Joe Rogan speaks about school

[Desu]

Watch on YouTube

[TheCancer]

He nails it.

[тωιѕтє∂]

Hell yeah he does.

[SmokeyTheAggie]

BEATIFUL!

[Marauder]

Amazing

[Potato]

this whole "teachers should get paid more" stuff is just politically correct BULLSHIT. school teachers should get paid jack shit, now that everyone has access to the limitless resource of knowledge called the fuqing internet. school teachers are as obsolete as the schools they work in. fuck. the few teachers around the world who are the best at their craft can compete for students in the millions on the fuqing internet.

[Ky]

^ That's where you're wrong. What, you think Uncle Sam only exploits the students? HELL NAW, the conspiracy continues far beyond that. The good teachers (yes, they exist) are also being screwed over by our establishment. The solution is to get the government out and get the private sector in. Make education voluntary, give schools the right to get rid of troublesome students, give troublesome students the right to the school (or alternative option) of their choice.

Teachers should be paid more. People who don't take teaching seriously should not be teachers, and hence should not be paid for being a teacher.

[Potato]

^ you can take the best few teachers from anywhere in the freaking world, have them give their lectures, record it, post that shit on the internet, so that people can freaking LEARN. tutors are another thing. by teachers, i mean people who stand in front of a classroom of about 20 ppl, and give the same lectures over and over as if video recording technologies don't exist. school teachers should NOT be paid more because their jobs are drains on the economy, obsolete in the presence of modern technology.

[TheCancer]

Well, yeah, maybe from a purely educational perspective but I wouldn't go so far as to say my students don't want and even need human interaction. And they also need hands on guidance to help them learn cooperation and kindness. Many of my students are raised in pure negativity, tv negativity, and Internet negativity. A good teacher can squash all negative behavior with strict control but a great teacher can get antisocial kids to turn to kindness just by setting the right climate. Maybe that's advanced day care more than teaching but computers still can't do it.

I hear what you're saying though. Teaching as it stands now is antiquated. There's a place for the traditional model but it shouldn't be forced on everyone.

[xcriteria]

The role of teachers really needs to be redefined. If they acted more like coaches, mentors, and advisors, who got to know individual students and help them develop a personal learning plan and use all the online and in-person resources that exist in the world, so much more learning could happen.

This approach is actually taken by Big Picture Schools:

A Simple Ed Reform Solution - Connect School Life to Real Life
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.co...nnect.html

Quote:Instead of teachers…
There are advisers who work with students making a multi-year commitment to serve as their coach, mentor, teacher, and friend who guide and supports them in managing their personalized learning plan and Learning Through Internship/Interest placement. Home visits are not only encouraged, they’re a part of the relationship.

Instead of grades…
There are authentic assessments such as public exhibitions of work, check ins, reflective journals, portfolios, and feedback from their real world mentors at work.

Instead of desks in rows in classrooms where the focus is the teacher…
There are chairs around a table in what resembles a conference room where the focus is each other.

Instead of bells and classes…
There are meetings and appointments.

Instead of relegating all learning to be locked inside the school building...
Students spend two days a week pursuing their interests and/or passions with mentors where they are learning through internships(LTIs) that they seek out in the real world. Additionally, all learning that happens outside of the school day and year is captured and documented for in school credit.

How leaving traditional school saved a life
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.co...saved.html



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The problem is that most schools are set up around the per-subject teacher, and that's how most teachers are trained to teach. Doing things differently requires a big change in how people think about learning and the purpose of school.

Similar changes are needed at the college level, too.

[xcriteria]

(05-11-2013 12:12 PM)DoA Wrote:  ^ That's where you're wrong. What, you think Uncle Sam only exploits the students? HELL NAW, the conspiracy continues far beyond that. The good teachers (yes, they exist) are also being screwed over by our establishment. The solution is to get the government out and get the private sector in. Make education voluntary, give schools the right to get rid of troublesome students, give troublesome students the right to the school (or alternative option) of their choice.

Teachers should be paid more. People who don't take teaching seriously should not be teachers, and hence should not be paid for being a teacher.

The private sector is involved in a lot of places due to charter schools. That doesn't magically make things better... it really depends on the model of the school.

If teachers should be paid more, who decides what any given teacher should be paid? Who should provide the funding? If government/taxpayers provide funding, they're going to want some level of accountability to know the money isn't being completely wasted. Most likely, any source of funding -- parents, philanthropists, investors -- wants to see some evidence of meaningful results.

Usually that takes the form of standardized tests and traditional grades, or college acceptance rates, but surely there are better ways to document whether meaningful learning is taking place. I think changing how people evaluate what learning is occurring is a big prerequisite to changing how education works.

How exactly should teacher pay be determined, if a free market, student choice model was brought to education?

[Ky]

(05-12-2013 01:25 AM)xcriteria Wrote:  

(05-11-2013 12:12 PM)DoA Wrote:  ^ That's where you're wrong. What, you think Uncle Sam only exploits the students? HELL NAW, the conspiracy continues far beyond that. The good teachers (yes, they exist) are also being screwed over by our establishment. The solution is to get the government out and get the private sector in. Make education voluntary, give schools the right to get rid of troublesome students, give troublesome students the right to the school (or alternative option) of their choice.

Teachers should be paid more. People who don't take teaching seriously should not be teachers, and hence should not be paid for being a teacher.

The private sector is involved in a lot of places due to charter schools. That doesn't magically make things better... it really depends on the model of the school.

If teachers should be paid more, who decides what any given teacher should be paid? Who should provide the funding? If government/taxpayers provide funding, they're going to want some level of accountability to know the money isn't being completely wasted. Most likely, any source of funding -- parents, philanthropists, investors -- wants to see some evidence of meaningful results.

Usually that takes the form of standardized tests and traditional grades, or college acceptance rates, but surely there are better ways to document whether meaningful learning is taking place. I think changing how people evaluate what learning is occurring is a big prerequisite to changing how education works.

How exactly should teacher pay be determined, if a free market, student choice model was brought to education?

I don't pretend to know why the private sector is superior, but I know what the government has done to ruin the standard of learning - they're encouraged teachers to avoid any and all creativity and work out of specific curricula, forced unwilling-to-learn students to have their education paid for when it would be much cheaper to drop them, and haven't treated the greatest business enterprise (education) as a business at all. If taxpayers knew just how much of their tax dollars went into education and how little their dollars accomplished in the long run, the IRS wouldn't see a single cent from anyone.

[xcriteria]

(05-12-2013 04:22 AM)DoA Wrote:  I don't pretend to know why the private sector is superior, but I know what the government has done to ruin the standard of learning - they're encouraged teachers to avoid any and all creativity and work out of specific curricula, forced unwilling-to-learn students to have their education paid for when it would be much cheaper to drop them, and haven't treated the greatest business enterprise (education) as a business at all. If taxpayers knew just how much of their tax dollars went into education and how little their dollars accomplished in the long run, the IRS wouldn't see a single cent from anyone.

Okay, so you think the private sector is superior, and that the government has done bad things, but how might things work differently? There are clear-cut examples of abuse in private sector education and very often they use the same factory model of school as public schools.

Ultimately, schools need funding. Some parents can afford to pay for some school. But many can't. Government, a.k.a., taxpayers, are one source of revenue. If people could be persuaded to contribute to schools, well more private schools could open up. Also, charter schools do provide an in-between approach with government/taxpayer funding and more flexibility in how they go about teaching. Big Picture Schools are one example. But other charter providers have come under fire:

Why Students Call KIPP the Kids In Prison Program
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/03/wh...rison.html

Bill Gates is a big fan and funder of KIPP schools, which are a big network of privately run charters. He talks about it in this interview:
Was the $5 Billion Worth It? A decade into his record-breaking education philanthropy, Bill Gates talks teachers, charters—and regrets.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...79948.html

On the fraught issue of school choice, his foundation has been a strong advocate of charter schools, and Mr. Gates is particularly fond of the KIPP charter network and its focus on serving inner-city neighborhoods. "Whenever you get depressed about giving money in this area," he volunteers, "you can spend a day in a KIPP school and know that they are spending less money than the dropout factory down the road."

It's hard to know the truth about KIPP without digging deeper, but one fact about it is that nearly all of their graduates go to college, but a huge proportion of them drop out of college, calling into question the entire process. Gates Foundation's higher ed guy talked about this in a long talk:



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So, the question remains, what models will work for alternatives? There's nothing stopping people from launching new schools or alternative programs, and marketing them to parents and students. In fact, that's being done in quite a few places, both with pro-learner approaches (for example, North Star Self-Directed Learning), and it's a huge industry for sinister behavior modification programs that sell pricey "teen help" to frustrated parents.

Those are private programs, often free of much oversight and regulation, and some of them are absolute nightmares.

CAFETY, the Community Alliance for Ethical Treatment of Youth, http://www.cafety.org/ is one organization working to combat these abusive, private programs.



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Government can be bad and inefficient, but it can also play a useful role in addressing horrific problems when people actually start to care about them. Sometimes, like with ed reform or the war on drugs, those solutions are expensive and problematic. So, what are the alternatives?

The US government lets people homeschool, unlike many places around the world. There are alternative schools and people can start their own in many cases, unlike many places around the world. We have a lot more freedom than you'd think, but too many people are stuck believing they can't change anything, or thinking there's no reason to change how school works in the modern world, many of them parents who went through the same system.

So again, what's the solution? How should teacher pay be determined? On a per-teacher basis, based on how many students they can sign up? Based on what degree they have, based on how many years they've been teaching?

If you really want to delve into that question, consider this lecture from Harvard professor Michael Sandel, from his Justice course. This episode covers utilitarianism and the question of putting a price on human life. Some students said they would never do that, others said sure, and he asked them what dollar amount would be appropriate.



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I'm not sure what the answer is, but if any discussion is going to occur about teacher pay, in a world of open online content and star professors, a lot of questions start emerging. Similar questions can be asked about college professor pay, which is often even worse than K12 teachers. There's a trend of colleges using more and more "adjunct professors" which are employed on an annual or per-course basis, and many of them never end up making very much money.



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That's one of the reasons I was never motivated to complete an academic degree. My dad was a professor and I saw his struggle with pay and the disconnect between his teaching and many students' learning... students who had learned how not to learn in K12. He worked at both a private and public college, and ultimately it's not "government" or "not government" that's the problem, but how individual schools and individual people's interactions are structured.

Change is in the air, though. More and more people in the US are unschooling, more and more people are taking the student perspective into account and trying to figure out what to do differently. Change requires figuring out what to do instead of what's currently being done. Somehow, an economic model is needed for how education can work.

Potato Wrote:^ you can take the best few teachers from anywhere in the freaking world, have them give their lectures, record it, post that shit on the internet, so that people can freaking LEARN. tutors are another thing. by teachers, i mean people who stand in front of a classroom of about 20 ppl, and give the same lectures over and over as if video recording technologies don't exist. school teachers should NOT be paid more because their jobs are drains on the economy, obsolete in the presence of modern technology.

So, what will they do instead? Maybe their jobs can shift to be more focused on mentoring and helping students pursue interests and learn using the available media and technology.

This article addresses the trend of "star professors":

The Coming Age Of The Teaching Megastar
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshal...-megastar/

Quote: However, just as the independence of the film star loosened the iron grip of the studio system, so too the independence of the star professor will loosen the grip of the collegiate tenure system. While the roots of this transformation go back several years, the rise of the celebrity academic became clear this past fall when Stanford Professor and Google Fellow (he of the self-driving “robocar”) Sebastian Thrun opened up his Stanford class on artificial intelligence to online students the world over. The class was free, interactive, and hugely popular. 160,000 students logged into Thrun’s lectures. Ever the disruptor, Thrun realized that he could make more money and enjoy greater freedom outside the university than within it. Moreover, his students would learn more if he could escape the “lecture trap,” and develop online tools that generated greater interactivity, as well as quicker, more meaningful testing and feedback. As Thrun colorfully put it, “Having done this, I can’t teach at Stanford again. I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill, and you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.”

Quote:As a result, other in-demand professors will soon realize that — thanks to the global reach, sophistication and live classroom verisimilitude of online education tech — they too can be their own bosses. And generate their own audience. And not just in the tens of thousands, but, potentially, in the millions.

Moreover, instead of feeling lucky to clear $150,000 a year as a tenured professor teaching to hundreds, star professors could theoretically clear more in ad revenue by teaching to the globe. And that’s not counting additional revenue that could flow into their coffers from public speaking, books, consulting, and referral fees to testing centers and credentialing sites.

As professors become disaggregated from university brands, they will team up to create their own startups – not to mention their own production companies — which will give them the tools of the university system with hopefully less of the kow-towing politics. There may not be as much private lunchroom conviviality, but there will likely be greater fun, leverage, and gravitas. Just as Tom Cruise, George Clooney, and Julia Roberts command at least $20 million a picture, over the next decade or two we might witness a star professor earning the same amount per semester. Moreover, star professors will beget star teachers on the secondary level, as Salman Khan of the world-famous Khan Academy has already demonstrated.

So, change is happening -- even many teachers are embracing the flexibility this opening up of content gives them to provide more individual attention, the so-called "flipped classroom." But what does this mean for student voice, and teacher pay?

[brainiac3397]

(05-11-2013 06:02 PM)Potato Wrote:  ^ you can take the best few teachers from anywhere in the freaking world, have them give their lectures, record it, post that shit on the internet, so that people can freaking LEARN. tutors are another thing. by teachers, i mean people who stand in front of a classroom of about 20 ppl, and give the same lectures over and over as if video recording technologies don't exist. school teachers should NOT be paid more because their jobs are drains on the economy, obsolete in the presence of modern technology.

I disagree with paying teachers less. Sure, technology makes access to information easier, but the teacher has always served as a middle-man between the knowledge and the pupil. There are some able to disregard the middle man, since history and slowly increasing in numbers as we improve technology, but the middle man has one big advantage over technology and that's the human connection.

Man is a social animal, and social connection always tends to hold greater influence and strength. The world's greatest leaders may not have been the smartest or strongest, but through their sheer charisma, were able to grip the smartest and strongest, and make them follow.

You can't expect the internet to "listen", because the internet was made to speak and show. You can't "bond" with a computer, and a computer will not know the most efficient way to work with you because it can't adjust itself.

And if people should be paid less for "Draining" the economy, then the police, most of the military, firefighters, doctors, lawyers can all be considered a drain on the economy. Police don't contribute to the economy directly, the military doesn't contribute directly, firefighters don't contribute directly, doctors don't contribute directly and lawyers don't contribute directly. They don't create products, they don't harvest anything, manufacture anything or even sell anything. They simply provide a service, a necessary service.

The time to "remove" human teachers will the the day where you can replace human lawyers, human police, human firefighters, human doctors etc. with technology. And you yourself may think we don't need it, but with an objective view, you will see teachers will always be necessary.

And why?: Because whose to teach you the means with which you educate yourself? Whose to teach you the most important basics that will help you learn? Simply because their basics, doesn't mean a teacher should be paid less, because no one else can actually teach you.

[TheCancer]

Quote:computer will not know the most efficient way to work with you because it can't adjust itself

Some of these programs they have now for reading and math identify weaknesses and generate work accordingly with more efficiency than any human could. I mean I can't specialize my instruction for 200 individual students but computers can.

[xcriteria]

(05-12-2013 07:23 AM)brainiac3397 Wrote:  

(05-11-2013 06:02 PM)Potato Wrote:  ^ you can take the best few teachers from anywhere in the freaking world, have them give their lectures, record it, post that shit on the internet, so that people can freaking LEARN. tutors are another thing. by teachers, i mean people who stand in front of a classroom of about 20 ppl, and give the same lectures over and over as if video recording technologies don't exist. school teachers should NOT be paid more because their jobs are drains on the economy, obsolete in the presence of modern technology.

I disagree with paying teachers less. Sure, technology makes access to information easier, but the teacher has always served as a middle-man between the knowledge and the pupil. There are some able to disregard the middle man, since history and slowly increasing in numbers as we improve technology, but the middle man has one big advantage over technology and that's the human connection.

I agree that a human connection is important, but that's exactly what's lacking for so many people in factory model schools. Teachers dispense information and focus on classroom management, and the system stifles creativity and real human connection.

As I see it, the role of most teachers needs to change from subject managers to mentors, who can actually form human connections and help people learn from the vast range of content that technology, or even old-fashioned items like books and newspapers, provide. A mentor can get to know their mentees as people, work with them for a longer period than a single semester or year, and help them grow as people rather than just get grade X.

So, how should that role be funded and what should those teachers make? Teachers in the US make a lot more than teachers in many parts of the world. Some charter schools actually pay teachers even more, like $70-100k, in an attempt to attract better teachers and motivate better performance. Especially when you think globally, "teachers" is a very broad category.

(05-12-2013 07:23 AM)brainiac3397 Wrote:  And why?: Because whose to teach you the means with which you educate yourself? Whose to teach you the most important basics that will help you learn? Simply because their basics, doesn't mean a teacher should be paid less, because no one else can actually teach you.

For the most part, in my experience, that hasn't been classroom teachers. I think that's true for many of the people here. It *is* possible to learn without an in-person teacher. Sugata Mitra's experiments have shown that -- what helps a lot is to have tools, and maybe a mentor-style figure who can provide some feedback and encouragement.



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It's just as possible for a moment of learning to occur in the context of a job, a game, or participating on a forum as it is in a traditional classroom. But too often, in any context, especially in classrooms, people learn things for that class, then quickly forget what they "learned." The solution to this is to spend time integrating past moments of learning with one's ongoing experience and ideas. This includes reflecting on what moments one really was learning, vs. not learning much, sitting bored. There's no class in school where people do that, and to teacher certification to help people make sense of what learning events were actually worthwhile.

If people did that, maybe the insights could also be applied to changing how education works. I've spent a lot of time doing that, identifying points, even in school, where I did learn something, but also many points, in and out of school, where I wasn't learning much. Sometimes it's not totally obvious what you are learning in a given moment, but with some effort it's possible to get a sense of this.

And that's where factory model schools and the roles most teachers are put in provides no option to provide feedback about the educational process. It is what it is, and that's that. Jeff Bliss' performance is a good example of that brick wall.

Teachers might actually be able to be paid more if the whole structure of school was re-evaluated, because they could spend more meaningful time with students and discuss the plethora of content, lectures, classes, and videos FROM classes and make the most of everyone's time, interests, and attention. Either way, the idea that the only way to learn is from a teacher is a very disempowering one. Teachers are one way, but there are others, including working on a project, building something, or playing a game.

[Potato]

Quote:And they also need hands on guidance to help them learn cooperation and kindness.

how exactly do you teach someone cooperation and kindness? kids are naturally in an unfinished state of development and inferior in their ability to emphasize with other people among other things, studies have shown... i don't think cooperation and kindness are stuff to be taught, they should come naturally as the brain matures. i also think that stress from school is one of the major factors in promoting negative behavior in kids, imo

Quote:So, what will they do instead? Maybe their jobs can shift to be more focused on mentoring and helping students pursue interests and learn using the available media and technology.

that's their problem. but whatever they do is probably going to be more productive to society than their current profession of assigning and grading busy-work, lecturing, reading from power points, writing bathroom passes, and generally bossing over people.

Quote:I disagree with paying teachers less.

they should be paid "nothing", not just "less"

Quote: Sure, technology makes access to information easier, but the teacher has always served as a middle-man between the knowledge and the pupil.

the pigeon has always served as a middle-man between the mailer and the receiver...so what

Quote:You can't expect the internet to "listen", because the internet was made to speak and show. You can't "bond" with a computer, and a computer will not know the most efficient way to work with you because it can't adjust itself.

the student can adjust to the computer. if one source isn't helping you understand something, you can Google out another one.

Quote:And if people should be paid less for "Draining" the economy, then the police, most of the military, firefighters, doctors, lawyers can all be considered a drain on the economy.

no, those people both take from and contribute to the economy. school teaching is a drain because it doesn't contribute anything useful. their salary is nothing more than charity, in that sense. most of the us military are also drains on the economy btw.

Quote:The time to "remove" human teachers will the the day where you can replace human lawyers, human police, human firefighters, human doctors etc. with technology. And you yourself may think we don't need it, but with an objective view, you will see teachers will always be necessary.

we don't have to replace lawyers to replace teachers, just as we didn't have to replace lawyers to replace blacksmiths. and simply saying that your view is objective and that mine isn't doesn't prove anything. objectively, education is the acquisition of knowledge in students, students can access and acquire all the knowledge they need from the internet and be motivated to do so by standardized tests which will determine their future success, so teachers are unnecessary for education to occur, and the busy-work which they are paid to assign and grade are counter-productive.

Quote:And why?: Because whose to teach you the means with which you educate yourself? Whose to teach you the most important basics that will help you learn? Simply because their basics, doesn't mean a teacher should be paid less, because no one else can actually teach you.

who's* they're* (getting corrected on the internet is as good a way to learn as any)

kids are born without having been taught any basics by any teachers. yet they learn to speak simply by listening. they will also learn to read through exposure to books (or the internet, we're just surrounded with written language) . kids are born with the ability to recognize patterns and to teach themselves (unless if the kid's retarded) you've probably heard of the hole in the wall experiment, and those kids were learning to read complex material in a foreign language. teaching yourself to read in your native language is much easier and happens all the time.

[TheCancer]

Potato, I think you over-estimate the value of the Internet.

[xcriteria]

(05-12-2013 11:11 AM)Potato Wrote:  

Quote:And they also need hands on guidance to help them learn cooperation and kindness.

how exactly do you teach someone cooperation and kindness? kids are naturally in an unfinished state of development and inferior in their ability to emphasize with other people among other things, studies have shown... i don't think cooperation and kindness are stuff to be taught, they should come naturally as the brain matures. i also think that stress from school is one of the major factors in promoting negative behavior in kids, imo

I think that kindness and empathy *can* be learned (whether formally "taught" or not.) The brain is open to change in a variety of ways due to actions, choices, experiences, and so on, including when it comes to relating to other people. This is called neuroplasticity, and the result is that people can develop on different timeframes than a totally pre-determined genetic program.

Part of how empathy and kindness are "learned" is through attachment relationships, and having seeing these things modeled and practiced in others. Some people learn these things from parents or others they are around, others less so. Some people find these things more natural talents, but a wide range of people are capable of learning empathy. This is the "human connection" side of things that brainiac is pushing. However, again, I really think that these skills are often not developed in factory model schools where many teachers don't model empathy.

Psychiatrist Dan Siegel has studied these attachment relationships and neural change in depth. As he explains in his TEDxBlue talk, much of education doesn't work to help people develop these skills, but instead it imprisons the brain.



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If creativity and empathy and curiosity are crushed out of people, or never effectively modeled by parents, teachers, and others in one's life, these things can not only take a long time to develop, but never develop. But they can be taught and learned and developed. Studies demonstrate that -- which studies demonstrate the opposite?

The Globe and Mail: Schools need to create human beings and citizens who are empathetic
http://nikhilgoyal.me/2012/12/17/the-glo...mpathetic/

Quote:Today, there is a dearth of empathy in young people. After analyzing data among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years, a University of Michigan study two years ago concluded that college students are 40 per cent less empathetic than their counterparts in 1979. Indeed, the most significant drop has been in the past decade. What’s more, cases of bullying and suicides are climbing at an alarming pace. That means empathy education is needed more than ever before. There is a growing consensus among neuroscientists, psychologists and educators that bullying and other kinds of violence can be reduced by encouraging empathy at an early age.

Primarily, children need to learn how to control and understand their feelings and emotions. We need to place children in capacities to practice and model empathy for themselves. Learning how to step into someone else’s shoes is hard, but without the personal immersion in the process, the experience will be a complete waste.

One program that is devoting itself to this is Roots of Empathy, started by Canadian educator Mary Gordon that has now reached more than 325,000 children in 10 countries in their 16-year legacy. A baby and its mother or father visit a school classroom 27 times during the course of the year. The curriculum is divided into nine themes, with three visits supporting each theme (a pre-family visit, family visit, and post-family visit). Students are asked to carefully observe the interactions that occur between the child and parent as well as their mood, and over time slowly become attached to them. In the process, they are learning emotional literacy, a term Ms. Gordon defines as “the ability to find our humanity in one another.” Later, the students express what they have learned in other subjects.

Quote: After conducting controlled studies specifically pinpointing “proactive aggressive students” – your playground bullies – Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, found that 88 per cent of these children decreased this form of behaviour over the school year compared with the control group where only 9 per cent did.

That's just one program, not a complete revamping of the teaching and learning process, but it's certainly evidence that empathy can be developed: that article cites one way of thinking about it,“Empathy can’t be taught, but it can be caught.”

Teaching empathy and perspective-taking is, in fact, one of the main ways it might be possible to get teachers to think in terms of the perspectives of their students. So, how many hours of sitting in ineffective classroom environments does it take to learn empathy? Maybe how people think about learning and development in general needs to change to take account of the actual evidence.

[brainiac3397]

Clarification here: By the title TEACHER, I refer not to the specific minions of the current educational system but to a person who "assists" in educating another, hence teaches one as a teacher. I'm speaking in a timeless general sense, not of a specific time-period. So be it a shaman, a druid, a wise-man, a medicine-man, a philosopher or bard, all would be teachers had they educated people, and were considered quite important in society. Technology will not replaced teachers, because technology at this time requires human input. It simplifies teaching in a sense, but teachers will always exist simply because it is within our human nature to be taught and to teach.

[Potato]

Quote:Potato, I think you over-estimate the value of the Internet.

no i don't. all i'm saying is that you need two things to make education: the source of information and the motivation to learn. and the internet has about all the information you could need.

Quote:Teaching empathy and perspective-taking is, in fact, one of the main ways it might be possible to get teachers to think in terms of the perspectives of their students. So, how many hours of sitting in ineffective classroom environments does it take to learn empathy? Maybe how people think about learning and development in general needs to change to take account of the actual evidence.

i think sorting kids together into groups by age, and isolating them inside a classroom for most of the day, creates an environment that hinders their emotional development. and i don't think teachers can be relied on to promote cooperation and kindness, there are many teachers who are uncooperative and unkind themselves..

Quote:Clarification here: By the title TEACHER, I refer not to the specific minions of the current educational system but to a person who "assists" in educating another, hence teaches one as a teacher. I'm speaking in a timeless general sense, not of a specific time-period. So be it a shaman, a druid, a wise-man, a medicine-man, a philosopher or bard, all would be teachers had they educated people, and were considered quite important in society. Technology will not replaced teachers, because technology at this time requires human input. It simplifies teaching in a sense, but teachers will always exist simply because it is within our human nature to be taught and to teach.

i was just talking about school teachers. i dropped the word "school" because to most people, "teacher" mean the typical teacher in front of the class..and when most people say that "teachers should be paid more" they mean that the gov should increase school teacher salaries.(and i think they should all find other jobs)

[xcriteria]

(05-12-2013 02:54 PM)Potato Wrote:  

Quote:Clarification here: By the title TEACHER, I refer not to the specific minions of the current educational system but to a person who "assists" in educating another, hence teaches one as a teacher. I'm speaking in a timeless general sense, not of a specific time-period. So be it a shaman, a druid, a wise-man, a medicine-man, a philosopher or bard, all would be teachers had they educated people, and were considered quite important in society. Technology will not replaced teachers, because technology at this time requires human input. It simplifies teaching in a sense, but teachers will always exist simply because it is within our human nature to be taught and to teach.

i was just talking about school teachers. i dropped the word "school" because to most people, "teacher" mean the typical teacher in front of the class..and when most people say that "teachers should be paid more" they mean that the gov should increase school teacher salaries.(and i think they should all find other jobs)

This is an important thing to clarify. I think the words mentor, advisor, coach might be more along the lines of the broad sense of the word "teacher." That said, I think "remote teachers" like finding good lectures on YouTube can also be an effective way to learn some things. And sometimes people can learn from themselves, recording videos, journaling, reflecting on mental processes. In fact, many "guru" types these days encourage people to be their own guru. Other people can certainly help, but a one-way expert to novice interaction isn't the only way learning can occur.

(05-12-2013 02:54 PM)Potato Wrote:  

Quote:Potato, I think you over-estimate the value of the Internet.

no i don't. all i'm saying is that you need two things to make education: the source of information and the motivation to learn. and the internet has about all the information you could need.

This is where experts/teachers/coaches/mentors can be useful -- they can help make sense of the vast amount of information that's out there. That job is both easier and harder with the information explosion of the past decade. But some role of getting worthwhile information or experiences to a learner can certainly have value. At the same time, just navigating the web frees the learning from dependence on a small set of in-person teachers controlling the flow of information.

(05-12-2013 02:54 PM)Potato Wrote:  

Quote:Teaching empathy and perspective-taking is, in fact, one of the main ways it might be possible to get teachers to think in terms of the perspectives of their students. So, how many hours of sitting in ineffective classroom environments does it take to learn empathy? Maybe how people think about learning and development in general needs to change to take account of the actual evidence.

i think sorting kids together into groups by age, and isolating them inside a classroom for most of the day, creates an environment that hinders their emotional development. and i don't think teachers can be relied on to promote cooperation and kindness, there are many teachers who are uncooperative and unkind themselves..

I basically agree, but then who can be relied on to do this? Perhaps a broader definition of teachers is a good starting point, including the many people who function as teachers online, or even in media, shows, books, documentaries, and so on. And maybe even in-person friends, family and neighbors once in a while.