So you are generalizing one incident (and still have yet to cite the role the Teachers’ Union’s role in all this) into all of education?
The ‘incdent’ was a new requirement that came out of the blue and was applied to all day cares in the city. There was no crisis, no incident with a child being harmed or anything else. It was a decision that benefited no one other than the teacher’s unions, who,found a backdoor way to essentially insert unionized employees into daycares.
Why? It was a great solution. The young mothers didn’t just get minimum wage - they got slightly more than that, PLUS $525/mo in daycare services. Plus they got to be with their child all day. For the ones we hired, it was a huge win. The alternative for some of them, which they were forced into later, was to apply for their own daycare subsidies, then get a minimum wage job somewhere else while figuring out how to get their kid to and from daycare every day and also paying the deductible for the subsidy.
The older ladies weren’t in it for the money - they were in it because they wanted to be around children and were bored at home. In this case, the low wage is kind of a feature, as it incentivizes only those who place value on being around small children. Pay a lot, and you get more mercenary employees there for the cash and not because they love kids.
As for training… when dealing with little children, the best training in the world is simply experience. You aren’t going to learn how to deal with a screaming toddler in your education class. It’s not a training issue, it’s a temperament issue - something that also selects for mothers and grandmothers who have raised children, understand what it takes, and still want the job.
Replacing them with 19-22 year old women angry because they aren’t working as teachers and who will leave at the first chance they get and may not even like children was a very poor choice. I saw it myself, and dealt with the complaints of parents whose kids didn’t like the new staff, the high turnover rate of these employees, the temper issues from young people dealing with a room full of toddlers they’d really rather not be around, etc.
Wow. Just… wow
I can outdo that. WOW!
There, Now I’ve added more content than you.
Are you also against volunteering? Because those people get paid nothing. It’s almost like different people have different motivations and not one size fits everyone.
The daycares are non-profit. Most of the clients are lower income. If we had paid more to the workers (and we had to when the new ones came in), the people who paid for it were the parents. The city eventually had to raise the daycare subsidy because we had to raise rates because of the wage increases, but even the new subsidies didn’t cover it all. So poor people paid more for worse care.
We have food kitchens for the indigent where all the workers are either minimum wage or volunteer to work for free. Lots of them are retired people looking for something to contribute, just like our older mothers were. If we paid them all $15/hr, there would be no food kitchens, and the indigent would get nothing.
I’m not against volunteering and in fact have done so myself. I AM against taking a necessary service and relying on volunteers to do it, though. Just like I think charity is great but cutting welfare and relying on charity to keep vulnerable people fed would be fucking stupid.
Sounds like the solution is a bigger subsidy rather than paying people crap wages.
So getting back to the OP, how were these minimum wage mothers and old ladies able to pass the Certification test, or is lack of proven competence only a problem when applied to unionized teachers.
You are arguing both sides here. It seems that your general opinion is that anyone can teach, be they mothers, old ladies, retired engineers, with the sole exception being actual teachers who upon being hired lose that ability through some arcane sorcery of the teachers union.
They aren’t teachers. They look after children aged 1 to 4, with the majority being 1 and 2, when moms have to go back to work. What the staff really need are an even, cheerful temperament, skills in calming children down or soothing them or whatever. Things you learn being an actual mother or years of experience working in a daycare. But the most important thing is that the staff were there because they truly wanted to be around small children. We paid them what we could.
No one made any money at all off this. The board was made up pf unpaid volunteers from the community. The system worked. Everyone understood the nature of the finances and what could be afforded for salary, because the math was simple. $525 per kid. Count em up, divide by number of staff hours, and you get the absolute maximum you coild possibly be paid. Then subtract rent, electricity, supplies, etc. And that’s what you got. It is what it is, and everyone got that and was okay with the situation because of the perks.
Again, you have not shown that the teachers Union had anything whatsoever to do with this.