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Not from USA, is there shortage of teachers in USA? Or government pays too little to have local teachers consider such jobs? Seems like a broken system

> is there shortage of teachers in USA?

No, there is a steady stream of teachers being fed into the maw of public education. The pay is low and job security is terrible until you get tenure. My wife was a teacher; I have heard horror stories.

You get paid based on a combination of how much money you earn your employer and how easy you are to replace. Schools get paid by taxes, and there are a ton of them produced every year. So, the pay is abysmal.


My gf makes about $90k a year, tons of time off, at 35 years old in a California public school. If she wasn't a teacher, she admits she'd probably be a cop or 911 dispatcher, because government gigs are what her entire extended family recommends. She has trouble adding 50 cents to 75 cents, but luckily she only teaches English and social studies to middle schoolers.

I have a kid who just graduated elementary and is about to enter Middle school.

Your post actually explains why every single classmate of my daughter has enrolled in private middle school ($50k+ tuition), despite being in the best school district (Palo Alto School District).

Apparently public middle schools are really bad in California, but you can still find decent high and elementary schools

All top private middle schools in the bay are oversubscribed and cannot accomodate everyone, and require ridiculous exams and admission process that rivals Ivy League, situation is really bad, and demand for good teachers is infinite


I like the girl but I can't help but dislike what her and her social circle are doing to schools. I go to their social events after hours for happy hour or family events and I honestly don't think these people are capable of molding the youth into anything but lame 'nice' kind stupid people. Yes, being nice and kind are important, sure. But you get major problems when these teachers can not inspire or provoke thought. And they can't, because they are honestly borderline retarded. Half the kids are just nodding along, and the other half realize by around 7th grade that their teachers are stupid and start really mistreating them and ignoring them. Its a mess.

> re---ed.

Please stop saying say. It's almost as bad as the n-word. There are a lot of neurodivergent people around here.


I personally like saying the word, but I'll admit this is one of the worse examples I've used in a while. Because I genuinely was trying to imply they were dumb, which makes it a more serious use of the word.

Personally I can't imagine saying that word in reference to anyone with a true disability. In my social circles, retarded is reserved for people acting in dumb ways due to really bad social skills or often even self centeredness or laziness. Using it in regards to the teachers was probably too close to a serious use of it and I shouldnt have. Sorry.


What happened was there were a lot of boomers that taught my generation in the bay area. So when I was in high school around 94-98 the teachers were typically 40-50ish year old boomer generation. These people were pretty good at teaching. Mostly white. As generation X started getting into the game, and bureaucratic processes the introduced "core" and "new math". Both pretty bad. I was in the middle of the transition so I did get pre-new-math as well.

What happened next? Well pretty much all of us got jobs at Google, Apple and other places. The only way for any of us to have stayed in teaching would have been major compromises. We decimated the teaching industry because it didn't realize the salaries these companies were waiting to pay us. They had no chance.


This situation rhymes with manufacturing jobs in the midwest.

Industrial and manufscturing jobs were offshored to Asia and Americans had zero chance to be price competitive relative to East-Asian labor

The diff is that Midwest didnt have Apple and Google to fall back on, they only had fentanyl to cope with their situation.

But now the situation is so bad, you cant even find talent in US even if you are willing to pay for it. Asian countries have better integrated supply chains that make manufacturing two to three orders cheaper than in US.

And nobody knows how to solve it, but there is only one solution.

End the USD as a global reserve currency, so that manufacturing in US has more power again, relative to financial industry. I dont see any other option long term


Rural Alaska is by and large very very remote. Often small plane is the only practical access and then only in favorable weather.

Recruiting teachers to remote villages with extreme weather is hard and if you are at US university training to be a teacher you will probably have other options that are more attractive as a young person.


Even anchorage is pretty bad

Yes, I mean there is basically one road to Alaska and from the nearest major US city (Seattle) it is 3600km to Anchorage…about the same distance as Barcelona to Moscow but entirely through sparsely or unpopulated wilderness.

And Seattle is a long way from most of the US…another 3300km from Chicago.


Teacher pay is low, but it also requires certification and a degree. And in exchange it will be relatively stressful and lacking in prestige.

And long hours!

My favorite teacher strike was when the teachers stopped doing work when they weren't being paid. The district quickly caved.

Little bit of both. Pay varies drastically from state to state, even taking cost of living into account. By the time you pay for a degree and a credential the ROI isn't great. Jobs in better paying areas exist too but are understandably more competitive

The "Alaska" bit is very important. Very remote, very cold. Everything is very expensive because almost all of it has to be shipped in by air.

Yes, the US teacher pay is generally crap and we're short on teachers everywhere, but Alaska is a rather unique situation.

It's 16% of the US's land area, but only 0.2% of the population.


Teachers are paid less than they should be and and must complete specific undergraduate and graduate degrees as well as additional ongoing certifications. They are, unfortunately, not well respected by many groups. And right-wing folks have been making noise about augmenting and replacing teachers with AI. I have multiple friends who have left teaching due to lack of respect and support from student parents. I still have two teachers in my family.

Article seems a bit biased. Similarly like some other ones where he cut research funding to then later resume it, with almost no significant loss, but the Democrats cried about it all over like if funding was completely stopped. They always tell one side of the story that fits the narrative.

Just to be clear I am against this as well, just the journalism is so filthy now.


Cutting and/or other randomizing activities makes planning for everyone involved very, very hard.

Congrats, the funding came back that time; but jobs were already cut, people already got deported whose college time depended on it, the professor got axed because the college couldn’t afford it anymore, etc.

Stability is worth its weight in gold in some areas. This isn’t that.


Have you considered that he has had to walk back the cuts because of the outcry?

low level support, means that they can be "bribed" to do things like this.

Companies that focus on product and not “investor value” through nice looking working websites

What exactly does it do? What is brain energy?

A good question, but we don't know what anti-depressants do or how they do it, same with anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers, psychedelics, etc. I think we can say we have good theories for creatine.

We do know that it does do something at certain doses.


There are lots of studies. It's possible to find satisfactory information. Creatine has been studied for a very long time.

First hand experience for many is a noticeable improvement, especially during busy/sleep minimizing times, to the point where it can sometimes be a substitute for caffiene without the crash.



If water is the problem then why are we ignoring how much water beef needs? If we measure per person use it is hundreds times more than data center usage in comparison if we measure in per person consumption


you quickly went from "AI water consumption isn't a problem", to "it's okay because cows consume water too"

Cows don't steal people's jobs.


Right, see, again, giving away the game. It's not about the water (if it was, the objection would be easy to dismiss). Everything is downstream of a populist argument against AI progress.

The loss of income of people displaced by AI may end up eating less meat to survive.


Is this a serious comment? No one, in an environmental discussion, ignores how much water beef needs. It’s a central part of most vegan/vegetarian commentary.

But this is a conversation about data centers. It would be great if you had the capability of staying even vaguely on topic instead of spinning off into “what about” bullshit.


1. Beef uses trillions of gallons of water per year, while data centers use billions - data center water use is nowhere remotely as much as beef.

2. Despite beef using far more water, is it getting anywhere remotely as much coverage as data center water use?

3. Senators like Sanders proposed stopping data center construction nationwide - have senators proposed similar nationwide bans for beef?


You can go ahead and try to do that. Politically, to say its a DOA bill, is the understatement of the century. Also, water is renewable. This entire discussion is absurd and scientifically illiterate. There is a reason why nobody says, "party of science" anymore.


> Also, water is renewable.

Tell that to the aquafers we’re emptying that won’t refill for generations.

Water is renewable, but not necessarily in the right place or in timely manner.

Using treated potable water to cool servers is just taxpayers subsidizing server cooling.


Beef uses water, but you can eat beef.

Ai uses water, but you can’t eat ai.

Can you see the difference?


>> If water is the problem then why are we ignoring how much water beef needs? If we measure per person use it is hundreds times more than data center usage

> Ai uses water, but you can’t eat ai.

Almost all other foods don't use trillions of gallons of water like beef does. If someone's goal was to reduce water use, then shouldn't they be making at least as much noise about the non-necessary thing using far more water compared to data center's billions, not trillions, of gallons?


Point I am making is if we need to tackle the water issue then we need to do it via 80/20 rule, focus on the elephant in the room first. Data centers are a fly in a room with an elephant in this case.

No, that logic does not make any sense whatsoever.


Was anyone proposing to eat AI? Was anyone proposing to do data processing with a pot roast?

Why is the difference in what specific use case the consumers of these products are serving with them one that's relevant to the discussion?


This has been my experience. Glad they got what they finally deserved.


Sanctions thing is such a hypocrisy. Russia pumped through ukraine about $1B worth of gas PER DAY after the war started and continued for about 2 years, yet they sanctioned some companies that were like a drop in the ocean of those billions paid to Putin


You were not born in eastern Europe that’s why. That’s the whole Eastern European mind set - the only way to succeed is to rip people off or scam. Anything else is already taken or no money in it or government will take it away from you.


As an atheist, how do you read a bible without critical thinking? I’ve tried and I just have a really hard time with all the double meanings and things not making any sense. What am I missing?


The parent said it, it's a historical document about events and beliefs of people that shaped most of the modern world. I was never one for history, but as I've gotten older I've come to appreciate history as a study of the present in terms of events, ideas, and other influences that made the present what it is. You can't understand the present without understanding the past.

It shouldn't cause you so much friction to hold an idea in your head you don't believe to be true. Read it as anthropology rather than metaphysics.


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