Thoughts on education
2020-06-24

In this post, I will argue that America's K-12 "education system"
is better described as a universal childcare system. Teachers are
in the same predicament as cops; they are trained for one purpose,
and used for another. Those who strive to educate kids are faced with
significant problems.

Problem 1: Dealing with large groups of kids is very difficult

Schools are accountable for the well-being of children during the
school day. The central problem of K-12 schools is maintaining order
in large groups of children with few staff. Imagine being the sole
adult responsible for thirty kids, and you understand the problem. Much
of the skill of teaching is learning to "read the crowd" and keep it
from devolving into chaos. Gimmicks that keep kids "busy" are widely
deployed: videos, technology, etc. because this is the only way of
managing many kids with few staff.

Problem 2: Teachers are busy with responsibilities other than teaching

A teacher's duties go beyond the educational (instruction, grading,
lesson planning) to include the logistical and menial (breaking
up fights, ferrying kids from class to class, supervising lunch,
interacting with parents, cleaning and organizing the classroom,
etc.). Some of these secondary responsibilities could be handled just
as well by childcare workers who are not certified educators, allowing
for more efficient use of teachers' time.

(If we're talking about inner-city schools, the kids often do not
have readily available caretakers/parental figures in their lives
and are stuck learning basic life skills at school. Which makes it
even harder to teach "the curriculum". More on this later.)

Problem 3: Shit rolls downhill

There is a pecking order of schools, and a pecking order of
districts. There is also a dire shortage of teachers. It is hard to
fire incompetent teachers (and especially incompetent admin), so they
tend to get shuttled to the schools where they can do "the least harm",
which tend to be the bottom-performing schools in underprivileged
communities. This is a death knell that stops those schools from ever
getting organized and fixing their problems. Any competent teacher
at such a doomed school will be stuck pulling 2x their weight, and
will transfer to a different school as soon as possible.

To summarize, the #1 problem of K-12 schools is not quality of
education, it is maintaining order in large groups of children with
few staff. This problem should not be teachers' responsibility
to solve. Systemic change is required to realign America's K-12
"education" system with the childcare problems it is being forced
to solve.

Obviously I am not a teacher and do not know how to make this better,
but I will offer suggestions.

Suggestion 1: Rename the "public school system" to the "public
childcare system", as this better reflects how parents are using it.

Suggestion 2: Hire large numbers of childcare workers to meet the
children's non-educational needs.

Suggestion 3: Hire TA's. Many schools already employ "student
teachers" who are still getting their education degree, and their
responsibilities are best described as TA-like; this program should be
further expanded. Perhaps 1st/2nd year teachers should also default
to being TA's. Hell, maybe a 5-year student-teaching apprenticeship
should be an acceptable non-college path to a teaching certificate.

An aside: "Fixing schools" is a band-aid on a larger problem, namely,
that it's irresponsible to have children unless you are able to devote
one full-time adult to care for the children. Could be dad, mom,
grandparent, uncle, etc. -- doesn't matter. All children benefit
from individual attention, and some (especially those born with
disabilities) will require individual attention, potentially for very
long stretches of their lives. Without a caregiver, these kids are
screwed. Schools, prisons, and all sorts of state-run systems are
full of kids that got screwed -- and this is a huge source of human
suffering. The normalization of dual-incomes (and marginalization of
single-income households) is the greatest con that business EVER pulled
in the name of productivity and """"equality""""; it is actually making
inequality worse and it is screwing over lots of kids in the process.

It's difficult to talk about this belief in polite company because
people usually read it as either "poor people shouldn't be allowed to
have kids", or "women should be kept at home to care for children",
both abhorrent ideas. Instead, I want to point back to this article
[1] and its discussion of alternative child care arrangements. I also
want to point at the comparative weakness of family ties and other
non-state support structures in the US compared to some of these
other countries and cultures.

In conclusion, the primary function of American K-12 schools is
non-educational. Systemic change is required to realign America's K-12
"education" system with the childcare problems it is being forced to
solve. Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

[1] https://moultano.wordpress.com/2020/06/21/the-defaults-dont-work/