
A School Where the Students Hire Their Teachers - llama_dentist
https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/a-school-where-the-students-hire-their-teachers/eb752ffe-09f6-4857-a35b-9792b8641674
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FollowSteph3
This is great for students who want to learn but as something that is offered
to the general public it will fail because too many students want to do the
minimum possible to graduate. That being said I think it's a great idea to try
in schools with highly motivated students.

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true_religion
It would seem odd to actually have 'children' do this, as it appears in the
article. Trained adults can't pick the difference between a good teacher and a
bad, I can hardly expect kids to find who isn't a good liar.

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cperciva
Are trained adults unable to tell the difference between good teachers and
bad, or are they merely unable to do anything about it?

When I was in high school, everybody -- the students, the parents, the
administrators, and other teachers -- knew who the good teachers were and who
the bad teachers were. But they had seniority and were protected by the union,
so the school couldn't get rid of them; and since the school couldn't get rid
of the bad teachers, they had to assign students blindly (since if students
could pick which English 11 class they took, nobody would take the one with
the lousy teacher).

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FollowSteph3
You're absolutely right, this is the problem that should really be solved. The
other is a workaround because it's a lot easier to implement. Kind of like
applying a quick hack to code rather than refactoring or re-architecturing.

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kareemm
The Sudbury Valley school is one of the first US schools based on the original
child-driven school called The Summerhill School, which is based in the UK:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School)

This "democratic school" movement has spread across the world since the
Summerhill School was founded in the 1920s:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_democratic_schools](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_democratic_schools)

If you want to deep dive There's a book about The Summerhill School that was
written in the 1960s:

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/178734.Summerhill](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/178734.Summerhill)

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danielpops
I think there are alot of crappy teachers out there, and this proposition
would help weed some of them out. Now that I mention that, there are also alot
of crappy students out there. This would be a great system to pair up crappy
students that want crappy teachers and good students that want good teachers.

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tmptmp
It is important to point out the issue of crappy students and their crappy
parents too. The crappy students will not do work and when they fail they and
their parents will complain about the teachers. No doubt, there are crappy
teachers, and we must do all to weed them out. But so should the crappy
students be weeded out if they do not change for better after given due time.
If such students/parents are not weeded out of the school they will add to the
poisonous atmosphere.

Sadly, nowadays, it has become politically incorrect to say anything against
students/parents. I remember what Bill Maher has said about it [1].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3vPkFhtGGI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3vPkFhtGGI)

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NetTechM
This is an intriguing system, on the one hand I imagine this will prepare kids
for the business world on an exponential level... on the other, I hope there
are safety nets created through policy that regulate fiscal decisions.

