Debate: Teachers Wages

[jokerthief]

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I am so sick of hearing about how low teacher's wages are. They get three months off and it's an easy ass job. They teach simple subject matter and have no one to answer to. They have total job security and have no pressure to perform well beyond their own intrinsic motivation. And to tell you the truth, teachers importance is another vastly over-rated dogma. I've learned more from books than I have from teachers. [/rant]

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1. It is far from an "easy ass job" when its done properly. It doesnt start at 8 and end at 3, with planning, grading, meetings etc. it is easily a 10 hour a day job.

2. Its more like 2 months off, but teachers arent able to hibernate. They still have to eat, feed their families, pay their mortgages etc for those 2 months. On top of that, while they get the same standard holidays as everyone else, they dont have other paid "vacations". If the average vacation time in other industries is 4 weeks, the teacher is less productive than other industries by 1 month, far less than the 3 you are maintaining. The answer to that is to utilize them for that month, either by adjusting to a more year round schedule or finding other things they can do, like continuing education requirements, tutoring etc.

3. The level of job security is higher than other non-unionized industries, but comparable to other union jobs. Pay for performance will go a long way to weeding out or at least mitigating the impact, and certainly address your "motivation" and "pressure" issues.

4. There may be a rare few who can learn as well from books than from teachers, but they are the exception. Their importance is NOT overrated. There is little doubt that they are failing to do their jobs as well as possible, but thats a problem with the system (likely to be a wage issue more than anything), not an intrincically lower value for what they are supposed to be doing.

When you stop ranting, start thinking.

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Thank you for spitting back common goodthink that we have all heard a million times.

Teaching IS an incredibly easy ass job. I just don't buy that it's hard. I used to work with people with severe developmental disabilities and I would spend six months just teaching them just one life skill like doing laundry. That was hard. I home schooled my nephew who was a problem child. That was very simple in comparison. That's when I learned that teaching is not that hard.

If being a teacher is so hard and they are so valuable then why is there a surplus of teachers when they get paid so little? They get paid what their worth. In fact, the market says they get payed more than they are worth, hence the surplus.