Are teachers underpaid?

You mean the whining about your own failures?

Because it sounds like you have been given the tools to succeed and somehow have wasted them

 

I wasn't at all complaining about my own failures or at least I was not intending to make it look like I was. I simply tried adding some personal experiences to my view on the problem of education to make it more relateble.

The points I was trying to make was that school is, obviously, doing a very bad job since reading, writing and mathematic skills are constantly dropping and since employers do not consider a high school diploma as any kind of valueble merit whatsoever (despite it taking 12 years to earn one). And since most young kids are not very interested in school at all and rather sit on Facebook during class than listen to their boring teacher.

 

If you are claiming that high school doesn't prepare you to be a software engineer, you're accurate.

Claiming that handing over K-12 education to corporations WILL...is just stupid or dishonest. I hope you're not claiming that

 

It does not prepare the child for anything.

Care to ellaborate or are you just going to stick with this non-argument of randomly calling opposing ideas "dishonest" and "just stupid"?

 

Well I disagree, you pay 9.5% in SS taxes and the employer pays 9.5% to match it. 403b contribution (equil to our 401K) are not matched. Yes public employees don't have their retirement funds siphoned away to pay for SSI disability payments and their contributions are invested and make money while our SS taxes are just used as a peter to pay Paul arrangement. Put it this way, they get away with not contributing to all the SS disability payments, and payments to children whose parents passed away before they turn 18 or 21 if in school. Yeah, I wish I did not have to pay for other peoples misfortune as they do not.

And I take issue with the 10-20 percent contribution to 401Ks. maybe after age 50 but not during mortgage payments, student loan payments, and child rearing. While my mortgage was being paid I contributed 7% which was more that the other professionals in my office. Afterwards I upped it to 10%

I disagree, so you believe that only parents should bear the cost of educating the young and it is not society's responsibility. That is flat out wrong. Now if you choose to home school for what ever reason, you are choosing not to participate in the free schooling that society provided. Fine by me. What about adults that don't have children? Why should they pay? Pacifists that don't believe in war? or people that don't believe in birth control or abortion? People who only want a vol fire dept?

 

What do you mean you are unemployable? you have an associates degree and can't get a job at McDs? Why didn't you go to a vocational school?
There are high school dropouts making $15 an hour holding "slow" signs outside a construction site. I think you are one of those people who think that since you have a degree in communication and social skills which is all a high school diploma is that you should make 40,000 a year.

 

Ffs, I wasn't talkin about myself! I was referring to the overall negative trend and making a case against education.

 

Delete

 

You made up a completely baseless claim. There is no evidence of any sort to support your claim. None at all.

But there is an ongoing meme in right wing media that supports your assumption, ususally with faked videos and anecdotal claims. Not with statistics or facts. But then, it speaks to people who rely on television and blogs for news, media that lends itself to anecdote and not to fact based arguments.

In fact your claim is the sort of hyper partisan and anti intellectual claim that one expects from the sort of people who promote the lowbrow mentality of Trumpsterism and routinely ridule intellect and learning.

I have no idea where you teach, or even if you teach.

But as someone with first hand experience with the hiring process of a fairly large public school system, I can say inequivocally, that your claims are absolute nonsense.

 

This is the truth when my nephew was interviewing it was commented on, The only time you see and equal ratio in teachers are in science and math K-8 I would think seems 5-1 female to male in my suburban school system. If a boy does not play sports all his adult role models are female if he comes from a female headed household.

 

You can produce evidence that supports your claim. You won't. Because you can't. I know liberals and conservaitves who work as public employees. The idea that there is an ideological test to get a government job is the sort of claim that only a Trumpster would make. Of course, if were up to Trump, that's exactly the way it would be!

As for the ""Right Wing" phen0omenon to look down on people with degrees". you would have to be the one to explain that. It is reflected in the right wing comments on this very thread. Anti intellectualism is a constant theme of Fox and in right wing talk radio. And anti intellectualism is also the core theme of right wing attack groups like the inappropriately named "Campus Reform". Nor is this a recent phemonon. Anti intellectualism has been a hobgoblin of every extremist right wing movement in history. It is popular with right wing demogogues and populists from Huey Long to Hitler to George Wallace to Donald Trump.

 

That is not the fault of the school system but the parents. The parents are the ones who have the responsibility to motivate thier kids to learn. The teachers just provide the opportunity to do so. My kids had to do 2-3 hours of homework every night whether it was assigned or not. until then, no TV no internet, no video games and no talking to girlfriends on the phone.

 

don't confuse anti intelligentsia with anti intellectual. One does not try to establish a dogma of beliefs to follow and one does. Brown U actually had a discussion because a right wing conservative wanted to donate money to the U a small portion of which was to form a conservative student organization. Some faculty was opposed to the gift of university controlled scholarship money just to insure they would not be a differing opinion would be allowed to subsidised.

 

I live in Sweden and here they have added lots of "gender theory" to the kindergarten curriculums and also into the curriculums of higher education where even the natural sciences are forced to introduce courses on "gendered perspectives on physics" etc. This is just to mention only one aspect of ideologisation of education. You may think education is not biased, but if you only think twice and realise that government rules it and that modern education derrives from the old Prussian military indoctrination, it should be really obvious to you.

Especially since you are American, you should have experienced that cultish worshipping of the flag and all the pictures and icons of former leaders hanging on the school walls.

A public school system can never be neutral. Where I live, we have "Public Service" radio and TV that is supposed to be "unbiased", but the level of Leftism is very obvious (UK has the same problem with BBC).

I am an Anarcho-Capitalist and my experience is that my camp of the Right Wing is over-intellectual. I do not associate much with mainstream politics and have no idea how the, so called, "Right" thinks or views the world. All I know is that actual Right Wing perspective views every individual as free and capable and is not one bit interested in playing identity politics by looking at people in terms of "educated collectives" vs "uneducated collectives". That kind of categorisation is what The Left likes to do.

Hitler was not really Right Wing and actually relied on the mainstream intellectualism of his time that was "racial biology". And Trump is faaaar from being an extremist in any sense of the word, as far as I am concerned.

 

Of course, parents are very important and should always be around for their kids, but I thought that went without saying.

A real education would have to be centred around the individual to discover their interests and talents at a very young age. There is no use for a child with zero interest or talent in chemistry to do chemistry, for example. If this student is forced to pass chemistry to get his diploma, he will end up putting down less time on what he is good at in favour of what he sucks at which ends up being a complete waste of talent and resources. If education is customised after individual needs and interests, it will be centred around a few set of subjects (eventually maybe only one) which is obviously cheaper than paying for every darn subject there is. Furthermore, some kids are not even made for school and if a child is more practical than theoretical, he should be allowed to make the most out of his personality too - Someone who likes being outside, doing things with their hands should not be forced to sit inside and read about the French Revolution.

In a more individual-oriented society, parents would be given even greater need and incentive to take responsibility gor their children's education and to engage with them enough so that they can help them discover their talents.

 

With you as someone in charge of hiring, I think my point has been clearly made.
Why am I not surprised that a far left prog is in charge of hiring.
Thank you for being my evidence, but here's the thing, I don't need any "evidence".
I'm not here to prove anything. I'm just answering the question with the benefit of my experience.

I teach in a few places, this is the one I am most pleased to be associated with.
http://www.kaetsu.co.uk


Murray Edwards College Cambridge.
I'm like all academic and ****. Booksy.

 

no, post secondary is where those choices are made. Please 1/2 the kids in college switch their majors and you think high school is where those decisions should be made? After High School, I joined the navy, when I got out worked as a union laborer for 12 years, got hurt and went and got my AS
worked as 15 years as a mech designer progressing to Engineer and then spent 20 years in sales. I didn't decide what I wanted to do until I was 42 years old.

High school is for an absolute minimum baseline to get enough knowledge to make a choice in voting and to go onto college. Even vocational high schools where a kid learns a trade at best just prepares you for a go-fer position. Now if you live in NYC or some other large school system you can go to a HS for math and science, another for performing arts another for high art etc. But most communities can not afford such diversity in ED, you join a science club and take AP calc A and B, or you join the drama club, photography club, art club, debate club. Learn an instrument find out what you like and then pursue it. But meanwhile, you learn to solve an equation with an unknown, learn enough science to understand scientific theory so you can make a decision on global warming, learn a foreign language to get an appreciation that not every one lives a life as you do. learn enough civics to understand political thought. In short a well rounder citizen, it may fail in that in some cases but that is their mandate.

 

No, that is the exact reason I say those choices should be made even earlier. The younger the age, the better because then everyone who applies for college will have tried so many subjects that they are already sure about where their interest and talent lies.

Is this good or bad?

And this is only because high school is - more or less - compulsory and this, obviously, just serves to inflate the diploma. Employers have high school diploma as a minimum qualification "just because", but no one really looks at it as any kind of merit whatsoever.

If it was privatised, it would be possible for anyone to do it, even more so in the contemporary era of digitalisation.

 

They do operate on a market. The DoD has to compete for engineers, just like private companies do. The pay and benefits of government workers have to be commensurate with the private sector, else no one would work in government.

 

The government is a thief that only serves to destroy the market.

 

There's only three options here: Either teachers are overpaid, paid enough, or underpaid. The way to determine which one is the case is to look at how many people are going into the teaching profession. Is there a glut of teachers? Then they're being overpaid. Is supply keeping up with demand? Then the pay is adequate. Is there a shortage? Then the pay is inadequate. There is currently a shortage of teachers and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. Therefore, they're underpaid.

 

Are you an anarchist?

 

This is the problem. You support increase of taxes and I don't. So how is it fair to people who pay more taxes to govt incompetence? I don't have any kids so why should my property taxes go towards something I have no association with? this is why I support ending the public school monopoly. Especially when school superintendent salary makes $200k on average. How about cutting that salary in half and give it to the teachers? Tax is theft.

 

L.A., New York, Chicago, etc.

They're underpaid because we cannot get people to do the job at the current wage. What other definition of "underpaid" is there? Either the pay is enough to attract new teachers or it's not. It's currently not enough.

 

You speak truth. No wonder jocks seem to have a healthier childhood. Not just because of popularity. But because of male adult influence.