[fabbari]

  Schools do not treat stupid and intelligent children the same, teachers - with few exceptions - do. Not because they are evil, but because to be able to cater to the different levels of intelligence and the variation in interests that you will naturally find in a random sample of children they require the time and opportunities to do so.

  As long as we treat teachers as the least important workers, without acknowledging the critical work they do [0], have classes that have more pupils than a teacher can follow individually in a meaningful way and consider education "an expense" that needs reduction, rather than "an investment" we will not have a proper education system.

  On the flip side: an uneducated population is easier to sway, so there is not a lot of pressure on the political establishment to change things.

[0] Lack of self awareness - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er2_n9pXUAMZnyq.jpg:large

[corty]

Paying teachers more is beside the point. A well-paid teacher isn't suddenly a better teacher just because it earns more money.

The things we should invest in are more teachers, smaller and more separated classes and better teachers' education. Only the last one correlates (somewhat) with teachers' salaries.

[Aerroon]

How much of a difference do teachers make in the public school system? I don't mean teacher vs no teacher, but good teacher vs average teacher. The topics in the public school system are not set by the teachers themselves - they have to teach what has been decided elsewhere. A good teacher can engage students better, but how much of that is the teacher's ability as opposed to the teacher and students happening to get along? How much of it is good students self-selecting themselves into academically better schools, therefore having better peers?

Asked in a different way: if we paid (all) teachers 3x as we do right now, would we observe significant long-term improvements in students?

[randompwd]

Please do not use code blocks just to draw attention to your comment. It is not clever or creative.

[fabbari]

  This is odd - I am not using code blocks, I am just typing in the text box to reply. I thought it looked like code as a way of showing my comments. I really don't know why it happens, I will look and see if it's somewhere in the settings.