Comment by throw93038383
10 hours ago
Perhaps teachers are just useless. It is heavily unionized job, with skills that do not change at all (maybe once a decade history books gets updated).
And there is a strong move towards useless subjects like black history and oppression studies!
What changed with teachers? As if they were doing same thing as previously you would expect pretty much same result. But clearly something changed somewhere and it might not be the teachers. It might be for example be the tools they have...
> Perhaps teachers are just useless
Teachers collectively became useless a decade ago? As a cohort? They were fine until then, but then suddenly collectively and globally decided to start sucking?
I disagree with the grandparent comment, but you could imagine a few teacher related causes:
- Maybe the better teachers retired or quit due to burnout/better opportunities (the pando surely increased both of these and I think one could imagine reasons for better teachers to disproportionately stop teaching). One thing we observe is the best decile being a lot less affected than the average or worst, which vaguely lines up with the hypothesis. I didn’t try to look into attrition or retirement rates.
- There could be a new teaching method that is popular with teachers, teachers’ unions, administrators, or governments but which is actually quite ineffective. My weak understanding is that the quality of education research is very poor and that evidence-based decision making for how to teach is extremely rare, so this also feels plausible. I think many HN readers would have seen stories about math teaching in SF public schools, and there’s also the positive case of Mississippi seeing great successes from some teaching methods that are supported by good evidence. In some sense this isn’t really a case of teachers being bad.
There is a concerted attack on the teaching profession, that's why education is terrible.
Teachers at the middle / high school level are not allowed to fail kids anymore. Parents are extremely litigious in America, suing schools over every little thing. Admins don't want to deal with that + their school's funding is tied to attendance / outcomes, so together they pressure the teachers to lower their standards.
Add into this the tech ologopoly trying to get kids hooked on their products young, pushing for chromebooks and google classroom when there have been numerous studies showing handwriting is important for retaining information.
The quality of student (on average) has also decreased thanks to tech. On average, kids are watching brainrot while their parents are trying to make ends meet, instead of reading or educating themselves.
Teaching is a thankless job. You have lots of unpaid hours (teachers need to prep lessons outside of school time, need to grade papers outside of school time, etc). I think a lot of people also severely underestimate the effort needed to keep 30 rambunctious kids on track. It truly drains you.
Given all this, there is no surprise at the outcomes.
Wow, in just one comment you have demonized:
You seem to be an incarnation of an actor acting in bad faith with a highly ideological agenda. Perhaps give it a rest?
I was pointing out teachers are very unlikely (not motivated) to learn modern teaching methods. They have more important topics to push!
Perhaps teaching defense against modern totalitarian state is far more important?
We will have a color flip after next election, all will be the same, but sudenly goverment and authorities will be the best think since sliced bread.
As the child of two public school teachers, you don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about.
But then, I feel I was right in my initial assessment: you’re an ideological shit-stirrer. Stop stirring up shit.
FOH “both sides”. Trump is a cretin
Black history and gender theory are super useful today.
Understanding them makes you understand Hegseth, Trump and Iran war a lot better.
I agree that understanding gender theory helps understand Iran a lot better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_Iran
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I’d honestly argue—in 2026—it’s more important for Americans to understand black history today than the Vietnam war. The idiots who keep propelling Presidents into the Oval who repeat Vietnam’s mistakes in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran are folks with a terrible understanding of our racial history and way too much surface knowledge about big guns and materiel.
What currently constitutes these studies seems to be a mix of propaganda and bullshit. But that sort of underlines the point that we have an impoverished set of common facts.
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