Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

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An uncomfortable fact of teaching is that it is 15% inspirational and highly nuanced technical leadership, and 85% unskilled labour.

When most of the job is rock breaking then it’s easy to see why the supply of new teachers is so high. Coupled with the romance of wanting to be that inspirational teacher, and the genuine privilege of wanting to work with young people, and it’s not hard to see how schools can get away with murder when it comes to pay.

Money isn’t the worst of it though. Alongside the low salary there’s also a huge risk of employers developing a them/us relationship. The involvement of unions exacerbated this, and schools are already high-rules / low-trust environments even before any of this kind of staff/management internecine conflict.

But: (1) I love working with kids; (2) while the job attracts good people and bad people, the good ones are great.

PS: I’d eat my hat if exactly the same wasn’t also true for police detectives and nurses.

Teaching is mostly unskilled labor? What a ridiculous statement. Have you ever created a lesson plan? Written a test? These are difficult tasks that take skill and practice.

Have you ever marked 400 “third-month algebra” assessments? Done “stop playing football in the classrooms” break duty? Teaching requires a lot of skill, but most of the work a teacher does isn't teaching; it's child diplomacy, tedious marking and paperwork. (I wouldn't say as much as 85%, though – and it's not unskilled, either; just largely unpaid.)

You* are right to call out my use of the word unskilled. Teaching is skilled work, but it’s much more blue collar than the job requirements would have you believe.

Driving a fork lift truck is skilled work. Plumbing a house is skilled work. Felling a tree is skilled work. I have never done any of these jobs but I believe the majority of work a teacher does has a lot more in common with this kind of labour than it does with, say, maintaining a web-based Rust build infrastructure.

*plural

Over a 10 year span of teaching the same material, what percentage of time is spent on those high-skill activities?

I agree teachers are under-valued (both of my parents did that as a career), but a lot of the minutes of activity required when working as a teacher seem more aligned with the skills needed for baby-sitting than instruction.

I don’t know if it’s 85%, but from my experience in public school and observing/listening to my parents, it seems like it’s over half.

It almost seems similar to big video-game development shops exploiting the passions of game developers.

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