The story only kind of touched on some things. Not all… see the end
When John F Kennedy decided we should go to the moon, he didn't just funnel money into NASA. For us to get to the moon we needed education. There were also many programs that would solve today’s the teaching shortage problem.
I hesitate using an old-timey cliché when talking about rocket science, but you need to put the horse before the cart. The plan was to train and hire more teachers, all all levels. With the understanding that to go to the moon there would need to be more education of scientists, mathematicians, physicists.... etc.
In the 1960’s funds were funneled into more and better teachers.
The story touches on things.. suggesting retirements, CoVid and fewer new teachers entering the field. But those are symptoms. Why are teachers retiring as soon as they can? Why are fewer people entering the field?
It ignores this problem manifested before CoVid. It started when several things happened in the profession. Back in the 90’s, the profession began to lose respect. Also, we transitioned from parents expecting their children to work hard, to do homework, and they expected that the smarter their children were the more rigorist their class schedule would be to:
Parents saying: What are you going to make my students pass. Yes teachers have to teach, but you can’t educate someone without incentive. The common phrase you hear from boomers is: “If I did that my parents would have killed me.”
The essence of that phrase was, don’t talk back to your teacher and work. Or the job of teaching children who don’t respect their teacher got harder. If you asked educators in 2010 (and likely still to this day), if they were encouraging their own kids to become teachers and the answer would be - > “NO!”
A lot of this comes from what I have mentioned before, but we are dumbing down our education.
As far as respect and more than just parenting - Name a politician who has said that we need more teachers. Or one that says they want to have a more educated populist. Name a talking head pundit (a la rush limbaugh, tucker carlson, et. al) that isn’t telling people how they should think. Think about the number of times a politician or talking head has told you that the boogieman is the decline of our society.
The boogieman could be: drag shows, dangerous books, liberal teachers, not enough guns in schools, video games.
Those politicians who are not saying education is important (cough republicans cough)... are exploiting an ignorant population.
This is education as a whole and I don’t see anyone changing that. I will set that aside and localize this past politics.
As far as rural schools, there are those political problems and those related to what rural America has become: Sparse and Red. I hate to generalize, but add ignorant into that.
Now pretend you are a single, 22-year-old, educated and willing to accept facts (you know like climate change or we need to do something about school shootings. You don’t want to move to St. Lawrence County.
Let me stop here and just put it succinctly. Pretend you want to find a partner. Let’s not go crazy and say you are gay, transgender...or even a person of color because there is too much hate for you to consider Rural America. How are you going to find a mate. Go to any dating site and search for a 20-something member of the opposite sex in Keene, North Creek or even Lake Placid.
You have to pay a teacher a lot of money if you are going to ask them to live a celibate life.
Plagiarism demonstrates that”dumbing down” of educational standards. It’s OK if you’re President of Harvard and so is genocide “in the proper context .......”
A really important thing in the ncpr article is: non-certified teachers, teaching.
There are schools that have physical education teachers teaching math. This is not to disrespect phys ed teachers, because having a science teacher teaching gym is not a great idea either.
But if your concern is taxes... then is an uneducated community cheaper?
The Administrator who thinks public schools should now also be teaching people to be teachers in lieu of college... has more free time on his hands than you would expect/
I agree that a lot of the shortage is caused by the lack of respect for the profession any more. Taxpayers object to pay raises for teachers, parents/students dismiss them and undermine their authority. Why be a teacher when you can become a banker or a tech bro and make a lot more money with a lot less stress. Same goes for health care providers. The stress they suffered working through COVID and the abuse they would get for trying to follow recommended protocols. (Like vaccines etc), who needs it. The public is its own worst enemy and our abuse of public service and public interest workers is just symptomatic of how we view the professions.
Health Care providers... underpaid and under-appreciated. (probably all the frontline workers) I all but laugh... four years ago people were standing outside hospitals saying thank you.
Now I hear from nurses - - > patients will yell at them for no reason... The one plus Nurses have (and there are not many) is they can get a job anywhere they want.. and if they get tired one place the demand is such that they can get a raise by switching jobs
I agree--about editorials, being the conscience of a community, having a mission...about the importance of a reflective, thoughtful voice and what makes for a good local newspaper and an informed community. It is the community newspapers that revealed local corruption and also personal reflections on farms and goats and families and factories and workers....But just having read the Post Star 360, i also felt how good it was to read about Fort Morgan in Colorado, the community there not only welcoming refugees from Guatemala but creating a vibrant community...about what could be done, what we could do here. Also about elderly people living alone and how a "robot" could provide a voice of connection; and about the gender gap in terms of work and wages, women still doing so much and getting so little; and about the growth of misinformation and how social media has been firing those who could guard and protect viewers from what undercuts our democracy; and about signs of illness....Not just opinions --but actually information that i didn't know, that made me--and could make us all--think about what is happening locally and in our larger world, making us all citizens of a community and of a larger world.
just read a comment from a "Nordic Pagan Soldier" which display how "opinions" by ignorant racist, and anti-semitic people--quoting Ford, using profanity and hate--is so common in social media and dangerous to democracy, intelligence, and reflective thought..
Hello bernice the following link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford# is an article about Henry Ford, click on the hyperlink titled “Antisemitism and The Dearborn Independent”. You may learn something about Herny Ford that my high school history teacher never covered. Follow the links and see where they lead.
Thank you for your writing, and today, thank you for pointing out the teacher shortage. New York needs to deal with its serious issues in public education. One of the major issues in school districts deals with funding inequalities. No one wants their taxes to increase. If you ask Queensbury or Saratoga schools, they are not experiencing shortages (except maybe in highly specialized areas) because they pay better and their classrooms are better equipped. Teachers in small rural districts deal with shortages and inadequate resources and spend a significant portion of their already lower compensation on classroom supplies. I speak from experience. The inequities from one district to another can be enormous and still rural homeowners end up with a large tax burden. Vermont’s system is better although still imperfect.
The article pointed out a factor... and like so many issues.. there are the small things we don't give enough weight
The cost of health care continues to climb, well above inflation rates.
If we went to the same system most of the civilized world has, that would cut the cost of labor for schools and so many other industries.
Many schools expect the teachers to pay up to 20% of that cost. A teacher who leaves one district to another not only will have a salary raise, but might save $2,000 when they don't have to pay for their health insurance
So health care for all would save both the employee and the employer.
Some will say taxes will go up.. but the research I have see shows there will still be an over all savings...
In this case rural districts will be competing on equal footing (in the health insurance)
Editorials and columns only have value as a SUPPLEMENT to robust local journalism. The journalism has to be the core of a local newspaper. For example, the local weekly has spiky columns but minimal journalism, which is why it has little relevance outside its solid arts/culture coverage.
Successful people are always the problem? How does the “local weekly” double it’s circulation, revenue and influence in an era when out of touch media (like NPR) preach to the cool aid drinking choir. Opp’s, time for my 8th vaccination and new n95 mask.
Newspaper should report facts, not opinions. Everybody has an opinion. Just because you work for a newspaper doesn't mean your opinion matters more than others. I know many people that absolutely hate Ken Tingley and Will Doolittle, and they provide good reasons for doing so. Everybody has their supporters and detractors. Everybody thinks their own opinions are right. Report the facts. You are not the arbiter of right and wrong.
Without the conversation and debate, there is little chance of getting to what is right and wrong. I never said my opinions were always right, but a jumping off point for the conversations to begin. Editors and columnists are paid to do the research, to take the time to explore issues and come to conclusions. Many citizens don’t have that time. How many citizens have a chance to talk with a political candidate for a hour or so and ask them questions? Many would not even know there was a debate without newspapers weighing in on an issue.
Here is an example: If I wrote a column that said Elise Stefanik is a bad congresswoman, that is my opinion. But if I write a column that says Elise Stefanik lied to her constituents and provide facts to back that up, well, I think that is a reader service and something voters should know about. They can check the facts and judge for themselves. But if no one ever addresses the issue at all, how will anyone ever know?
WASHINGTON (AP) — When it comes to the news media and the impact it’s having on democracy and political polarization in the United States, Americans are likelier to say it’s doing more harm than good.
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults say the news media is increasing political polarization in this country, and just under half say they have little to no trust in the media’s ability to report the news fairly and accurately, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.
That all comes down to how you define “media.” If you are talking about prime time cable shows I would have to agree with you. If you are talking about community newspaper reporters and editors, I would disagree.
The nation’s largest newspaper chain is of the opinion that its opinion pages are alienating readers and becoming obsolete. So newspapers owned by Gannett Co. — publisher of USA Today and more than 250 dailies — have begun to radically shrink and reimagine their editorial sections, publishing them on fewer days each week and dropping traditional features such as syndicated columns and editorial cartoons. Even political endorsements and letters to the editor are being scaled back. The company has been pushing for the cutbacks for years, and they have become increasingly visible to readers since a committee of editors formally recommended them at a meeting in April. “Readers don’t want us to tell them what to think,” the editors, who come from Gannett newsrooms across the country, declared in an internal presentation. “They don’t believe we have the expertise to tell anyone what to think on most issues. They perceive us as having a biased agenda.”
I am fine with, and even encourage, editors to express their opinions in editorials, and columnists to do so in their columns, but reporters should not allow their opinions to color their news articles, and editors should not allow their opinions to affect (or infect) their news coverage.
A teacher shortage in rural school areas. ( https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/48914/20231227/teacher-shortages-are-getting-worse-in-north-country-schools )
The story only kind of touched on some things. Not all… see the end
When John F Kennedy decided we should go to the moon, he didn't just funnel money into NASA. For us to get to the moon we needed education. There were also many programs that would solve today’s the teaching shortage problem.
I hesitate using an old-timey cliché when talking about rocket science, but you need to put the horse before the cart. The plan was to train and hire more teachers, all all levels. With the understanding that to go to the moon there would need to be more education of scientists, mathematicians, physicists.... etc.
In the 1960’s funds were funneled into more and better teachers.
The story touches on things.. suggesting retirements, CoVid and fewer new teachers entering the field. But those are symptoms. Why are teachers retiring as soon as they can? Why are fewer people entering the field?
It ignores this problem manifested before CoVid. It started when several things happened in the profession. Back in the 90’s, the profession began to lose respect. Also, we transitioned from parents expecting their children to work hard, to do homework, and they expected that the smarter their children were the more rigorist their class schedule would be to:
Parents saying: What are you going to make my students pass. Yes teachers have to teach, but you can’t educate someone without incentive. The common phrase you hear from boomers is: “If I did that my parents would have killed me.”
The essence of that phrase was, don’t talk back to your teacher and work. Or the job of teaching children who don’t respect their teacher got harder. If you asked educators in 2010 (and likely still to this day), if they were encouraging their own kids to become teachers and the answer would be - > “NO!”
A lot of this comes from what I have mentioned before, but we are dumbing down our education.
As far as respect and more than just parenting - Name a politician who has said that we need more teachers. Or one that says they want to have a more educated populist. Name a talking head pundit (a la rush limbaugh, tucker carlson, et. al) that isn’t telling people how they should think. Think about the number of times a politician or talking head has told you that the boogieman is the decline of our society.
The boogieman could be: drag shows, dangerous books, liberal teachers, not enough guns in schools, video games.
Those politicians who are not saying education is important (cough republicans cough)... are exploiting an ignorant population.
This is education as a whole and I don’t see anyone changing that. I will set that aside and localize this past politics.
As far as rural schools, there are those political problems and those related to what rural America has become: Sparse and Red. I hate to generalize, but add ignorant into that.
Now pretend you are a single, 22-year-old, educated and willing to accept facts (you know like climate change or we need to do something about school shootings. You don’t want to move to St. Lawrence County.
Let me stop here and just put it succinctly. Pretend you want to find a partner. Let’s not go crazy and say you are gay, transgender...or even a person of color because there is too much hate for you to consider Rural America. How are you going to find a mate. Go to any dating site and search for a 20-something member of the opposite sex in Keene, North Creek or even Lake Placid.
You have to pay a teacher a lot of money if you are going to ask them to live a celibate life.
Thank you for so elegantly and completely illustrating Edward Low’s statement that we are dumbing down our education.
Really driving his point home now, aren’t you?
Plagiarism demonstrates that”dumbing down” of educational standards. It’s OK if you’re President of Harvard and so is genocide “in the proper context .......”
A really important thing in the ncpr article is: non-certified teachers, teaching.
There are schools that have physical education teachers teaching math. This is not to disrespect phys ed teachers, because having a science teacher teaching gym is not a great idea either.
But if your concern is taxes... then is an uneducated community cheaper?
The Administrator who thinks public schools should now also be teaching people to be teachers in lieu of college... has more free time on his hands than you would expect/
I agree that a lot of the shortage is caused by the lack of respect for the profession any more. Taxpayers object to pay raises for teachers, parents/students dismiss them and undermine their authority. Why be a teacher when you can become a banker or a tech bro and make a lot more money with a lot less stress. Same goes for health care providers. The stress they suffered working through COVID and the abuse they would get for trying to follow recommended protocols. (Like vaccines etc), who needs it. The public is its own worst enemy and our abuse of public service and public interest workers is just symptomatic of how we view the professions.
UGH UGH
Health Care providers... underpaid and under-appreciated. (probably all the frontline workers) I all but laugh... four years ago people were standing outside hospitals saying thank you.
Now I hear from nurses - - > patients will yell at them for no reason... The one plus Nurses have (and there are not many) is they can get a job anywhere they want.. and if they get tired one place the demand is such that they can get a raise by switching jobs
I agree--about editorials, being the conscience of a community, having a mission...about the importance of a reflective, thoughtful voice and what makes for a good local newspaper and an informed community. It is the community newspapers that revealed local corruption and also personal reflections on farms and goats and families and factories and workers....But just having read the Post Star 360, i also felt how good it was to read about Fort Morgan in Colorado, the community there not only welcoming refugees from Guatemala but creating a vibrant community...about what could be done, what we could do here. Also about elderly people living alone and how a "robot" could provide a voice of connection; and about the gender gap in terms of work and wages, women still doing so much and getting so little; and about the growth of misinformation and how social media has been firing those who could guard and protect viewers from what undercuts our democracy; and about signs of illness....Not just opinions --but actually information that i didn't know, that made me--and could make us all--think about what is happening locally and in our larger world, making us all citizens of a community and of a larger world.
just read a comment from a "Nordic Pagan Soldier" which display how "opinions" by ignorant racist, and anti-semitic people--quoting Ford, using profanity and hate--is so common in social media and dangerous to democracy, intelligence, and reflective thought..
Hello bernice the following link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford# is an article about Henry Ford, click on the hyperlink titled “Antisemitism and The Dearborn Independent”. You may learn something about Herny Ford that my high school history teacher never covered. Follow the links and see where they lead.
Thank you for your writing, and today, thank you for pointing out the teacher shortage. New York needs to deal with its serious issues in public education. One of the major issues in school districts deals with funding inequalities. No one wants their taxes to increase. If you ask Queensbury or Saratoga schools, they are not experiencing shortages (except maybe in highly specialized areas) because they pay better and their classrooms are better equipped. Teachers in small rural districts deal with shortages and inadequate resources and spend a significant portion of their already lower compensation on classroom supplies. I speak from experience. The inequities from one district to another can be enormous and still rural homeowners end up with a large tax burden. Vermont’s system is better although still imperfect.
https://vtdigger.org/2023/11/16/with-the-start-of-school-budget-season-districts-brace-for-new-education-finance-law/#:~:text=In%20Vermont%27s%20education%20funding%20system%2C%20the%20money%20that%20pays%20for,local%20residential%20property%20tax%20rates.
The article pointed out a factor... and like so many issues.. there are the small things we don't give enough weight
The cost of health care continues to climb, well above inflation rates.
If we went to the same system most of the civilized world has, that would cut the cost of labor for schools and so many other industries.
Many schools expect the teachers to pay up to 20% of that cost. A teacher who leaves one district to another not only will have a salary raise, but might save $2,000 when they don't have to pay for their health insurance
So health care for all would save both the employee and the employer.
Some will say taxes will go up.. but the research I have see shows there will still be an over all savings...
In this case rural districts will be competing on equal footing (in the health insurance)
Don’t take the bait…internet trolls take up too much oxygen in whatever space they invade.
A good New Year’s resolution for us all to remember.
https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041688471-How-do-I-ban-or-un-ban-someone-from-commenting-on-my-publication-
Give him the jackboot!
Editorials and columns only have value as a SUPPLEMENT to robust local journalism. The journalism has to be the core of a local newspaper. For example, the local weekly has spiky columns but minimal journalism, which is why it has little relevance outside its solid arts/culture coverage.
Successful people are always the problem? How does the “local weekly” double it’s circulation, revenue and influence in an era when out of touch media (like NPR) preach to the cool aid drinking choir. Opp’s, time for my 8th vaccination and new n95 mask.
Nice piece, Ken, on conscience of the communithy. Happy New Year!
Newspaper should report facts, not opinions. Everybody has an opinion. Just because you work for a newspaper doesn't mean your opinion matters more than others. I know many people that absolutely hate Ken Tingley and Will Doolittle, and they provide good reasons for doing so. Everybody has their supporters and detractors. Everybody thinks their own opinions are right. Report the facts. You are not the arbiter of right and wrong.
Without the conversation and debate, there is little chance of getting to what is right and wrong. I never said my opinions were always right, but a jumping off point for the conversations to begin. Editors and columnists are paid to do the research, to take the time to explore issues and come to conclusions. Many citizens don’t have that time. How many citizens have a chance to talk with a political candidate for a hour or so and ask them questions? Many would not even know there was a debate without newspapers weighing in on an issue.
Here is an example: If I wrote a column that said Elise Stefanik is a bad congresswoman, that is my opinion. But if I write a column that says Elise Stefanik lied to her constituents and provide facts to back that up, well, I think that is a reader service and something voters should know about. They can check the facts and judge for themselves. But if no one ever addresses the issue at all, how will anyone ever know?
WASHINGTON (AP) — When it comes to the news media and the impact it’s having on democracy and political polarization in the United States, Americans are likelier to say it’s doing more harm than good.
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults say the news media is increasing political polarization in this country, and just under half say they have little to no trust in the media’s ability to report the news fairly and accurately, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.
That all comes down to how you define “media.” If you are talking about prime time cable shows I would have to agree with you. If you are talking about community newspaper reporters and editors, I would disagree.
The nation’s largest newspaper chain is of the opinion that its opinion pages are alienating readers and becoming obsolete. So newspapers owned by Gannett Co. — publisher of USA Today and more than 250 dailies — have begun to radically shrink and reimagine their editorial sections, publishing them on fewer days each week and dropping traditional features such as syndicated columns and editorial cartoons. Even political endorsements and letters to the editor are being scaled back. The company has been pushing for the cutbacks for years, and they have become increasingly visible to readers since a committee of editors formally recommended them at a meeting in April. “Readers don’t want us to tell them what to think,” the editors, who come from Gannett newsrooms across the country, declared in an internal presentation. “They don’t believe we have the expertise to tell anyone what to think on most issues. They perceive us as having a biased agenda.”
I am fine with, and even encourage, editors to express their opinions in editorials, and columnists to do so in their columns, but reporters should not allow their opinions to color their news articles, and editors should not allow their opinions to affect (or infect) their news coverage.