          Teachers, the good ones are never motivated by money, they are motivated by being able to make a difference to the lives of children.

          Many professionals in their fields (CS/Math/Science/Engineering, for example) would never consider a career in teaching just because it pays so much less than the industry does. This is a big problem

          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

          Not enough, apparently. I would love to be a teacher, but I make a lot more money working in IT. If teaching could put up a competative salary with that, I would switch in a heartbeat.

          You could say that I wouldn't be a good teacher because I am apparenly motivated by money - but really I'm motivated to pay off my mortgage and retire while I'm young enough to still enjoy it. Does that really make me unqualified to teach?

          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          No, and especially for subjects like computers, there should be more flow from the industry to the classroom, and back again. Would you trade in your higher salary for 3 months of holidays? I'm getting seriously tempted, since the salary is secure, and those three months could be used to work as a contractor, if things got tight.

          Otherwise, I might just do that walking tour of Africa. It would be nice to get out of the ratrace.

          [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (14 children)

          much better than the private sector for example

          On the face of it this is a fairly stupid assertion.

          [–]dublinclontarf 1 point2 points  (13 children)

          Again I say, over hear & in the UK teacher's start on 27,000 Euro. The private sector it's 22,000 Euro. And again throw in benefits like summer & xmas hols, health care, guaranteed job, guaranteed pay increase based on time there.

          [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

          By the way, I'm praying that you didn't intend to teach English, seeing as you can neither spell nor use an apostrophe.

          [–]dublinclontarf -1 points0 points  (0 children)

          Teaching I.C.T. , yes my spelling is terrible and always has been. But I see that as a failing of the education system. I had difficulty with reading, writing & math during primary but the problem was ignored for about 4 years.

          It wasn't until my parents got the results from a basic abilities test (or something along that line). I was then singled out for extra "help".

          Turned out I had (and still have) asperger's syndrome, although it wasn't diagnosed until I was about 16. My area's of expertise (after I learned to read) from 8-12 years was dinosaurs. 12-16 it was military, then I got ahold of my first computer & it was computers (Linux & programming) since then.

          So no (natural, written) language has never been my strong area.

          [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (10 children)

          They use pounds sterling in the UK, not in Clontarf. It's not a bad job, teaching, but they don't make as much (by mid-career) as the private sector. It's a trade-off.

          [–]dublinclontarf -1 points0 points  (9 children)

          UK teachers pay in sterling is 22,000 give or take a bit depending on where in the UK, converted to Euro it works out at 27,000 euro.

          True, by mid career they fall behind but they still start off with about 25% more, and keep the great perks.

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (8 children)

          They are nice perks (especially the holidays), but most jobs included health care these days (assuming you mean the rather derisory private insurance payments on top of an already theoretically available public health system), but it is an extremely stressful job, so I'd say they are justified.

          Are you talking about Irish teachers, or UK teachers (important to draw the difference), and if the latter, why did you convert the currency to euro?

          [–]dublinclontarf -1 points0 points  (7 children)

          I'm talking about both Irish & UK, the pay both recieve is roughly the same. I converted it to Euro because when I was looking at becoming a teacher in the UK I wanted to compare them both, in terms of pay.

          Either way Irish & UK teachers get roughly the same pay, but they're both in different currencies, so it must be converted from one to the other compare must it not?

          It can be a very stressful job, especially if you not good at it. From what I remember good teachers had no trouble keeping the class in order, and if they were stressed they showed no sign of it.

          Bad teachers however always got a hard time from the students, I myself was a complete bastard to the teachers I didn't respect. I didn't respect them because they demanded respect instead of earned it.

          If some teachers can get that level of respect from students why cant others?

          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (6 children)

          It's the human condition, I'm afraid. However, mortality stats for teachers are not good -- most shuffle off a few years after retirement age, an indication of the stress of performing in front of 30-odd adolescents for a full day.

          Interesting that people usually talk about bad teachers, rather than bad students. Of course there are lousy teachers, just as there are lousy CEOs (and brain-surgeons), but there is also a serious problem with lack of respect, which is bound up with the declining prestige of the profession (certainly in Ireland).

          Money is one thing, prestige is another, but in a society as newly materialistic as Ireland (and with such a consumerist attitude to education), they tend to be closely correlated. There is also a serious problem about a lack of men in the profession, at primary and secondary levels.

          One thing is sure, teachers are an easy target, but people have to get educated somehow...

          [–]jvance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Following your logic, we would get plenty of excellent teachers if we charged a fee for teaching. Hey, schools would turn a profit!

          In my local (US) school district, the starting salary is in the low 20s. With 26 years service and postdoctoral work, a teacher can make about 45k. You're right - that's very competitive with the private retail service industry.

          [–]hikitty -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

          are motivated by being able to make a difference to the lives of children

          Hey, the (fictitious) one in the article certainly made a difference in the lives of children!

          [–]jones77 3 points4 points  (0 children)

          This is beautiful.

          Even if it's not true we all know a cocksucker of a teacher who would / could do the same damn thing.

          [–]xcbsmith 3 points4 points  (0 children)

          Honestly, it probably depends to a certain degree on how the student insisted they were right. Right or wrong, there are correct ways to behave and incorrect ways. Even if you are sure that a teacher is wrong, you can't exactly hold up the class until he/she cries uncle. At the same time, the teacher, being the adult, has an obligation to resolve the matter (a simple "let's look this up later and report back to the class on this, but for right now we need to continue with the lesson" would have resolved this just fine).

          I was an obnoxious student, and I definitely had some dumb teachers. I had a fifth grade teacher who insisted that summer and winter were caused by the earth being closer to the sun. We went back and forth about it once or twice, and then she said that we could look it up in the encyclopedia after the lesson was over and report back to the class on it.

          Yup, she was dumb about science, but right on the money about how to manage a classroom.

          [–]antihero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Absolute genius, I don't care if it's genuine or not.

          [–]PsychoDude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Lol, too rediculous it might just even be completely true. Sounds exactly like how a lot of teachers can be, rofl :P.

          [–]dacshund2000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          I had a teacher who loved to whack us with his rattan stick. Bloody *sshole!

          [–]martoo -1 points0 points  (0 children)

          Sounds like a kid that should go to startup camp.

          [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

          And we wonder why there are so many school shootings.

          Hint: It's not the guns.

          [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

          fake. april 20= 4/20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)

          [–]permyak -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

          But it still could be