i hate my cushy bullshit job where i make obscene amounts of money. should i quit my job and become a teacher? here’s what i’m thinking so far:

pros:

  • i won’t hate my job anymore
  • my job is a real job where i actually contribute to society
  • summer vacation sounds dope

cons:

  • maybe i still hate my job
  • my job would be a real job where i do work
  • i won’t make obscene amounts of money
  • wtf grad school is expensive

alternatively, are there other jobs i should try to do instead? mind you i have no skills and would probably need to go back to school.

      • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Unironically it is though. We teach math wrong in the United States (it has gotten better since I graduated high school, but its still pretty shit). You get taught the wrong way to use math because it’s what capitalism demands from a teenage workforce, you spend undergrad unlearning everything, then finally get to what you should have been doing the whole time in graduate school, which will leave you “”“over qualified”“” and in debt with zero job prospects outside academia.

        It’s the entire reason the US is behind every other developed country when it comes to math.

          • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

            Below is a blog post from a teacher about “What if we taught art the way we taught math?”

            What if we taught art the way we teach math? We start by showing students all the colors, not to play with, but to memorize. Then, after a few years of that, we give them two or three colors and permit them to only paint straight lines over and over until they’ve mastered them. Then we work on arcs and then other curved lines for a few years. Finally, after many years of this sort of drilling, we move on to shapes where we drill some more. Then comes more repetitive drilling on colors, color mixing, composition, until finally, after many tedious years, the art student, now at a university, is finally permitted to actually create something of his own. Oh, and never, ever take a peek at someone else’s paper. It’s a ridiculous, backwards idea, but in a very real sense, this is exactly how we attempt to teach math.

            This is a summary of the book “A Mathematician’s Lament” by Paul Lockhart (I have not read the whole thing, so if these people are full of brainworms I wouldn’t know). An excerpt from his book:

            By removing the creative process and leaving only the results of that process, you virtually guarantee that no one will have any real engagement with the subject. It is like saying that Michelangelo created a beautiful sculpture, without letting me see it. How am I supposed to be inspired by that? (And of course it’s actually much worse than this— at least it’s understood that there is an art of sculpture that I am being prevented from appreciating).

            If you graduated high school before 2010, you were taught math completely wrong. Only in 2022 were the first students graduating high school that were taught using common core, a half-cocked remedy that fixes a lot of problems, but still leaves a bunch in place. Basically, you were taught things like multiplication tables, told to memorize formulas, etc. etc. Never were you taught the proofs mathematicians used to come up with this stuff. For example, multiplication and division are shorthand methods for addition and subtraction. So when kids are taught only to memorize, when they encounter numbers they have not memorized, they don’t know what to do.

            That’s not how mathematicians do things. Instead, they’re focus is on finding proofs for unsolved problems. Knowledge of formulas and how numbers interact are simply tools to go in your toolbox. It’s like arguing a court case where you cite precedents. We already have the proof for the Pythagorean Theorem so there’s no reason for you to prove it. Yet that’s what we have kids do. They practice problems using the Pythagorean Theorem while groaning about “When are we ever going to use this?” This method of teaching is great for creating a workforce that can count change or take measurements. It’s not great at creating the people that will discover a unified theory of gravity. In order to make new discoveries, it would help if children were introduced to algebra and calculus a lot sooner than 8th. and 12th. grade (respectively). More importantly, it would help if they were taught how algebra and calculus solved problems that weren’t understood (like the exact volume of a water bottle shaped like a bear).

            Probably the worst culprit is homework, which is used to get children to accept being available to their employers at all times. When you’re off the clock, they want you to perform unpaid labor. Even when that unpaid labor is bullshit other people figured out 2,000 years ago.

  • doleo@lemmy.oneEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    From personal experience, I can only advise that you avoid school teaching as much as possible. It’s a horrible, thankless job that puts you in numerous no-win situations. I’ll spare you the full length report, but speak to a number of teachers and you’ll hear plenty of sorry stories. Speak to any ‘good’ teacher and they’ll tell you how much it sucks to care about the job and be powerless to do it well.

  • Thief_of_Crows [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    You should make yourself financially bulletproof first, and have some investments. You’ll have to do real work, which might not be something you’re used to doing. Don’t delude yourself that it’ll be easy, your current job is undoubtedly easier than teaching.

    But that said, yes you should, if it’s not stupid for you to do it. You can’t help change the system by helping capitalists, the best thing a leftist can do is either join a union or become a teacher. Pick a job to make money, or to help society. The middle ground exists purely to make losers feel better about existing inside capitalism.

  • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    I’ve been teaching for a long time, and honestly the answer is… maybe

    It can vary a lot from state to state, municipality and school to school. There’s no guarantee it’s going to be better or more fulfilling than your current job, but it might be. Anyway, feel free to DM me with questions if you like.

  • MF_COOM [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    IDK. It’s not really reasonable to expect that everyone has a job that makes the world a better place. It’s just your job. If being a techbro permits you the time and material comfort to have a dignified existence and you’re not doing anything uniquely harmful (like working for the NSA etc) then like, w/e get that money and tithe 10% to a local org or something and use some of the extra time you get to help organize.

    If you want to change because you really hate your job and you genuinely want to teach, then yeah cool but don’t forget yeah you get summer vacation but you’ll also like you say really have to work.

    Just don’t become a teacher because you think it’s A Noble Job and you think it’s very important for you individually to feel like you have A Noble Job so you can consider yourself A Good Individual.

    • MF_COOM [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      I’d further add that you wouldn’t necessarily be making the world a better place by becoming a teacher anyways unless you have some reason to believe you’d be a better than average teacher in comparison to other teachers in your area. There will still be the same number of teaching jobs but your inclusion in the labour pool will make other teachers getting a job (who maybe don’t have an option to become a techbro) incrementally harder.

  • puff [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I’m in the same situation and the unhelpful answer is that it really just depends on whether the trade offs are worth it to you. I left academia because the pay is unsurvivable. I’m now in private industry (yuck) but I don’t have to skip meals and hand wash my laundry any more. I don’t have any employees (I am the employee) so I’m not exploiting people and don’t feel guilty really but obviously I wish I was working for state-owned industry or employee-owned industry. I dislike my job but I think I dislike being impoverished even more. I’m not ‘rich’ but I never want to be on the verge of homelessness. I’ve found that cutting back on work hours to do hobbies I enjoy helps a lot. I’m thinking of saving up enough to take a few weeks to a year off at some point to do other shit. Sort of like living two lives.

  • brainw0rms [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    My advice, keep your cushy job, and find a hobby or something else that you can enjoy or feel fulfilled doing and use your obscene income to fund it. Teaching is generally a pretty thankless and shitty job. There are always exceptions, but you probably won’t be any happier and you’ll have far less money.

  • Facky [he/him,comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Do online tutoring to see if you’re cut out for teaching. You can do it for free or you can squirrel away the money and use it while you get your teaching certificate.

  • the_post_of_tom_joad [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    • summer vacation isn’t as long as you think, what with keeping up with your teaching license and your turn at summer school

    • Beware, the job has just as many things that make it hateful as any other, being hamstrung by policy, uncaring incompetent superiors, what/how you may teach

    Source: grade school teacher friend who vents to me