Chile Forum

I got a kick out of seeing the terms "greedy" and "teacher" used in the same sentence. Just have a look at the faculty parking lot of any public school in the USA; those previously owned gems running on hope are a clear sign of the greed.
I will agree that pouring money into schools does not correlate with quality. How can you use funding to ensure that a 7 is a 7 is a 7 (At PSU time) regardless of the school attended?

How can you use funding to ensure that a 7 is a 7 is a 7 (At PSU time) regardless of the school attended?

You can't, and that is one of the major weaknesses of the PSU system and the reliance on numbers for measuring progress. It distorts the picture of real abilities. It makes the drop out rate in the first 2 years of university way too high. Kids get into university and can't cope, don't know how to research a subject or write anything literate about it.

No one denies that efforts are being made to better the quality of education across the school years, but changes in education can take decades. One of the problems is that talk of equality soon becomes talk of finance. You could pour money into education here and you would come out with basically the same results at the end of the day. The place where changes in education would make the most difference would be in the first years of schooling, but the tots don't march, and in teacher training/evaluation. The present minister has spoken of this often enough but no one is listening. Aside from that, teacher training by subject is vital.

The rise in teacher's salaries over the last few years have meant a small improvement in the candidates for teaching degrees at universities, but you still have the basic, underlying problem that your pool of possible teachers went through the system themselves. There is your vicious circle. But focussing attention and finance on the early years of learning could move up the ladder with a generation and make a difference.

When my son went to the university here he had a friend he made the first day. This kid's father was a carpenter and none of the family had finished senior school, let alone attended university. The kid wanted to study physics. His family thought he was insane to blow a university degree on something they saw as impractical. He had a first class brain, but he didn't know how to write a report, didn't know how to summarise, couldn't read the books in the uni library which were in English. So they became a team with my son supplying the deficiencies in his friend's education and the friend joining his great brain to their projects. Both went on to doctorates. But without the teamwork, that kid probably would have dropped out the first or second year.

We have had a lot of noise lately about educational reform but it is just so much noise about money. The teachers' union also marches! The very people who are against evaluations. Money can only get you so much if your methods are at fault. Basically, it is just painting over dirt.

I know I can't stand driving through those wealthy teacher subdivisions...you know, all the opulent homes, fine cars. What suckers of the public teat are these slackers! It's the same world wide. They make sofa king much money it makes me sick.

And so then there are the ordinary workers...damn...they think because they work they should earn a living wage and have pensions and stuff. Hideous entitlement vultures! Next thing you know people will start to expect they should have good water, access to decent, safe roads. I don't know what got into these selfish, lazy people.

Several of you live on a different planet than I do. Our suburban school parking lot has lots and lots of imported cars in the teachers' section (with all sorts of very progressive bumper stickers), not much in the way of beaters. Average salary = $75k (pretty damned good in Ohio), benefits package adds another $20k+ per year, gold-plated medical (one teacher plan costs about the same as 2 of my employees plans, I am on the same plan as my employees), retire young with a guaranteed pension, that is, work for 26 years and live off of you for another 30, work 180 days per year (max) during their "working" years, and those 180 days are under union conditions, meaning positively posh compared to say, running your own business. And that for a degree that doesn't compare with engineering, science or even business in terms of difficulty. That's thanks to the unions and the state monopoly, period. Is my kids' education better as a result? No, the opposite.

Spare me the maudlin, caring tears. Here's what you cannot refute: We have dumped tons more money into education and gotten zero in return, at best. For example, university tuition has skyrocketed even as subsidies have increased. Lots of students cannot repay their loans. Lots of students are duped into studying useless things that do not begin to justify their cost. Students are no better off for all that extra funding. Who benefits? The number of university employees has skyrocketed, and the pay and conditions of those employees is very, very comfortable. In any other context, the lefties out there would be screaming "Greed! Exploitation! One Percent!". Not so much when it's fellow travelers who are sticking it to the otherwise sacred "children".

It's smug greed, watered by politics, pure and simple.

John Hyre

Anyone know of of public school teachers in Chile driving fancy cars, living large? As for the "toothless" residents of Aisen, that's just another feckless comment by a hateful RR, who lives in a country he abhors though for whatever reason stays. Ignorant, racist and bigoted comments PX.

Why would anyone ever want to visit or move to your Chile?

Donnybrook wrote:

How can you use funding to ensure that a 7 is a 7 is a 7 (At PSU time) regardless of the school attended?

You can't, and that is one of the major weaknesses of the PSU system and the reliance on numbers for measuring progress. It distorts the picture of real abilities. It makes the drop out rate in the first 2 years of university way too high. Kids get into university and can't cope, don't know how to research a subject or write anything literate about it.

No one denies that efforts are being made to better the quality of education across the school years, but changes in education can take decades. One of the problems is that talk of equality soon becomes talk of finance. You could pour money into education here and you would come out with basically the same results at the end of the day. The place where changes in education would make the most difference would be in the first years of schooling, but the tots don't march, and in teacher training/evaluation. The present minister has spoken of this often enough but no one is listening. Aside from that, teacher training by subject is vital.

The rise in teacher's salaries over the last few years have meant a small improvement in the candidates for teaching degrees at universities, but you still have the basic, underlying problem that your pool of possible teachers went through the system themselves. There is your vicious circle. But focussing attention and finance on the early years of learning could move up the ladder with a generation and make a difference.

When my son went to the university here he had a friend he made the first day. This kid's father was a carpenter and none of the family had finished senior school, let alone attended university. The kid wanted to study physics. His family thought he was insane to blow a university degree on something they saw as impractical. He had a first class brain, but he didn't know how to write a report, didn't know how to summarise, couldn't read the books in the uni library which were in English. So they became a team with my son supplying the deficiencies in his friend's education and the friend joining his great brain to their projects. Both went on to doctorates. But without the teamwork, that kid probably would have dropped out the first or second year.

We have had a lot of noise lately about educational reform but it is just so much noise about money. The teachers' union also marches! The very people who are against evaluations. Money can only get you so much if your methods are at fault. Basically, it is just painting over dirt.

I wholeheartedly agree with you, Donnybrook.

Throwing money at the problem is only a (small) part of the solution and the time to make a difference is in the first school years.

As I have indicated in an other post I also believe it would be rather inexpensive and efficient to have longer school hours and less but better distributed vacations. Financing university education universally is in all likelihood a bad idea and should be focused on the usefulness of a specific career to the economy (may be natural sciences and engineering only), as the taxpayer is making an investment after all.

JHyre wrote:Several of you live on a different planet than I do. Our suburban school parking lot has lots and lots of imported cars in the teachers' section (with all sorts of very progressive bumper stickers), not much in the way of beaters. Average salary = $75k (pretty damned good in Ohio), benefits package adds another $20k+ per year, gold-plated medical (one teacher plan costs about the same as 2 of my employees plans, I am on the same plan as my employees), retire young with a guaranteed pension, that is, work for 26 years and live off of you for another 30, work 180 days per year (max) during their "working" years, and those 180 days are under union conditions, meaning positively posh compared to say, running your own business. And that for a degree that doesn't compare with engineering, science or even business in terms of difficulty. That's thanks to the unions and the state monopoly, period. Is my kids' education better as a result? No, the opposite.

Spare me the maudlin, caring tears. Here's what you cannot refute: We have dumped tons more money into education and gotten zero in return, at best. For example, university tuition has skyrocketed even as subsidies have increased. Lots of students cannot repay their loans. Lots of students are duped into studying useless things that do not begin to justify their cost. Students are no better off for all that extra funding. Who benefits? The number of university employees has skyrocketed, and the pay and conditions of those employees is very, very comfortable. In any other context, the lefties out there would be screaming "Greed! Exploitation! One Percent!". Not so much when it's fellow travelers who are sticking it to the otherwise sacred "children".

It's smug greed, watered by politics, pure and simple.

John Hyre

I’m with you there, at $5000 a year for tuition for 4 years and 48k starting salary topping out at 82k after 10 years for working 9 months a year, maybe those that spent 100k for a non-paying job should move to BC, well that won’t happen their Union would never let you teach. And yes teaches can afford houses in Vancouver, and yes they mostly drive late model cars.

Long and short of it Miss Vallejo should go spend a few months in the hermit kingdom, the last bastion of Communism in the world, but she better take a food supply with her, I hear they are starving to death over there in sight of the DMZ and it’s the USA not China looking to bail them out with food aid. Well even Communist can’t stick together.

patagoniax wrote:Yup, can't stand the place. It's simply bloody awful. Oh please oh please somebody get me outta here. It's so awful, so terribly awful and mean and awful.

mayo.jpg

I hadn't even READ this comment before I posted the other one making fun of you about your vast people-free wonderland pictures!!
So the curmudgeon-y hermit-like caricature I have of you in my brain really IS you! I love it when my imagination comes true. I think this made my week.

patagoniax wrote:

carica wrote:

patagoniax wrote:Yup, can't stand the place. It's simply bloody awful. Oh please oh please somebody get me outta here. It's so awful, so terribly awful and mean and awful.

mayo.jpg

I hadn't even READ this comment before I posted the other one making fun of you about your vast people-free wonderland pictures!!
So the curmudgeon-y hermit-like caricature I have of you in my brain really IS you! I love it when my imagination comes true. I think this made my week.

So very pleased that your every dream has come true.

But how selective becomes our memory. Do you not recall the many images I have contributed of the local humanity? The friendly and smiling inhabitants joyfully going about their daily tasks in this infinitely harmonious Happy Land ?

aysenrecrudece3.jpg

Noooo po, ellos segun tu no son personas. I call foul (as usual)!

patagoniax wrote:

carica wrote:....I posted the other one making fun of you about your vast people-free wonderland pictures!!

Since certain of my fan-club have expressed an interest in seeing more people in my selection of images, let's see what we can do to round out the portrayals.

First, there is Eliana. She is in jail right now for stabbing her husband with a kitchen knife. She is the very picture of chilenahood.

eliana.JPG

Then, there is Nelson, one of my former builders. Former. He stabbed his wife and went to jail. Wasn't that good a builder, anyway. No idea if he knows Eliana, but the spouse-stabbers club is a big one in Chile.

Sorry about the landscape part in the background.

I hope it's not too late for you to benefit from a 'socialization' sabatical in Santiago, or Miami.

JHyre wrote:Several of you live on a different planet than I do. Our suburban school parking lot has lots and lots of imported cars in the teachers' section (with all sorts of very progressive bumper stickers), not much in the way of beaters. Average salary = $75k (pretty damned good in Ohio), benefits package adds another $20k+ per year, gold-plated medical (one teacher plan costs about the same as 2 of my employees plans, I am on the same plan as my employees), retire young with a guaranteed pension, that is, work for 26 years and live off of you for another 30, work 180 days per year (max) during their "working" years, and those 180 days are under union conditions, meaning positively posh compared to say, running your own business. And that for a degree that doesn't compare with engineering, science or even business in terms of difficulty. That's thanks to the unions and the state monopoly, period. Is my kids' education better as a result? No, the opposite.

Spare me the maudlin, caring tears. Here's what you cannot refute: We have dumped tons more money into education and gotten zero in return, at best. For example, university tuition has skyrocketed even as subsidies have increased. Lots of students cannot repay their loans. Lots of students are duped into studying useless things that do not begin to justify their cost. Students are no better off for all that extra funding. Who benefits? The number of university employees has skyrocketed, and the pay and conditions of those employees is very, very comfortable. In any other context, the lefties out there would be screaming "Greed! Exploitation! One Percent!". Not so much when it's fellow travelers who are sticking it to the otherwise sacred "children".

It's smug greed, watered by politics, pure and simple.

John Hyre

Damn! I clearly taught in the wrong states. Pack your things kids we're moving to Ohio.