I disagree because the word “fungible” was used in the previous sentence.
Before I get started, understand that I’m not knocking teachers, I’m pointing out my observations of the Education Industry.
This is exactly the point. Innovation in Teaching results in Johnny getting some extra help multiplying 8s. It results in new testing procedures, New Math, and customized lesson plans.
This is Innovation in Medicine. Inventing a test that could turn a diagnostic death sentence for thousands of people a year into a life saving early warning.
This is Innovation in Engineering, a building a half a mile high.
Yet, 12 years ago, our national school system was in such a state that the Federal Gov’t stepped in with NCLB. NCLB does not happen if schools are turning out noticeably higher skilled graduates than in years past. We still have 80 percent of NYC high school grads needing remedial courses at the collegiate level. Just look at WhyNot’s mom ranting about new teachers who don’t have a good grasp of basic math and grammar, they are products of this innovative educational system, and they suck.
For all of the innovation of the 20th century, teaching is still about a teacher communicating directly with a child. The CHILD is the ultimate limiting factor here, not the teacher. There is only so much innovation that can be put into the concept of stuffing information into a child’s brain. Innovation in other fields results in changes that massively affect everyone’s lives, diseases are eradicated, we can do things with technology that were unthinkable 50 years ago, just the products of people’s imaginations back then, now reality.
The Education Industry does not inherently allow for that level of innovation, it’s still 1 teacher + 20 students in a room.
Two reasons for me.
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We have all experienced teachers. Sadly there have been a lot more pathetic teachers and average teachers than “great” teachers. It is probably the same with other professions, but how many times do we get to be the recipient of literally dozens of samples of the same profession?
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They aren’t held high in intellectual regard.
This lines up with what I experienced from college too. Sure, there were some bright “el-ed” majors. But I remember there being several very easy science classes set up for them to get their science requirement. It was known in the physics dept that astronomy 101 was like 80% el-ed majors.
Edited to add: I really don’t want to hijack this thread, but teacher unions aren’t helping. They give the impression that the majority of teachers want to squeak by doing the absolutely minimum possible and do not want to be able to be fired.
Thanks for the replies so far. It seems that the question/debate behind this might really be…
“What is it about a job or profession which makes people respect it?”
So far, it seems, expertise seems to be pretty high on the list. Doctors and lawyers are respected because you have to be *very good *at medicine/law to qualify as one.
I’ve posted something like this before and, while my opinion/analysis I think it has some merit:
Why do some jobs pay more than others?
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Supply - how many people are qualified for the position compared to the number of positions? How easy is it to become x?
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Do you benefit many or the few? The more people the position benefits the more it will pay. If you are on trial for murder you want the best you can afford and that person you hire benefits few (i.e. you). However a journalist benefits many so paid less.
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How quickly can you be replaced? Not the hiring process that goes with Supply above but if there was a person like you replacing you how long will it take that person to be up and running?
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How immediate are the results of the positions work? The more immediate the more it will pay. Using the murder trial again you are either free or going to jail.
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How valuable is an extremely competent person versus a very competent person? Is it easily distinquishable? Using sports athletes that tiny bit of extra skill can be very noticable. If so, more pay.
Looking at teaching you can see it pretty much fails in all categories. Plenty of supply (mainly because the process to become a teacher is so weak) - You benefit many, not the few - You can be replaced in literally minutes (just send another teacher in) - The results of your work are not only delayed but delayed by YEARS - competency is hard to judge (Mary might have become a doctor under your teaching but not under mine…how are you to know?)
In a capitalist system like we have it money/salary talks and so it is no wonder teachers are spat upon by society in general. It’s why I left teaching long ago.
If you’re going to criticize educational outcomes at least manage to paraphrase things correctly.
What the article says is that 80% of NYC hogh school grads **who went to a specific community college program **needed some for of remedial help - a group of precisely seven community colleges, at least some of which are specifically meant to serve people who are disadvantaged in some way, and at least one of which has remedial English courses for the rather simple reason that many of its students don’t speak English as a first language. That is not the same as all NYC high school grads, which would be the literal interpretation of what YOU wrote.
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RickJay, I don’t understand your meaning here. Are you saying being a teacher in the Navy is easier or harder than being an elementary school teacher?
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I’m saying it’s different, and so the workload of one is not necessarily indicative of the typical workload of another.
Yeah, seriously.
Half my SO’s sorority sisters went into teaching after getting their MRS degrees from their lackluster college. And as far as I can tell, most of them are pretty dumb. By comparison, my SO went on to get an MBA and works in finance in NYC.
Also, Im sick of teachers complaining about how much they make. So they might make a bit less than the national average. No one held a gun to their head and made them be schoolteachers. If you want to make more money, go to law, business or med school.
Teachers aren’t respected because we all went to school and we all know how big of a loser our teachers were.
I currently work in a middle school. Before kids I had a corporate drone job in a bank. Teachers work much much harder than anybody I ever saw in the bank. They have to be at work before school for meetings, sub days in my district are limited, so after they are used up each month, the teachers rotate using their prep periods to cover for an absent teachers, they have meetings after school, many of them allow students into their rooms during their lunch to let them make up work or get extra help, even just walking around campus a teacher has to be “on” supervising students. The kids are pushing boundaries all the time and I myself get discouraged having to take away phones, gum, send to the office for dress code violations, don’t throw rocks, don’t run down the steps, providing pens/pencils/tape/can-I-have-some-glue/paper/markers/can I print on your computer? It is a constant barrage of requests and discipline issues. Oh god the discipline. So much time taken up with discipline. Kids on drugs. Kids fighting. Kids refusing to work. Calls home to parents. Need a lightbulb in your classroom? There is a website to fill out a request for that. Remembering who has allergies, who has accomodations, who’s mom emailed and asked that you keep an eye out for peer conflict, and now the principal wants to do monthly benchmark tests. One day per month to give the test, the next day to “test talk” and go over the answers. Two teaching days gone. And the kids that were absent need to make it up…
There is no: taking 10 minutes to regroup, peeing when you need to, closing the door when you have a headache, having an "off’ day when you just don’t get much done.
I sure hope they love it, 'cause the job seems kinda nightmarish if you didn’t.
Great idea. Let’s discourage people from doing something stupid and worthless, like educating our children, and encourage them to create new financial products which will bring down our economy again.
When I was in school, 50 years ago, our teachers were not losers. I think the reason for this was that this generation of teachers grew up during the Depression, where they saw teaching as a respected and stable profession, so for the most part really smart men and women went into it. They also got good pay and decent facilities. In my neighborhood, at least, they were respected.
This post is rich.
Nothing like the ol’ “no one put a gun to your head” argument to make a person be resigned to their fate.
“Don’t like your salary? Well you should have been a doctor, dumbass”
That’s a stupid argument. The fact is that most people in business and finance don’t work in positions where they “bring down our economy”. They just do the day to day stuff that business need to run. Not so much me and my SO though. She analyzes CDOs for a rating agency and I’m doing some consulting for AIG. 
But other business people aren’t destroying the economy.
I’m a bit younger than you. I grew up in the Breakfast Club generation where teachers were viewed as out of touch authoritarians who didn’t “get” us.
Also, teachers didn’t bang their students when you were in school. That certainly doesn’t help their rep.
But honestly it’s a bit of a strawman that teachers aren’t “well respected”. It’s not a glamorous job like being an editor for Conde Naste or a lucrative job like managing a hedge fund. But I don’t think many adults look down on being a teacher as a profession.
Oh boo hoo. Nothing like the ol’ “I’m pissed off about how much I earn even though I knew what those jobs made before I applied to them” argument. How is it someone’s “fate” to be a schoolteacher? And why should schoolteachers earn more or less than what they make which isn’t that far off from the national median salary?
Because everyone feels that the ones we are getting, at the wages we are willing to pay, are not very good at their jobs?
I actually think improving working conditions would be more cost-effective than raising salaries, but either way, if people aren’t content with the teachers we have, they need to find a way to attract the teachers we want. The solution is not just to yell at teachers that they should be content with what they make, considering how stupid, out-of-touch, and incompetent they are.
If you want to improve the quality of teacher applicants, remove the requirement for a degree in education.
Allow anyone with a degree to teach after proving their knowlege of subject matter.
To be honest, if I could go and teach right now I’d sure as hell give it a shot.
The financial services sector grew to be a too large part of the economy, but that is another discussion. Saying someone is a chump for teaching at lower pay than doing finance at high pay is a part of the problem.
When I was in college the sorting of many less skilled kids into teachers programs had already begun, possibly because women were just beginning to get more opportunities in college. A classmate of mine was in the first class of women at Yale, for instance.
I bet there was as much student teacher sex then as now - it was just something the papers were not going to publish.
As for respect, consider all the thread right here where lots of people say public schools are worthless, that no one ever learns anything there, that teachers are overpaid for too little work. Even the Mallard Fillmore comic strip insults teachers from time to time, though to be fair the creator of that strip clearly never learned anything in school, especially how to draw. The insults are mostly on the conservative side these days, but they are there. (In Pink Floyd days they were on the other side more.)
Is it not possible to take some sort of postgraduate certificate of education in the States? It’s a one year course here that you take following your degree - I think you are then qualified, but the first year of teaching is heavily monitored. In any case, it’s a popular way into the profession for a lot of graduates.
Yes, you can. In fact, I don’t know any secondary teachers with a degree in “education”: you get your degree in a subject, and then add teaching certification, either concurrently in college or after graduation as a one year program. In some alternative certification programs, you are teaching (and getting paid for it) in as little as six months.
How on earth would that improve the quality of teaching in, say, the second grade?
I assure you that “knowledge of the subject matter” does jack squat when you’re teaching rudimentary language and math skills. You don’t need to have a Fields Medal to understand second grade math, but you DO need to understand the methods by which 7-year-olds can be taught second grade math - methods I’m guessing you don’t know. It’s not as easy as one might think.
That sounds like an awful idea- teaching involves a lot more than knowing more than your students; it’s a good start, but the ability to actually pass the knowledge on, especially to those not necessarily motivated to learn, is a very different skill.
How 'bout that. Here is an example of one method:
I could derail this entire thread tallking about how bad the boys’ gym teachers at my HS were. The one who taught 11th grade health was especially annoying. In addition to not caring about the material he inisted on teaching use about “spiritual health” defined as “the ability to believe in some force”, :rolleyes: encourged students to join a Christain abstinence club, and taught use things like babies are often born alive at abortion clinics and the doctor simply drowns them to death. Did I mention this was a public school?
Sure they did. Except these days people actually talk about it in public and the authorities have started trying to actually punish the offender rather than blaming the victim and sweeping the whole thing under the rug. There were teachers at my grandmother’s high school who were known to “not be gentlemen”.