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Comment by skhunted | Hacker News Reader

It’s disconcerting that people who have no training on how to teach think they can do it well enough. Those same people generally seek out those with training to do things in other areas of their life. But when it comes to teaching they think they know better. Asimov’s famous quote on ignorance comes to mind.

EDIT: Do people generally use those without training to provide medical care, fix cars, cut hair, do electrical work, etc.? The answer is no. But when it comes to teaching science to k-12 students it’s ok to use someone with no training? It’s crazy.

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Did you go to college? If so you probably also learned from people with almost no training in teaching. Somehow every college professor in America teaches just fine without this supposedly crucial "training on how to teach."

I also hope you aren't learning online from people like Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown), Salman Khan (Khan Academy) who also have no formal training. Side note: I can't name a single popular online teacher that keeps from a typical teaching background.

College teaching is different than teaching kids. Intellectual maturity comes into play at a certain point. Khan’s explanations and videos have a lot of flaws and are poorly done. At least the math ones that I’ve seen.

Universities are famous for terrible teaching, so not a great examt.

If you consider what constitutes this training, you'll realize it doesn't matter, what matters is understanding the core topics and communicating well. Parents aren't teaching a class of 30 students, they can engage on a 1-1 level with their kids.

> But when it comes to teaching science to k-12 students it’s ok to use someone with no training?

That "someone" is you. Do you have any memory of gradeschool at all? Teaching is not complicated, it's just work.

How do you know this? What is the basis of your conclusion? I’ve taught mathematics for 30 years at the college level. I don’t know how a child should be taught an introduction to fractions. I could look it up and get the gist of it. But then I’d also have to look up how children learn and what cues to look for. How would I know if a kid needs special education? I could look that up too. At what rate should a person learn how to do arithmetic with fractions? I don’t know. I could look it up.

But I’d have to do this with every subject. It’s not feasible. My sister has 8 kids and homeschooled all of them through grade 12. The first 3 went to college but the remaining ones did not. They didn’t learn as much as they should have an all of them have nutty beliefs. They all believe the Union started the Civil War and that slaves were generally treated well.

There are enough knaves and fools. We don’t need to willfully create more of them. There’s a reason teaching requires training. It sounds to me like you’ve never really taught and don’t know what you are talking about.

Can you be more specific than teaching math "at the college level"? In America, after 13 years of public education by professional teachers, they're lucky if they've even taken an introduction to calculus or trigonometry. Somehow I think I can do better than that.

Somehow I think I can do better than that.

Dunning-Kruger.

Ad hominem. The system you're defending has set the bar so incredibly low that I just need to do "okay" and my children are infinitely more well off. Homeschooled kids consistently do far better than kids who attend public school, even by the standards and metrics public schools design. Your "average" is my failure state.

>I’ve taught mathematics for 30 years at the college level. I don’t know how a child should be taught an introduction to fractions.

Some of the best K-12 math teaching initiatives right now are run by college-level math profs who've observed deficiencies in incoming students in freshman level courses and have started volunteering their time at the K-12 level to help. See e.g., Anna Stokke's Archimedes Math program or the Navajo Math Circles program. It's not necessary to have an actual academic background in math education; some of the worst program designs come from that cohort, e.g., Lilijedahl's Building Thinking Classrooms and Boaler's YouCubed.

Some of the best k-12 math initiatives are being run by people with experience teaching math and with training in mathematics. From this you extrapolate that anyone can teach all subjects and levels in K-12? You conclude that no training is necessary to teach kids. Note that Archimedes program uses people with training in math. They don’t hire just anyone.

Also worth noting: Acceptance into our program is at the discretion of the program supervisors.

One program is successful (largely by selecting participants) and from this you conclude that home schooling is OK?

Obviously you can find examples of people being a great teacher without training in teaching. This is not the basis of good public policy. We don’t conclude that medical degrees are unnecessary because there a few examples of someone “doctoring” well without one.

If you think the average parent qualifies to teach all k-12 topics then you don’t understand how stupid the average person is.

> If you think the average parent qualifies to teach all k-12 topics then you don’t understand how stupid the average person is.

No different than the average teacher. edit: I cant reply to your post directly, so I will here: there is no evidence that teachers as a group are more intelligent than the average person.

What is your evidence for this? If it is true that the average teacher of a given subject has no greater understanding/insight/knowledge/intelligence in that subject than the average person then I am wrong in my beliefs on this matter.

I was just responding to that particular point in your post. I don't have any strong views either way on homeschooling.

However, that being said, for math in particular, some of the curricula available to homeschooling parents are truly excellent, especially Beast Academy, JUMP Math, and Singapore Math.

I'll clarify. When I say one needs training to be a teacher I'm talking about statistics. I don't mean literally that no person can be good without training. I mean that statistically speaking it is unlikely that a person with no training in a subject is going to be better or as good as the average teacher of that subject.

Observe the following curriculum and identify just how much of this would factor to homeschooling, and what it would entail: https://www.tc.columbia.edu/curriculum-and-teaching/curricul... .

Not only could core courses be summarized in brief, the bulk of it is relevant because, as I said, teachers have to reach many students at a time. That makes it redundant. Notwithstanding, tutoring gives kids a learning advantage that has been replicated time and time again. The distinguishing factor is focused attention and enhanced communication (two-way). If a parent understands the material and can function in everyday society, they can teach their kids, if they want to.

Most parents do not have 8 kids, they have 1 or 2. If a child is neurodivergent in any respect, then a parent could and should seek out help anyway, which would inform their teaching.

To reiterate, teachers college training does not ensure that your child has an education that focuses on fundamentals and yields effective learning outcomes, nor does it ensure that all teachers do well. Nor do I suggest that any and all parents try their hand at teaching. Those who can grasp basic core concepts in math, and demonstrate adult reading comprehension, ought to fare fine if they want. As for those who don't understand the basics, I don't think your argument would persuade them anyway.

This is obvious and no one is suggesting this. What I'm suggesting is that the average person can't adequately teach their kids k-12. On average they will do worse than an adequately funded school system and it's better for society not to let amateurs teach great numbers of kids.

I know that's what you're suggesting. I'm saying that's wrong and there's no reason to believe it.

Then why did you write:

if you knew what I was suggesting?

If you understand that, then you understand that homeschooling is a reasonable option if you want to ensure your child has a proper education. It would become your responsibility instead of offloading it.

Being a doctor does not ensure that they will always diagnose your symptoms correctly. Therefore, using your logic, we should all just self diagnose and not use doctors at all.

That is not analogous, at all.

We can be reasonably confident that we can teach a simple curriculum at home, and know there will be no disruptions or bad compromises. These are not complicated, they're comprised of things every adult ought to know. By contrast, we cannot be reasonably confident that we make medical diagnoses without training.

All of those things you listed are totally normal for people to DIY. It's kind of bizarre to me that you think otherwise. It's like when Randy on South Park teaches his kids to call the handyman to fix the oven door. Or there's a handyman on youtube who's talked about being called and charging people like $500 to push the button on a GFCI outlet. It's hard to believe he's serious. He's also talked about being called by millennials to change smoke alarm batteries.

I don't need a degree in babysitting to watch my own kids. That's all teaching is.

You clearly have never taught. Your statement is profoundly ignorant.

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