I already got the book online. we can share it. i'm kinda quick that way.
wow, that was fast - and sort of sneaky.
i grew up smuggling books. no, really. i'm gooooood. real gooooood.
So, you used your library card!
you know....you're sitting 1.5 meters away and we're actually talking in real life. this is weird!
And he's not going to come in and stand there, waiting.
Re: Education, why are teachers so underpaid?
OGIONIK wrote:It occured to me recently that education is the single most important element in running or creating a peaceful society.
Why are our teachers paid so horribly? Police spend all day parked next to 7-11's talking to each other, and they IMO are paid way better.
wtf?
Why do we spend trillions on war, when we could be using that to pay our teachers more, which would then lead to better education?
Why do we care more about violence than education?
Could it be said that education is a low priority to the government?
Could uneducated people be desired over educated people?
You have to pay more for smart work than you do for day labor
one more thing, why do we let people who dont give a **** run our country? with all the voting fraud i read about it would seem impossible to remedy this situation through political means, which is sad. maybe that 9/11 work strike i read about is a good idea. It would be a shame to let a country like this one falter and lose everything we have.
School teachers aren't underpaid. Please count all the holidays they get off and then there's the 2-3 month Summer vacation.
If anything, the people who're underpaid are the College Professors...
Re: Education, why are teachers so underpaid?
Miller wrote:School teachers aren't underpaid. Please count all the holidays they get off and then there's the 2-3 month Summer vacation.
At least one can say that school teachers in some countries earn less than school teachers in other countries.
The teachers in the USA aren't paid as sufficient as many others.
Re: Education, why are teachers so underpaid?
Walter Hinteler wrote:Miller wrote:School teachers aren't underpaid. Please count all the holidays they get off and then there's the 2-3 month Summer vacation.
At least one can say that school teachers in some countries earn less than school teachers in other countries.
The teachers in the USA aren't paid as sufficient as many others.
They aren't? OECD data doesn't support that claim. The last time OECD looked at comparisons of Teacher pay Internationally (2001) there was exactly ONE country that paid teachers higher (on average) at the starting level than the U.S. - Germany. When they looked at average teacher salary after 15 years experience there were two countries that paid higher - Germany and Japan.
I don't think that qualifies as "many".
Re: Education, why are teachers so underpaid?
Miller wrote:OGIONIK wrote:It occured to me recently that education is the single most important element in running or creating a peaceful society.
Why are our teachers paid so horribly? Police spend all day parked next to 7-11's talking to each other, and they IMO are paid way better.
wtf?
Why do we spend trillions on war, when we could be using that to pay our teachers more, which would then lead to better education?
Why do we care more about violence than education?
Could it be said that education is a low priority to the government?
Could uneducated people be desired over educated people?
You have to pay more for smart work than you do for day labor
one more thing, why do we let people who dont give a **** run our country? with all the voting fraud i read about it would seem impossible to remedy this situation through political means, which is sad. maybe that 9/11 work strike i read about is a good idea. It would be a shame to let a country like this one falter and lose everything we have.
School teachers aren't underpaid. Please count all the holidays they get off and then there's the 2-3 month Summer vacation.
If anything, the people who're underpaid are the College Professors...
college professors? as in tenured college professor? because those that I know earn well over $100,000. BUt that' s Boston University...one of the richest and most expensive schools anywhere. but of course us that are starting teaching (no tenure) only get 2 or 3 thousand per course, so when you scramble together 4 courses a semester to teach, you might survive, but it's a hell of a lot of work.
Measuring teacher salaries relative to a country's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita puts the United States in the bottom third of any list.
(According to the OECD, Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers [Paris, 2005]
OECD, Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2005 [Paris, 2005], table D3.1, p. 370.)
Walter Hinteler wrote:Measuring teacher salaries relative to a country's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita puts the United States in the bottom third of any list.
(According to the OECD, Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers [Paris, 2005]
OECD, Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2005 [Paris, 2005], table D3.1, p. 370.)
That still doesn't support your earlier claim. Even the Princeton-Brookings report (where you found that tidbit) concedes that the comparison to the GDP has drawbacks.
Claims that teachers aren't paid sufficently because a country has the economic capacity to pay more (which is what the GDP comparison is) are meaningless.
So where is the GNP coming from?
And where is it gonig?
I don't think the statistics are quite meaningless. First they should be GDP based on purchasing power parity (i.e. buying power, based on prices) and second they should use GDP per capita to account for relative wealth. Both adjustments would raise the U.S. standing in the ranking - by how much, I don't know.
Interestingly University professors in the United States are generally paid a good deal more than their European counterparts. How does one factor that into the analysis?
My opinion is that teacher salaries in this country are somewhat limited by public disatisfaction with the product of the public school system itself - one which is dominated by inward-looking, self-serving and monopolistic teacher's unions and professional education bureaucrascies. People are willing to pay a great deal for a quality education for their children - the growing populations of relatively expensive private and parochial schools are testimony to that. The debate is between those who assess the situation as one of class warfare, and others who are simply dissatisfied with a system that insists that it alone knows what is good for us and doesn't pay attention to the interests of those it presumably serves.
There is probably no reconciling those points of view. However, dissatisfaction with public schools and the usually failed attempts at social engineering it so zealously undertakes in preference to education itself, is a growing phenomenon among all social & economic groups here.
i doubt that dissatisfaction with public schools is a result of social engineering. There are far more 'engineered' school systems in the world that produce far higher quality of higher educatioin. Naturally, at the expense of the tax payer, but such is the choice of those countries and their populations.
I still think that the disparities between public schools based on the property taxes is grossly unfair, especially towards the kids who do not chose who they were born to, yet if they had the misfortune of being born to a low income family, they will end up in a poor public school, with limited options in their life. essentially they're screwed right from the start (with exceptions that make it against all odds).
And how CAN one be satisfied with a system that is in its basis unequal and often de facto seggregational. It would be surprising in fact if more people were satisfied with it.
That said, I think many university professors are paid far more than they deserve in this country. Of course, there are many who do earn their pay even if it's sky high, but there are also tons of slackers, who have cushy offices on campus, come there to have coffee and read the paper. Teach their one or two classes per semester, have teaching fellows do all the grading.... write an article every now and then.... But slackers are everywhere.
I love it when people use statistics to lie, er, mis-represent an argument.
My favorite one from this discussion has to do with how much time off teachers get. No mention of how many hours teachers work off the books, showing up early, staying late, answering phone calls at the home until the wee hours, that isn't figured in to those statistics.
Bottom line: Americans do not value teachers. Beats the hell out of me why not, but we don't. We really ought to pay teachers at the elementary level no less than 90,000 a year. The competition for teaching jobs ought to be fierce, but it's not. Teachers provide far more value to our society than lawyers, and I like lawyers and find them necessary from time to time, but I think teachers set the foundation for this nation's future and I am not being cute or coy about this.
If America is going to produce the new ideas and technology to keep our ecomomy and country strong, we'd better start investing in producing the thinker-uppers of those ideas.
Oh, and you don't want to spend your tax dollars on education? Tough ****, buddy, if we don't have a technologically savvy set of workers being produced year after year this nation is going to drift behind those nations who do.
Joe(Don't look behind you, that's three million citizens of Bangalore holding up their Masters Degrees.)Nation
Ah, Joe, thanks for making my point more eloquently than I could. Will you come guest speak in my classroom someday?
Anytime, kiddo. I've believed for a long time that if we as a society raised the level of respect we had for teachers that that factor alone would go a long way in alleviating a lot of our social ills.
Joe(Teachers, we give them no respect and then wonder why the schools have so little control over student's behavior. What's wrong with us?)Nation
Joe- I could not have said it better. Until people realize that teaching is just about one of the most important jobs there are, we will have inferior schools. I agree that teacher's salaries should be at a much higher level than they are, so that the top students vie for the positions. Good grief, these teachers are dealing with our nation's future!
The funny thing about many of the calculations I have read thus far ignore the most significant portion of a teacher's job--the time spent working while not in the school.
I am in the school at 7am and I leave at 4 at the very earliest. I work through every lunch hour (minus 15 minutes to eat) and on my preparation blocks. That is my day "on the clock".
I work AND AM PAID FOR 200 teaching days. Sure I get more holidays than most professions, but it's not like I get paid for them. My salary is taken over the 10 months I work and distributed over 12 months so I don't have to adjust my banking habits in the summer.
With 2 university degrees and after 5 years in the profession I earn $60 000 CDN, which puts $3265 in my bank account every month after all deductions.
Essentially I earn $300/day, or $33/hr if you consider a 9 hour work day normal. But I don't know a single teacher who only puts in 9 hours per day.
I have planning, marking, prep etc. on top of the time I'm in the school. In my first 3 years, I logged every hour that I put in for school and related work and I was averaging a 55-60 hour work week...and that didn't include the time I spent working over the summer.
So next time someone wants to spout off about how much time a teacher gets off each year, or how much money they get paid, remember that a teacher rarely goes home and puts their feet up and spends time with their family 5 nights a week...and remember that I am probably in the middle of more violence and potential harm that most policmen see in a day.
