> And teachers _constantly_ monitor how their students are doing
They actually don't do it, not constantly, nor as a way of improving teaching.
They monitor their output, but rarely listen to what the student have to say.
In the end it's not their job, their job is to teach what they are told to teach, they rarely go on a limb for their students.
Because their salary does not depend on it.
But as personal story I've always had a conflict with my Italian teacher in high school, I've always been an A student, even after high school, but she hated my temper, so I've always been graded C (I believe it means sufficient in some parts of the World, for us is 6 in a scale from 3 to 10) and when in our latest test I've submitted the assignment of her favorite and she submitted mine, she was graded 9 and I was graded 6, again!
I won't tell you what color her face was when we told her the truth.
You are going through all of this, no matter what, there's always gonna be some bad teacher and yo can't do anything about it.
And since the mentality is "don't tell a professional how to do their job" it's always the student's fault.
That's why I think student should be asked if they are satisfied of their teachings, not of their grades or about how much fun they are having, but of the people teaching.
> I would venture to say "making sure a student is doing well" takes up most of the time of the job.
I'm glad it was like that for you.
It isn't so common in places I know.
In my country they spend 12, 15 maximum, hours - by contract - a week in school as high school teachers, that is when students need it the most.
Let's start by making them work 30 hours a week, it's one of the few jobs left where presence is fundamental, but we still keep treating teachers like those poor souls who have to grade a bunch of four pages written tests, like if computers have not been invented yet. It takes them weeks usually.
> A patient complaining to their doctor about some treatment not working is not telling the doctor how to do their job
I think I have not been clear: they are not complaining, they are being asked questions and depending on their answers the doctor can (should) understand if the treatment is working as intended and not causing too many contraindications .
So the analogy in education should be smth like "what's your favorite Renaissance author, and why?" not "What's the date that changed the life of Machiavelli forever?" (real question from a real questionnaire)
There is no talking to them, nobody grades them for liking profoundly horror movies and writing beautiful essays about them, because it's not "part of the teaching program"
> The analogy to health care would be like if you declared the ways in which doctors should screen for cancer. Nobody without medical training would ever think to make such a claim, but many people seem quite confident in making similar claims about how the education system should work, as you did in your first comment.
I haven't said anything of the sorts.
I am simply saying that if half of the class is getting bad grades in maths you should blame the teacher, not the students.
But bad teachers are allowed to teach anyway, because they are not responsible for their bad teachings.
At least in my country they can't be fired even if they are literally doing nothing.
> without really showing an understanding of how knowledge or satisfaction are currently - or potentially could be - assessed... are you up to date with recent literature on these concepts? Do you have experience performing these kinds of assessments?
I have a few ideas.
For example monitor what subjects show the worst grades or the highest rates of absence from school the day of a test.
These are all basic symptoms of fear and anxiety.
It doesn't take a Nobel prize to understand basic human emotions.
Let's try to understand why, the subject could be really hard or the students really stupid or it could be the teacher. Anyway, being stressed by school it's not something that motivate students.
you could simply ask them to grade their teachers anonymously a couple of times a year.
Internet forums are full of cry for help from students not understanding why they are asked such silly questions and what's the point.
We could monitor those forums, for example...
Unsurprisingly when these kinds of discussions come up, unions complain and go on strike.
And I am all in favor for unions, I have been union delegate in companies I've worked for, but school unions, they are a corporations, at least here.
I've talked to some of them, of course what I'll say is anecdotal I don't pretend to know everyone of them, but when asked why they don't want teachers to be paid better instead of a lot of teachers badly paid who don't do anything important for __education__, they told me blatantly that they prefer two jobs at current wages than one job paid double. They can spin it as a victory. They also told me that if newer teachers are paid better, old timers are going to complain ans tart asking for the same pay (it's kinda impossible here to pay two people different wages for the same job, especially if it's for the public) and that better salaries would encourage more prepared teachers to start teaching and that would look bad for the rest of them.
That's the state of our education system, I hope it is different in all the other countries but according to my friends living all over Europe it's kinda the same everywhere, especially during COVID crisis, where families where left to solve problems schools would not solve, because they couldn't get teachers to get vaccinated or to go to school.
Except, of course, for a few exceptions, that I already mentioned.
But, back on topic, if people studying the subject have no idea, well, that's a problem, don't you agree?
If we wanna keep grading people and "judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree", I think pedagogy is not doing a great service to future generations.
Let's not forget that teachers quote pedagogists when it favors them, but when it goes against their interest, they criticize them saying that "they are talking from their ivory towers. they don't know what's like being a "street" teacher"
Not all is lost or grim, teachers still fight against school commoditization, they still fight against schools as furnaces that generate young workers/consumers, but there's still a lot of conservatorism disguised by idealism.
> Do you have experience performing these kinds of assessments?
As a matter of fact I do.
I wanted to be a teacher, I was discouraged by how limited the space for new ideas was.
In my family, that is very big as I've said, there are teachers.
All of them keep doing it because it's a safe job and the salary is granted, none of them is satisfied of the work they are doing and would gladly do something else, if they had the opportunity.
They all feel like are doing nothing substantial to help the students and that the students know it, but going against the status quo would cost them too much. They tried, they've been burnt, they gave up.
So to get rid of the guilt they grade everyone good, at least they are not unpopular.
That is a lot to sort through and I'll try to pick out the points that are relevant to the discussion we started.
> I haven't said anything of the sorts. I am simply saying that if half of the class is getting bad grades in maths you should blame the teacher, not the students.
Yes, this is exactly what you said:
> "This is not the issue, this is the root cause of the issue. You DON'T measure knowledge. You should measure the satisfaction of the students."
You quite explicitly made a claim about how teachers should assess students. Then I suggested that maybe you should take a step back and question whether you are qualified to make such claims. Now, it seems like you've doubled down, and written a diatribe which superficially touches on a half dozen issues in education. I'm simply pointing out this irony: that the commenter you first replied to was lamenting how so many people outside the field of education feel qualified to make claims about pedagogy. Even if their expertise is limited to, for example:
> I wanted to be a teacher... In my family... there are teachers
They actually don't do it, not constantly, nor as a way of improving teaching.
They monitor their output, but rarely listen to what the student have to say.
In the end it's not their job, their job is to teach what they are told to teach, they rarely go on a limb for their students.
Because their salary does not depend on it.
But as personal story I've always had a conflict with my Italian teacher in high school, I've always been an A student, even after high school, but she hated my temper, so I've always been graded C (I believe it means sufficient in some parts of the World, for us is 6 in a scale from 3 to 10) and when in our latest test I've submitted the assignment of her favorite and she submitted mine, she was graded 9 and I was graded 6, again!
I won't tell you what color her face was when we told her the truth.
You are going through all of this, no matter what, there's always gonna be some bad teacher and yo can't do anything about it.
And since the mentality is "don't tell a professional how to do their job" it's always the student's fault.
That's why I think student should be asked if they are satisfied of their teachings, not of their grades or about how much fun they are having, but of the people teaching.
> I would venture to say "making sure a student is doing well" takes up most of the time of the job.
I'm glad it was like that for you.
It isn't so common in places I know.
In my country they spend 12, 15 maximum, hours - by contract - a week in school as high school teachers, that is when students need it the most.
Let's start by making them work 30 hours a week, it's one of the few jobs left where presence is fundamental, but we still keep treating teachers like those poor souls who have to grade a bunch of four pages written tests, like if computers have not been invented yet. It takes them weeks usually.
> A patient complaining to their doctor about some treatment not working is not telling the doctor how to do their job
I think I have not been clear: they are not complaining, they are being asked questions and depending on their answers the doctor can (should) understand if the treatment is working as intended and not causing too many contraindications .
So the analogy in education should be smth like "what's your favorite Renaissance author, and why?" not "What's the date that changed the life of Machiavelli forever?" (real question from a real questionnaire)
There is no talking to them, nobody grades them for liking profoundly horror movies and writing beautiful essays about them, because it's not "part of the teaching program"
> The analogy to health care would be like if you declared the ways in which doctors should screen for cancer. Nobody without medical training would ever think to make such a claim, but many people seem quite confident in making similar claims about how the education system should work, as you did in your first comment.
I haven't said anything of the sorts.
I am simply saying that if half of the class is getting bad grades in maths you should blame the teacher, not the students.
But bad teachers are allowed to teach anyway, because they are not responsible for their bad teachings.
At least in my country they can't be fired even if they are literally doing nothing.
> without really showing an understanding of how knowledge or satisfaction are currently - or potentially could be - assessed... are you up to date with recent literature on these concepts? Do you have experience performing these kinds of assessments?
I have a few ideas.
For example monitor what subjects show the worst grades or the highest rates of absence from school the day of a test.
These are all basic symptoms of fear and anxiety.
It doesn't take a Nobel prize to understand basic human emotions.
Let's try to understand why, the subject could be really hard or the students really stupid or it could be the teacher. Anyway, being stressed by school it's not something that motivate students.
you could simply ask them to grade their teachers anonymously a couple of times a year.
Internet forums are full of cry for help from students not understanding why they are asked such silly questions and what's the point.
We could monitor those forums, for example...
Unsurprisingly when these kinds of discussions come up, unions complain and go on strike.
And I am all in favor for unions, I have been union delegate in companies I've worked for, but school unions, they are a corporations, at least here.
I've talked to some of them, of course what I'll say is anecdotal I don't pretend to know everyone of them, but when asked why they don't want teachers to be paid better instead of a lot of teachers badly paid who don't do anything important for __education__, they told me blatantly that they prefer two jobs at current wages than one job paid double. They can spin it as a victory. They also told me that if newer teachers are paid better, old timers are going to complain ans tart asking for the same pay (it's kinda impossible here to pay two people different wages for the same job, especially if it's for the public) and that better salaries would encourage more prepared teachers to start teaching and that would look bad for the rest of them.
That's the state of our education system, I hope it is different in all the other countries but according to my friends living all over Europe it's kinda the same everywhere, especially during COVID crisis, where families where left to solve problems schools would not solve, because they couldn't get teachers to get vaccinated or to go to school.
Except, of course, for a few exceptions, that I already mentioned.
But, back on topic, if people studying the subject have no idea, well, that's a problem, don't you agree?
If we wanna keep grading people and "judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree", I think pedagogy is not doing a great service to future generations.
Let's not forget that teachers quote pedagogists when it favors them, but when it goes against their interest, they criticize them saying that "they are talking from their ivory towers. they don't know what's like being a "street" teacher"
Not all is lost or grim, teachers still fight against school commoditization, they still fight against schools as furnaces that generate young workers/consumers, but there's still a lot of conservatorism disguised by idealism.
> Do you have experience performing these kinds of assessments?
As a matter of fact I do.
I wanted to be a teacher, I was discouraged by how limited the space for new ideas was.
In my family, that is very big as I've said, there are teachers.
All of them keep doing it because it's a safe job and the salary is granted, none of them is satisfied of the work they are doing and would gladly do something else, if they had the opportunity.
They all feel like are doing nothing substantial to help the students and that the students know it, but going against the status quo would cost them too much. They tried, they've been burnt, they gave up.
So to get rid of the guilt they grade everyone good, at least they are not unpopular.