I would certainly agree with that. Helping to develop independant learners is the most valuable thing a teacher could offer.

Although information today is more readily available and accessible, classrooms, I believe will always have an important place in learning. Discerning what information is valid, how to determine if it is valid and learning how best to procure said information are all things that need to be learned in order to become an independant learner.

This is only touching on the passing of knowledge aspect of it all. A lot can be said about the socialization in schools as well as the practices offered in debate, public speaking, presenting, etc.

Anyhow, I'm incredibly tired and I'm getting the feeling I'm just needlessly rambling now... goodnight all.

I think teachers and the class room are very important. I would never want to turn the US into something where every child didn't get a good education, from a socialized environment.

I just think if you privatized the system, or at a minimum pushed running education back down to the counties or states, you would have a much better education system.

Just one last post...

I would agree with your second suggestion. I'm not overly familiar with the US education system, but here in Canada it is at a provincial level. It'd probably be even more effective at a regional level.

Are you serious?

When someone wanted to become a blacksmith in the middle ages did they have to reinvent blacksmithing?

If teaching wasn't a profession then people would go back to the apprentice system.  It would be annoying and it would be less efficent but society would survive and entire disciplines wouldn't just up and disapear.

That's just stupid.

Also... you know.  Books exist and such.  I mean people are homeschooled you know.  They turn out just fine when it comes to learning.

Are you serious?

When someone wanted to become a blacksmith in the middle ages did they have to reinvent blacksmithing?

If teaching wasn't a profession then people would go back to the apprentice system.  It would be annoying and it would be less efficent but society would survive and entire disciplines wouldn't just up and disapear.

That's just stupid.

Also... you know.  Books exist and such.  I mean people are homeschooled you know.  They turn out just fine when it comes to learning.

I think teachers and the class room are very important. I would never want to turn the US into something where every child didn't get a good education, from a socialized environment.

I just think if you privatized the system, or at a minimum pushed running education back down to the counties or states, you would have a much better education system.

@fmc83

1. You said:
"Here starts the problem: You assume, that they'll all be happy about a wage reduce and are not interested to make more money."

I didn't completely follow you there. that's the opposite of my point. Can you explain in a different way?

Hm, I'll try: If they are paid the same and the surplus of the restaurant gets down, they get paid less. The question is: will they accept less money or not? My shot was: No, they wouldn't. If four out of the five managers wanted more money, they wouldn't accept the fifth to be lazy. They would put some good pressure on him and they would work harder. But the problem with this is (and the reason why the communist models tried out didn't work): no matter how hard you would've worked there you wouldn't get less or more money. Always the same amount, so no sense in working hard. But I was saying, that your example could work in a more socialist society with still motivating elements.

2. You said"
"So how can you prevent that? Taxes. The more you earn, the more you pay."

I agree, but I think if you want to do that and protect your liberties, you make a flat tax. If I make 10 times more then you, I pay 10 times more in taxes. Most tax dollars when spent on salaries, go to lower income workers. If that income is being collected more from the rich with a flat tax, your doing what you want to do, just at a lower rate then you might like. What you gain for the lower rate, is equality, which I think is worth the loss.

A better way to state it however, is I don't think government has the right to increase it, even if they thought it was better. That's what our constitution was there to protect. It's not now being followed (it hasn't for some time).

Well you probably know much more about your constitution that I, as a foreigner, know, but wasn't the whole point of it to prevent foreign nations of getting your taxes and that the constitutional fathers had no problem to pay taxes if they would benefit from them again?

About the flat tax: We had a huge political discussion in Germany about that before the last election, and I still haven't totally made up my mind about that. (It funwise nearly costed the conservatives the election and the social democrats nearly caught up because of this) but I reckon atm, that this leads to an even bigger difference between people, because the richest become even faster even richer than they are now, but as I said, if this problem is solved, I might become a fan of it.

3. You said:
"And naturally they don't want to loose it and wouldn't 7 $ not even be better? So they start to build hurdles: Education, social circles etc. You doubt that?"

I do not doubt that the natural order of man is to take everything he can get away with. That's why our liberties are so important. laws in this country should protect all people from those that wish to harm them. That can be done though regulation of companies to keep the rich from taking advantage of the poor. In the beginning, we took great advantage of minorities, and women. Today, from a legal standpoint, it's over. You can not legally deny a black, or woman a job, a vote, a place to live, or access to education. These are laws he had to put into place to better protect people from greed.

The problem is, no one is protecting the rich from the poor today. Today, every program that is passed to support the poor that is completely expected to be paid for by the rich is an example of the problem that you point out. Greed has made the rich an easy target. Government is suposed to protect people from that type of behavior, not perpectuate it.

Well, the richest don't need as much protection as the poor, because the richest won't die of hunger and won't start to attack everybody else in desperation. As well they are protected, otherwise, how the hell could they get rich, if they wouldn't have any protection. And sorry, in the US the taxation for the richest was way more lowered then the taxes for the middle class in the last years. But basically not the richest (which could afford it), but the middle class pays the most taxes.

About the same amount of education you need to be a microbiolgist.

Most of the jobs that require the same amount of education are really a lot harder.

Unless you disagree that a teachers job isn't as tough as things like microbiology.

I have no idea how hard microbiology is.  I'm sure it's tough.

Personally, I'm a fan of privatizing education... but let me just quickly touch on how hard teaching can be.

For a while, I was a high school English teacher for the Los Angeles school district (LAUSD), and it was a crazy miserable experience.  My classroom had no janitor; just me.  I say "my classroom," but it was also the classroom of the teacher who used it for an off-track summer school class during "my break."

The classroom was always packed, routinely more than 40 kids per class.  There weren't enough desks, ever, and the administration was absolutely powerless to help.  The teachers there had to resort to poaching desks from other classrooms on an ad-hoc basis.  Bottom line, every semester I had at least a handful of kids on the floor.

Thank god it doesn't rain much in SoCal, but when it did rain, the roof would leak into the classroom, soaking about a fifth of the total classroom space.  Reported to admin, never fixed while I was there.

Kids would come and go (i.e. moved classes, etc.) well into the semester, sometimes like 5 or 6 weeks in.  Within any given class, they ran the gamut of ability.  Some were classified as special needs, with an IEP, and sitting next to those same students were honors-level kids.  Mostly, however, they were first or second gen immigrants with a spotty command of the English language and little-to-no interest in reading.

"Classroom management" was always the buzz word; teachers were prized, not on their ability to relate the content, but on their ability to "keep peace" in the classroom.  During my first couple of weeks, an older teacher took me aside and scanned my rosters--he told me which students he recognized; which of them I would never get through to; and which to avoid confronting, in regard for my own personal safety.  In one class, one semester, I had to routinely let a kid out early to meet with his parole officer.

Those instances I did try to "discipline" were usually undermined by the student's family.  At one point, I was lectured by the older sister of one of my students who came to my class to cuss me out (within earshot of her four little kids, all of whom she brought along) because she knew her sister was a good kid, and didn't deserve detention.

And all of this doesn't actually touch on the difficulties of teaching English, and there are a few, even under the best circumstances.  And I never had the best circumstances.  Due to budgetary restrictions, and district guidelines, our reading list was fairly set in stone.  For 10th grade English, for instance, we had to read Macbeth.  My classes were routinely filled with children who had a hard time constructing standard paragraphs--they were not ready for Shakespeare--but that is how we spent our time.  We would read Macbeth aloud and I would help parse the meaning for the few who kept their heads off the desks.  (To have them read by themselves, or as homework, was to fail the classes almost without exception; any work you wanted done had to be supervised.)

Many of the teachers I knew routinely went to bars after the teaching day.  While I usually just went home, I think I understood why--the whole experience was pretty soul-crushing, and I would spend most of my nights off trying not to think about the classroom, and failing.

It's possible that my experience was atypical, or that I was somehow specifically unprepared to deal with it.  I dunno.  All I know is that it was the hardest job I've ever had.