This one guy (not my friend just someone I know) is a career student, gets average grades. Finishes something like 5 years of college in basically bullshit.
Gets accepted into teachers college. He is a lazy good for nothing. He will get his teachers degree, an inflated ego and spend the rest of his life acting entitled because he is not appreciated by the system.
If you want to be rich, work hard. If you want to be a teacher, be a teacher and accept that you will only get average to above average earnings.
I’ve had a lot of shit jobs, but nothing as soul-curdlingly awful as teaching English in a tough high school. If it were a choice between teaching for a living and losing everything I had, I’d grab my sleeping bag and hit the streets. Seriously. Wouldn’t even need to think about it.
I taught for a year in a place so unforgiving I saw 30 year veterans crack like eggs in less than a month. I’m proud of lasting so long, but I can’t delude myself into thinking I was ever really cut out to teach at a place like that. Honestly, you may have had harder jobs in your time, but you have no earthly idea how tough teaching can be if you’re not properly supported.
The year I was teaching, I started at 7:00am and finished at 01:00am the next day. Apart from a 2 hour break for dinner, I was working that whole time. Granted, most of that time was planning lessons, which I always found really hard, but there was also marking and prepping and Christ you wouldn’t believe the admin. I worked nearly every hour I was awake that entire year, and the first day I woke up knowing I’d never have to teach again was one of the happiest of my life.
Nowadays I work in an office. 9 to 5, never take work home, never have to put up with any bratty kids or any of their fuckwit parents. And you know what, even factoring in the 13 weeks holiday a year (in the UK, that is) I still work less now than I did when I was teacher. Seriously, I worked it out.
Personally, I think anyone who bitches out members of any profession should be made to do it for a month or shut their fucking holes. I think that, when it comes to teaching in particular, the culture shock alone would reduce the perennial and desperately tedious criticism of teachers among the general public by about 500%.
Seriously, I’d rather shoot myself in the fucking head than set foot in a classroom again.
Or maybe douche bags with no self discipline, dedication, or goal in life shouldn’t go into teaching in the first place then act like some kind of matyr because what they saw as an easy cushy way to continue their easy cushy college life didn’t turn out how they planned.
Everyone has to be defensive of these people just because they think they’re noble when in reality he has no idea about the profession and is just doing it because he thinks it will be easy. Then he will act like he was sacrificing himself for the greater good.
I’ve seen so many people follow the exact same path and it really pisses me off. These people are not doing ANYTHING for anyone else they just want what they think is easy road then bitch the rest of their lives when they don’t get it.
Then it’ll probably fuck him up and you’ll have the last laugh. Either way, I don’t get what your problem is. Are you his guidance counsellor, or something?
Just out of interest, what do you do for a living?
Because I’ll need to listen to the constant whinging about how they do it for the greater good but are not rewarded for their skills when the truth is they were under achieving idiots who couldn’t do anything else. But I’ll have to sit there and smile and say stuff like “yes it is horrible how our society doesn’t value education and how highly skilled teachers are not paid 100k a year straight out of college”.
I’m confused here - are you bitching about one particular person, about the whole profession, or are you assuming that because this one person you know is some sort of lazy, entitled loser you’re assuming every single other person in the profession is exactly the same?
Then surely the best thing to do is not talk to him. You’ve already said he’s not a friend. Why do you care? If that’s not an option, you could try changing the subject or, the nuclear option, tell him to piss off. I get that might be tricky if he’s family or something, but if he’s just some guy then you’ve no-one to blame but yourself for putting up with his whinging. Two to tango and all that.
At the same time, I’d never begrudge a teacher for complaining, not after having done it myself for a year. I went into it with my eyes open cos I’ve got friends and family who teach, but really, the job is hard in ways you can’t even imagine until you’ve actually done it. Especially if you’re in a tough school.
In all honesty, I’m not sure I understand all the bitching teachers do. They don’t get paid like investment bankers, but they do ok by the standards of most people with an average-ish liberal arts education. And you don’t have to teach at Louis Farrakhan Middle School. There are literally schools all over the country.
And what about all those entitled jerks in the nursing profession? They’re too lazy to become doctors, so they go to pretend-doctor school and make a living putting on bandaids and bitching about hard it is to be someone who has to save lives every day. You’d think cushy hours and access to good drugs would make them grateful, but instead they just whine about how hard things are. :rolleyes:
*Please, dear Og, don’t let my niece the ER nurse or my friend the Nurse Practitioner see this.
While the OP is obviously way over the top, his rant does have an element of truth to it. All of my way through grade school and high school, my teachers never really knew the subjects they were teaching, especially in science and math. If a student asked a question that wasn’t in the teachers guide, they wouldn’t know the answer. I’m pretty sure a majority were communicaitons/liberal arts/education majors that were teaching subjects they had no exposure to and had no knowledge of. Heck, my “robotics” class in high school simply involved putting Lego kits together - and not even the Lego kits with moving parts or motors or anything. Our final project was putting together the Millennium Falcon Star Wars kit. The teacher obviously had not the slightest clue about robotics, but got assigned the class and had to make do.
This lack of knowledge in the sciences, along with a large minority that would complain to the class about how underpaid they were and how hard their jobs were, really turned me off to teachers as group until I reached college.
It wasn’t until college until I realized that the instructors actually knew what they were talking about and were experts in their field.
So the OP is painting with a broad brush, but he’s not that far off from the truth, at least in my experience.
I don’t know if it’s teachers that are full of shit but rather shitty people, some of whom may be teachers but a lot of whom are not… are full of shit.
Dude - I can think of 3 threads you’ve recently started:
You’re 30 and haven’t dated
Anyone who calls themself a self-made man is a lying, privileged d*bag
Teachers are full of shit
It sounds like you have some issues you are working through - I am sorry about that. I will say that if you keep looking at what’s wrong with others, and not what you need to change about yourself, you will not be looking at a happy life.
Best of luck.
Edited to add: also, just starting threads with what sound like “cool” topics and ending your OP with “discuss” isn’t doing you any favors. It sounds like you want to have a thoughtful discussion - but you just want folks to agree with you and pile on. You would need to stay involved in the thread, posting back and forth with other Dopers and demonstrating that you are open to other points of view…