paying teachers more is not going to solve the problem that most people do not appreciate teachers whether its kids or parents. It is certainly not a job for those who cannot stand being criticized the whole time.
My wife is (ex)teacher. Parents would flat-out say that they can't respect her because of her salary. Along the lines of, if you're smart and can do stuff, why the hell are you working for such a low pay? Ergo teachers are dumb and parents (along with their kids) feel free to make fun of dumbasses who work in schools.
On top of that, paying more would help with self-respect. It's damn hard to be an authority to kids when you live paycheck-to-paycheck. Especially in teens' world where appearance matters a lot.
> Parents would flat-out say that they can't respect her because of her salary. Along the lines of, if you're smart and can do stuff, why the hell are you working for such a low pay?
Damn, that is so gut wrenching to read. It's so short sighted that society does not value teachers more highly. The next generation is the ultimate investment.
True. We needs massive propaganda campaign to highlight teachers. And, of course, show respect by paying them accordingly.
Another semi-related issue is school system used for virtue signalling first. For example „special needs“ kids integration. It sounds nice on paper, but in reality one kids holds up whole class. And then smarter kids riot because they get bored. But hey, that's teacher's fault..
IMO that will be the crucial piece for West decline. This is reverting the best bit in post-industrial-revolution welfare states. Teach the masses to fish out the brilliant mind from the whole pool. But now we're reducing the pool to those who can afford private schools. And loosing lots of talent in the rest of society. If that trend continues, soon we'll be back in nobility-peasants split with little social mobility. Which a loss not onlh for the society as a whole, but for neo-nobility as well. At first it may be cool to be richer-than-thou, but over time „richest in the room“ will turn out to be poor at global scale.
It actually makes sense to deprecate teachers if you are one of the christian fascists in the republican party. We need only look at the recent string of laws, book bannings and similar to get an idea of what religious fascism does.
Attacking the teachers have been a long term goal. School funds already are now allowed to be directed to parochial (religious) schools from the state school coffers. This starves the public school systems one by one.
No Child Left Behind guaranteed that bad schools get less money, and get worse. This all but guarantees that low income areas have terrible school systems that are more just juvenile delinquency prevention and babysitting services.
Book bans are pushed by the "right" (which they rarely, if ever, are), with obvious canards like "Harry potter is evil occult and should be burned". Naturally, with the exception of https://www.vice.com/en/article/epzv9j/texas-school-bans-the... , most of the bans are done explicitly by the christian fascists forcing their beliefs on others.
Or, instead of more money and resources, we see Texas state legislature forcing schools to hang banners of "In god we trust." https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/18/texas-schools-in-god... . Again, it's the forcing of one myopic direction of religion on the masses. It brings the parochial school into the public piece at a time.
All of these different directions have the ultimate effect - deprecate the "godless" education to something with their variant of religion in it. And naturally, we get pablum like "Noah and dinosaurs lived together", and other completely non-science garbage taught as fact.
Globally, the root cause is definitely not „christian fascists“. For example in my country it's woke neoliberals pushing the notion of schooling freemarketisation. At the same time claiming that teachers' salary increase won't help with terrible students' performance at exams :)
I’m sorry to hear that, but to counter-anecdote: Four of my family members are teachers at various levels. They all have strong frustrations but money (either in terms of perception or paying the bills) has never been one.
Are any of them under 40 and completely self-supporting? Most of the coworkers I had when teaching who weren’t bothered by the money had an external source of financial support. It took me a long time to realize it because those who are supported by others don’t like to admit it. I referred to them as hobbyist teachers, and they were much much more likely to stay longer than 5 years compared to those who were doing it as a career.
Legitimate question, thanks. Two married to each other. One over 40. Last living in a nicer part of town than otherwise due to husband, but actually looked for non-teaching jobs and couldn’t find higher salaries so stayed.
Money will not overcome the "those who can't, teach" sentiment that runs quite strongly in the US. There is a very strong anti-intelligence (not merely anti-intellectual) sentiment in this country.
It will help, and we should certainly pay teachers more, but it isn't the whole solution.
"Those who can't do, teach" is almost exclusively about money, the idea being that in almost every industry you would be paid more to do than to teach. Thus, if you are teaching it's likely because you failed to be a doer. This isn't anti-intelligence, it's actually a fairly logical stance.
It does miss that a person's desire to educate can far exceed their desire to ply the trade and they are willing to sacrifice their pay at that particular altar. But given most teachers do not seem irrationally excited about teaching or being teachers that line of thought is quite diminished.
Being a teacher (as opposed to a trainer, like me) is really difficult, and a great many people who are excellent engineers and scientists, are horrendously bad teachers.
The best teachers that I ever had, were ones that were trained as teachers, and were not necessarily content matter experts.
The worst teachers that I ever had, were content matter experts. Almost universally, they had no patience for folks that had a hard time coming up to speed, or that weren't already at a level beyond the class they were teaching.
They would ridicule you for asking "stupid" questions (that's me -I ask questions that have the whole class in stitches, but by the end of the semester, I'm coaching my classmates). They would start from a baseline that actually assumed the student had already completed and passed the class they were taking.
I would sign up for a class, because of the bona fides of the teacher, but would end up regretting my decision.
More money will encourage more of “those who can” to switch to teaching, which will help to undermine the stereotype.
There are already many “who can” who already teach, but they’re almost exclusively the ones who also intrinsically value teaching highly. A higher pay will help bring the ones who would be good teachers but are in a situation where they need to prioritize money.
> More money will encourage more of “those who can” to switch to teaching,
No, it won't, because in the private sector you can have a growing career. If you are teaching it's very likely to be the very same job until you retire.
I know some people “who can” who cared a lot about teaching and decided to be a teacher. I also know some people in industry who were on the edge of being a teacher but decided it didn’t pay enough. More pay absolutely would draw in the people on the edge.
“Those who can’t teach” is a direct result of the low pay. A software developer might semi retire and start teaching, but it’s a hobby at that point not a viable alternative.
It’s more complicated than paying more money automatically means better workers, but higher pay does let an industry be more selective.
"Those who can't, teach" is the result of systematically underpaid teachers. There are two groups who go into teaching: those who like it so much they're willing to take less pay, and those who are drawn to the profession because the pay is competitive with the other jobs they're capable of.
Money is not sufficient to overcome the problem on its own, but it is necessary, and not having enough of it caused the problem.
If there was salary parity between teachers and workers, I think that sentiment would vanish. With the current disparity, the implication is teaching is a "final resort" for people who "couldn't cut it" in their industry.
Yes it will. Because if you pay teachers more, in fact, pay them well, then more people will want to move into the field.
If teaching was like a FANNG tech job, with limited availability due to demand and salary, then it would be "discovered" to be prestigious and valuable and important.
And moreover, everyone would be free to come up with their own performance management BS because you'd actually have the glut of incoming talent that supports failures removing people from the industry (or screw it up so bad that despite the money no one bothers - also a FANNG phenomenan).
Money does not come from the skies, it's about what the market agrees the value actually is (when it comes to private education) or what the government decides (for public education). Public education is a problem because in many western countries it's already the largest budget and it's still a shitshow so you are going to have a hard time to convince everyone that injecting more money is going to make it better.
Public schools are not a market economy. Even in the most capitalist country in the world, there will be obligatory free public schools, and they will be government-financed.
The level of demand, however, can vary. Do Americans even want good public education? Or it is an afterthought?
Market forces for schools are reflected in real estate prices. Houses in good school districts can go for 4x the cost of similar housing a few miles away if the schools are bad.
That’s right, but the schools themselves are not participating in the market feedback forces, their quality distribution is random (or worse).
This very observation is telling us that the entire system is outside the market (why, for example, people from other locations cannot choose this particular school if it is better than others?)
If our goal is to shovel new people into the system as quickly as others are quitting, I suppose lawyers are a good aspirational example. But if we assume that the best teachers are ones who like their jobs and have been around for a while, we might want to try a different model.
Nah I think most people like "the idea" of being a lawyer (or a doctor). But to actually be one it's much harder, and that's when they get a reality check
Lawyers will mostly attest how divorce/family practice has nothing on actual criminal practice, and it might be even harder. Most people don't know about the long hours, the case studies, etc. They think it's the romantic view of what they see on TV
Doctors have to know how to deal with bodly fluids. Of various kinds. They have to learn how to tell a family a dear person died. They have to literally survive residency.
> Nah I think most people like "the idea" of being a lawyer (or a doctor). But to actually be one it's much harder, and that's when they get a reality check
Same with writing software. I get rather tired of running into people that obviously took it up for the money, then found they weren't particularly good at it. Being a good engineer (software, or otherwise) is hard.
In my experience, these folks tend to be quite concerned about the "culture," as opposed to the actual art of the field. They look and sound great, but don't rely on them to actually ship anything.
Delivering software is really difficult. I've been doing it for my entire adult life, so it's become pretty much habit. It's always shocking to encounter folks that aren't able to deliver software, yet have been in the field for a very long time.
Why not ? I would argue that most teachers provide a more valuable service than most lawyers (For my definition of value atleast). Lawyers have strict licensing requirements while teachers don't, which would be one of the major differences
Teachers have strict licensing requirements in literally every state.
Although the bar exam specifically is probably harder than any single component of teacher licensure, overall they are comparable, as teachers have more components.
In NY, teachers have to pass exams, and get certified. I could ask my friends for details, but I know they need to do it, because I hear them bitch about it.
It’s education as a whole that isn’t valued very highly. People just don’t want to put in the work and it’s easy to blame teachers on the front line doling out the work.
But money is at least a big factor: even those who keep up with self-motivation and co-worker’s appreciation can’t go on if money isn’t there. Paying them fairer prices is the first step in any attempt to make teachers come back.
