Sorry, i keep seeing and hearing people bitch about teacher's jobs being cut because of budgets and they compare it to athlete salaries. That is really stupid. Professional athletes work for private companies, and it's no one's business how much they make. Teachers are government employers paid with tax dollars and government revenue. If your school sucks and can't perform, I want you gone, easy and simple.
Ever since I watched The Wire I can't see it as that simple, actually. Teaching kids how to pass a test isn't necessarily giving them the education they really need.
Sigh. It's about the fucked-up sense of priorities we have in this country. The very fact that we have companies out there spending millions on people to bat a ball around compared to a teacher making $35K a year speaks volumes about the priorities we have as a society as that teacher is vastly more important to society than an athlete. Sure it's a private company paying that athelete but that athlete wouldn't be making that much money if so many people made that athlete, and his job, worth so much.
Nobody is saying teachers should be paid the same as athletes. The point is they are paid unreasonably low salaries. As for the coment about "if your school sucks and can't perform, I want you gone," that does go to show how little the general public truly thinks of teachers. While I agree that teachers, like all professionals, should do their best and strive to improve, to hold teachers accountable for so many elements that are out of their control is unreasonable. Budgets are being cut across the board in education. This means that class sizes are increasing, supplies are being cut, leaving less time to actually work with the students. That is something that can be dealt with. However, when you're responsible for 35 children, the parents won't make sure they do their homework or study. Parents will keep them up to all hours of the night so they'll be falling asleep in class. Parents will get children to school late, some virtually every day, or keep them home far too often. Not for illness, mind you. When children act up in class, the teachers are limited on how they can deal with the situations. No, I'm not talking about or advocating paddling. When parents are called, the response is often "Not my child!" or words to that affect. Many children should be classified as special needs so they can get support services, however often the parents won't allow it. Therefore the help that the children need is often denied, due to the parents unwillingness to face the realities of their children. And yes, there are many, many good, dedicated parents who are involved with their children and make sure they are at school every day, do their homework, study, etc. Strange thing is, these children generally do really well in school. While athlete salaries are paid by private industry, it just goes to show the misguided priorities in this country. The public can be more involved about how they want their tax dollars spent. They should realize that the people teaching their children should not also be worrying about how to pay their mortgage and put food on the table. If the general public stopped paying the ticket prices for the sports games, which pay the athletes' salaries, they would put forth a message about what their priorities are.
Absolutely. It's absolutely mind-boggling the incredible nonsense that brings in the big bucks-- not just sports, but the idiotic movies and TV shows and music that bring in billions of dollars. We should have a sports tax; that way, every time a couple of football players mudwrestle or every time a baseball player runs around in circles and spits on the ground, some school is funded for a year.
It's not that simple. That leads to underperforming kids passing when they shouldn't in order to save the school and everyone's jobs.
Not only that but they have this incredibly stupid new program where the better performing schools get more money. Therefore, the underperforming schools have less money to hire better teachers and are stuck with the bad ones. Higher salaries for teachers WILL result in better education.
The sports issue aside, there is a flaw in your logic. You hear people bitch about teachers' jobs being cut because of budgets. Then you claim that if your school sucks and can't perform, I want you gone. The problem right now is that we're cutting teachers across the board because of lack of funding, with no respect to whether the teachers are good or not or whether the schools are performing or not. We're not cutting these teachers because of lack of performance, it's because of lack of money. And, yet, we're willing to allow athletes to get paid outrageous amounts of money when we can't even afford the teachers we have now, to say nothing of paying them what they might be worth. Do you see the issue more clearly now?
Exactly. Like it or not, in a market economy, that's how things work. The value of a job is determined by supply and demand. It has absolutely nothing to do with “importance to society.” The biggest problem with America's public schools is that they're a government monopoly. With no competition, there's no incentive to improve. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-3_8_06_JS.html http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/mar/09030504.html
there are a lot of problems with the education system. plenty of blame to spread around... unions, parents, middle management, students, teachers... the list goes on, but by the time you reach "professional athlete" you are really on thin ice.
Not only that but schools pay ungodly amount of money to support athletic facilities. Million dollar buildings. Yes, they do put money back into the school but they also spend a lot. Do they really need a new building?
i agree with this sentiment; it's a shame not enough resources are allocated to the actual practice of education.
Ugh, this. It's bad enough to see the pro athletes getting paid obscene amounts for playing stickball in fancy uniforms, but when actual schools do get some money, the lion's share goes to the athletic departments time and time again. And don't give me the crap about athletic scholarships getting kids into college that otherwise wouldn't attend. There are schools with single digit athlete graduation rates. These kids are used for four years, and then dumped with a phony degree (if any) and no more attention is paid to them.
The importance of these activities to society is reflected in the demand element of the supply-demand equation. If society were greatly interested in education and poorly valued professional athletics, there would be little demand for athletes and great demand for good teachers.
Our school system overall is better than yours, as I understand it, but the low salaries of teachers is a problem. Many who would be excellent teachers choose different careers, since it pays so little compared to other jobs with the same amount of education.
Well said. I'm a teacher and I understand that parents want what's best for their children. But to me the education system in some countries seems to be turning into a form of business. Everyone's focussing on the product (test results) and not enough on the process (the actual education teachers provide). Education is at the foundation of a society. Schools can't be expected to keep performing if they have to keep cutting costs. Governments need to invest more and pay their teachers more. By doing so they are investing in their country's future.
The problem is that there are six or seven million teachers and only 16,500 professional athletes (according the bureau of labor statistics). If you added the take of the top five highest paid athletes (Tiger Woods, Oscar de la Hoya, Phil Mickelson, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O'Neil) and spread it across 6.5 million teachers, each teacher would get $44.00 extra dollars. The average wage of all 16,500 professional athletes was $79,400 per athlete, summing to $1.3 billion dollars. Spread that across 6.5 million teachers and it would come to $201.55 per teacher.
Teachers in the UK also have to deal with an insane amount of paperwork, and spend hours during the evenings and on weekends battling through this red tape. The UK government also enjoys changing the educational requirements every year or so. Most of the ex-teachers I know left the teaching profession due to the paperwork, not the lower pay. I didn't go into teaching for this reason. Parental attitude has a lot to do with the state of the educational system. While many parents actively participate in their children's education a depressing number of parents see schools as free babysitting services and don't give a damn if their kids learn anything or not. The negative attitude towards education and teachers that these parents harbour rub off on their kids. These kids often turn out to be bored and disruptive but there's hardly any point speaking to their parents because the parents don't give a damn. Little wonder that so many teachers are demoralised.