I keep on forgetting to post these Dollars and Sense cartoons after each issue is published. This cartoon is from the October issue. The teacher in the last panel is a caricature of my sister (who teaches second grade in Ithaca, New York).
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I like how the teacher seems to be glancing toward the pornographer.
Good ‘ol America. :)
can anyone say “Fall of Democracy” ?
In much the same way, conservatives bitch and moan about how universities and colleges are filled with liberal professors, as if liberals are somehow at fault, when in reality liberals are simply more willing to work for what universities pay. This from the folks who preach “personal responsibility.”
But, of course, the same people are behind underfunding No Child Left Behind, which, by that very lack of funding, made things harder on teachers by making them more accountable without giving them the tools needed to produce the required results. Of course, conservatives think that the problem is that teachers are lazy and unmotivated. Therefore the key to improving education isn’t to make teaching more attractive through increased incentives, higher salaries, and better working conditions, but rather by creating new and better requirements for teachers to live up to or be punished. Negative reinforcement is what those lazy teachers need! Live up to our arbitrary, underfunded standards and mandates, or else! That’ll learn ’em!
Paying those ungrateful, lazy teachers more? Hell no! Massive, no-bid contracts for Halliburton, billions in corporate welfare, faith-based initiatives, and government buyouts of poorly run businesses? Yes!
And certainly the continuing battle over whether or not science (ie, evolution) or superstition (ie, creationism) should be taught in the schools really helps attract teachers too. When simply trying to impart students with a well-rounded background in current scientific theory becomes a political issue, why the hell would anyone want to teach when you have to worry about whether you will have to violate your intellectual integrity because of politics?
People are willing to pay for what they think is important. Despite all the rhetoric about how important education is, the people have consistently failed to put their money where their mouth is. Teachers get lip service along with soldiers, firefighters, police officers, and emergency responders, but when it comes time to pay a fair market value for the services these people provide, suddenly all the people who care about education and supposedly “support our troops” are nowhere to be seen.
Hey, Amp. This reminds me of something: Remember how –a million years ago, on a certain mercifully defunct “big name” bb– you had a thread about income taxes and how paying them was no big deal ? There was the usual immediate influx of Libertarians and assorted Righties, all there to complain about how taxes were so terrible, awful, a plague on a free society and so on. Somehow I ended up talking about Government workers, as I am one. I found it (and still find it) interesting that when Libertarians and assorted Righties complain about “wasteful Government spending” it always seems to be arenas like teaching, social work, libraries, clerical work and so forth that come in for the brunt of their wrath. OTOH, the military, fire departments and the police always somehow seem to fall outside their range of anger. It’s as if there’s a tacit understanding that the necessity of the latter –and the accompanying need for truckloads of taxpayer cash to be shovelled at them in ever-greater amounts– is above question.
Since this was a feminist bb we were on, I wondered aloud whether this double standard might have something to do with sexism. The “bad” government spending like teaching tends to be female-dominated. The “good” government spending like the police force tends to be male dominated.
Still a worthy topic of discussion, should you ever have time for it. I’m just sayin’. ;)
I dont think its sexism or people not valuing teachers or anything else. Its simply a matter of teachers not being in a job where they produce earings for thier “company”
For better or worse, when teachers can directly contribute to earning a few million dollars worth of sales like an advertiser or like a hatchetman or like a porn star, they will be paid similarly.
This cartoon is a cute look at the irony of the most important jobs making the least amount of money, but one job does not directly relate to another nor do i feel like i need to choose between my porn tapes and funny comercials or paying teachers more money. Cant we do both somehow?
I am not a cartoonist, but it seems like you could do several versions along the same lines.
Upper left corner: Barbara Striesand
Her Job: Singer
Impact: Not much. Entertainment?
Pay Scale: Sweeet.
Lower left corner: Mike Moore
His Job: Left wing propagandist.
Impact: Thousands of left wing conspiracy kooks now make the old right wing kooks look reasonable.
Pay Scale: 100s of millions. Richer than the Bin Laden family.
Upper Right Option 1: ACLU Lawyer.
Her Job: To sue the boyscouts until they think like left wing PC collective.
Pay Scale: Pretty good, but needs to start suing doctors with class action suits to start making the real money.
Upper Right Option 2: Alec Baldwin (Or some other generic Actor)
His Job: Actor
Impact: Not much. Entertainment I suppose.
Pay Scale: Very Nice.
Lower Right Corner Option 1: Soldier
His Job: Fighting for his country
Pay Scale: Squat!
Lower Right Corner Option 2: Police Officer
His Job: To protect and Serve
Pay Scale: Squat!
Wow, I didn’t realize that the majority of the Fortune 500 were filmmakers and musicians.
Double wow !! I didn’t realize that the millions made by Toby Keith or Rush Limbaugh, or countless other Righties in showbiz were “liberal” dollars !! [snicker]
David, you missed my point.
Larry:
What about this:
Upper left corner: Britney Spears
Her Job: Singer
Impact: To alienate the masses so they don’t think to much about real problems.
Pay Scale: Millions and millions
Lower left corner: Rush Limbaught
His Job: Right wing propagandist.
Impact: Hundred of thousands of hours lying and spreading hatred in the radio, in the name of conservative values
Pay Scale: 100s of millions. Richer than the Bin Laden family.
Upper Right Option 1: Defense contractor CEO
Her Job: To sell weapons that are going to kill thousends of innocent personns so he can be rich
Impact: Thousands of innocent dead people.
Pay Scale: Ridiculous
Upper Right Option 2: Dick Cheney (or some other oil industry CEO)
His Job: To pressure and manipulate the government so they go to war with tax payer money, so he can be richer
Impact: Thousands of dead people for wars in the ME and a polluted environment with more dead people for it
Pay Scale: Very fucking high
I guess that neither the ACLU or Michael Moore can compete with that, isn’t it Larry?
Larry, I would change your “police officer” to say:
Lower Right Corner Option 2: Police Officer
His Job: To Pepper Spray Babies and beat up hippies
Pay Scale: Good, and excellent job security (I can beat up and shoot anyone I want and not get fired) and benefits (I can go on stress-related disability and get paid for not working!)
Nice Job on the additions though I am still partial to my own. The important thing is that you are trying.
“The wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment.” Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Nice cartoon. And like most political cartoons, it glosses over much complexity.
Public school teachers vary in income. During a discussion about the number of public school teachers that send their kids to private schools, I recall reading that households with public school teachers tended to have more than the average household income. (So, sure, some send their kids to private schools, but they were less likely to do so than other people of their income level.) I don’t doubt that you can find cases of destitute teachers, just as you can find cases of destitute pornographers.
That said, there is some curious aspect to the “honourableness” premium public employees pay. Consider the tax breaks that the Bush administration says people deserve. Professional football players are multi-millionaires and get huge tax breaks. Unless, of course, you’re Pat Tillman, and sacrificed your lucrative career (oh yeah, and your life) to join the US armed forces. In that case, you barely deserve any tax relief. Because, how productive are you, really? If you were doing something productive, clearly you’d be earning more, right? As a member of our armed forces, Tillman probably didn’t even earn enough to qualify for the Child Tax Credit.
The penalty paid by people who forsake private careers to serve the public is pretty big. And is some cases, it’s breathtaking. Literally.
Ignoring the “what about my counter-cartoon idea, since I don’t have the talent nor creativity to come up with my own cartoon, so I’ll mock the fact that your cartoon has a liberal slant where a parallel one might not” argument, I’ll also add the fact that the pornographer’s payscale is “sweeeeet” is quite humorous.
Actually, come to think of it, why is that pointing out that teachers are grossly underpaid is suddenly “liberal”? I mean, do conservatives think that pornographer have something of value to contribute to society? Or do they enjoy the constant stream of advertisement? Or do they really think that CEO’s need a pay that’s so high you could plotz? I mean really, who needs to plotz?
Not to disagree with or even cast doubt on the basic message, but another interesting data point would be how much we as a society spend on teachers in total (rather than per teacher), compared to how much we spend on (say) ad mavens in total. We may pay the teachers less, but given that there are more of them (I think?) it might turn out that we pay more on them altogether.
Similarly for pornographers (although in fact I’ll bet your average pornographer isn’t all that rich): we may pay each one more than we pay each teacher, but we pay for alot fewer pornographers than we do teachers.
Which, again, isn’t to argue that teachers aren’t underpaid. But it’s a possible counterargument to think about, if you plan to use this argument in an adversarial environment…
David, you’re not looking at demand. Having “more teachers” is irrelevant if we have a large demand for teachers.
Pornographers don’t have a “sweeet” pay scale. Of course, as a pornographer–sorry, make that “perpetuator of sexism”–I could be biased.
Well, I know there were a number of directors of pornography in the 1960’s and 1970’s who were talented directors and just couldn’t get work elsewhere. If they were making a ton of money, they’d probably quit.
Still, there’s still the Hugh Hefners and Jackie Treehorns of the world.
Lower Right Corner Option 1: Soldier
His Job: Fighting for his country
Pay Scale: Squat!
Lower Right Corner Option 2: Police Officer
His Job: To protect and Serve
Pay Scale: Squat!
So I guess you voted for Kerry then, right? As I recall, these were campaign issues for him.
Not for GW, tho.
Varro:
Most of my experiences with police officers have been bad. I am also, as someone dedicated to civil rights, apalled by the civil rights violations perpetrated by police officers. But I try to remember two things when considering the plight of police officers, despite my personal distate for those I have met and my libertarian dislike of authority:
1. Police officers risk their lives every day
2. We only hear about the bad police officers, because the good ones just do their jobs and never come into the public light
Most police officers, especially those who don’t work in big cities, don’t earn large salaries and don’t necessarily have good benefits and the ability to retire if injured or go out on a stress-related disability.
But I’m definitely not saying that what you have pointed out isn’t a problem in our nation! There are tons and tons of testosterone-juiced guys who use their badge as a power trip. But I just try not to let myself color all police officers that way, because the good ones deserve better for putting their lives on the line every day in good faith for the good of the people. That’s all.
But yes, as has been pointed out, the world is more complicated than a political cartoon can encapsulate. But this cartoon does point out one simple truth that I think stands despite the complexity of the issue: People pay for what they value. If our society really valued education and teachers as much as we claim to, then we would be willing to pay for the quality and number of teachers we claim our kids need. Right now, we pay teachers less than necessary to attract the level of talent we claim that our kids deserve and pay for fewer teachers than we claim our kids deserve. You can say you want something all day, but until you are willing to plunk down your hard-earned cash for it, it’s just lip service. You get what you pay for, and all the bellyaching in the world about the state of education in America is meaningless until we decide to pay teachers commensurate with what we expect from them.
The average pimp makes out more than just fine, and the products of their filming labors collectively earn more money than all the big American sports franchises earn combined.
See this is a perfect example of why the “Left vs Right” doesn’t work.
There are probably just as many jobs that could be considered left or right where people aren’t getting paid what they are worth.
Can’t you see it? It’s Rich vs. Poor. And the GOP is steadily increasing the gap. It used to be there was a middle class in this country. There isn’t anymore and we all suffer for it.
The “Contract For Americans” that the GOP came up with in the 90’s was not a contract for all Americans. Just the rich ones.
In what way isn’t there a middle class anymore? I’m part of it, as is everyone else I know.
The huge, undifferientiated middle class is largely gone–there are few people anymore who have modest homes, children, two cars, and a decent retirement fund on one income unless they are in the upper tax brackets. For instance, my boyfriend holds a job that if had it 40 years ago, he would have been able to afford the house/car/housewife/2 kids/2 cars lifestyle. Now I have to work whether I like it or not and we don’t have children and never will, because you have to choose between children or a retirement account.
Well, that and I don’t like children, but that’s beside the point.
I thought it was called the Contract On America…
As a few people have pointed out, a cartoon (especially one printed in the teeny, tiny space D&S makes available to me) is gonna end up simplifying the issues. For instance, I intended the pornographer to be a Hugh Hefner-type, which I suspect is very different from what Mythago does.
The problems with everyone’s alternate suggestions is that – for folks who don’t have an idealogical reason to hate the cartoon – having a teacher think, “Shoot! I knew I should have been a pornographer!” is funny.
In contrast, having either a cop or a soldier think “Shoot! I knew I should have been a singer!” just isn’t funny, no matter what your politics.
Amanda,
I was under the impression that it had been fairly well proven that what you call the “undifferentiated middle class” – house, two cars, one income, June Cleaver – was a myth, or, at most, an absolute abberation of the post-war economy in the fifties. At no other point in our or anyone else’s history have so many had so much with so little work. Besides which, I see plenty of people in my (high cost of living) area who DO manage to have what you’re talking about on one income. They don’t live in big houses, or the trendiest neighborhoods, and they never buy new cars, and they don’t own big televisions, or have cable or cell phones, but they manage. Then again, most folks in the 50’s didn’t have those things either.
Not a big house, but a modest house. There is little doubt that people made a lot more money in real dollars in the 50’s than they do now. To make things worse, you need a lot more expensive education than you used to for that middle class existence, meaning people carry a heavier debt load.
The house I own was built in 1955–it’s a nice house, plenty big enough for a couple and a kid or two, though I wouldn’t particularly like having more than two in there. But there’s lots of houses like it up and down the street with the kids in them, so obviously lots of people find it acceptable. The class of people who live there is roughly what it would have been in the 50’s–a mix of people with union-level working class jobs and people with okay-ish white collar jobs. Not much has changed since the 50’s–except that in order to maintain the same lifestyle, each family has 2 incomes, meaning that on average they are bringing in 75% more money than a one income family, if you take the wage gap into account.
People like to point fingers at the cell phones and TVs, which don’t particularly cost more in real dollars than they would have in the 50’s. But even if we do have a few extra items that we buy, would those items really necessitate 75% more income plus a much larger debt load and less savings per household? No, they wouldn’t. The second income is necessary because incomes haven’t even come close to growing with inflation and our real dollar take-home per person has shrunk considerably.
Another “cheat” that people use to approximate the 50’s middle class lifestyle is moving WAY out to the suburbs where land is much, much cheaper. The only people I know who maintain on one income drive more than an hour each way to work everyday. But as gas prices go up, they are going to have to make some tough decisions.
And these are city and suburban people. Rural communities are in the toughest spot they’ve been in since the Depression.
Simply shifting from a ‘right vs. left’ paradigm to a ‘rich vs. poor’ one isn’t good enough as it still buys into the ‘Us vs. Them’ paradigm that the GOP are selling.
what they don’t want to know is that they are a collective of people who live with a ‘Me vs. them’ paradigm, which if the rest of society also adopted this paradigm, would not have left us with Bush in power.
of course if you listened to the right wing retoric, and took it as true, the paradigm would simply be ‘Us’. (but that would be like socialism! oooOOOOoooo! it’s nieghbourly to look after your nieghbour if they need a bit of help isn’t it? now mulitply that by society…)
Besides which, I see plenty of people in my (high cost of living) area who DO manage to have what you’re talking about on one income.
We ‘manage’ on one income. Of course, managing things like a college fund, retirement, regular doctor’s visits, and the like are not really in our reach, but I’m sure we look ‘managing’. I mean, we’re not homeless.
Amp, yes, the line is funny. But c’mon, the whole “oh no, you’re one of the GOOD pornographers” thing is silly.
It’s all right, mythago. I’m one of the GOOD Gummint drones. You can be in my club. :/
I like to refer to my own middle-class lifestyle as “default prosperity.” It allows me a home and a comfortable living on about 27K a year mostly due to the things I DIDN’T DO: Didn’t get seriously ill, didn’t have a kid, didn’t have a no-good partner who wouldn’t pay his own way, didn’t have to spring for my own college tuition, etc etc… :o
Not nearly as silly as you calling yourself a pornographer.
I’m going by the generally accepted radfem definition of pornography, “material that combines sex and/or the exposure of genitals with abuse or degradation in a manner that appears to endorse, condone, or encourage such behavior.”
“Erotica refers to sexually suggestive or arousing material that is free of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and respectful of all human beings and animals portrayed.”
Definitions from http://www.dianarussell.com
And lucked out with the government job. ;) My boyfriend I have gummit jobs, too, and the fact that we can buy into the state retirement program and that the state pays our entire insurance premium helps us save enough money to pay for our mortgage, which we wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.
Myth, sounds like whether or not you’re a GOOD pornographer, you’re definitely not making out like Hugh Hefner.
Teachers as a class are grossly underpaid.
Teachers as individuals are grossly overpaid.
We pay fairly low salaries to teachers, when you consider the responsibility and importance of the job of “teacher”. We pay very high salaries to teachers, when you consider the starkly limited intellectual abilities of most education school graduates, and especially when you consider how little real education even someone with a PhD in education has.
I believe that the teaching profession needs a radical overhaul. Teaching needs to become a high-wage, high-skill job. This will mean that most of the people who are currently teachers will have to find new jobs, more appropriate to their modest mental talents.
Well… what about being a teacher of pornography? Like, a porn-studies professor, but teaching k-12 classes instead?
Mythago,
I don’t think Amp said you were one of the GOOD pornographers, I think he just acknowledged you were one of the poorly paid pornographers. :)
Amanda, the idea that Joe Average had more money in the 1950s than s/he does today is just silly.
There has been an increase in the polarization of wealth in this country; that’s difficult to argue. But that doesn’t mean that anyone has gotten poorer. The lifestyle of a member of the working poor in 2004 is much, MUCH better than the lifestyle of a member of the working poor in 1950.
(Please don’t respond with a list of all the good things that a member of the working poor today doesn’t have. The same schmo didn’t have those things in 1950, either, but s/he DOES have a lot of new things today that the richest person in 1950 didn’t even dream about.)
We are much, much materially wealthier as a society today than we were 55 years ago. Culturally may be a different story, but that’s a whole different argument.
Ah, thank you for the clarification, Charles. :)
“Erotica refers to sexually suggestive or arousing material that is free of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and respectful of all human beings and animals portrayed.”
Conjugate: I enjoy erotica. You watch sexually-explicit material. She consumes pornography.
Raznor: “Actually, come to think of it, why is that pointing out that teachers are grossly underpaid is suddenly “liberal”?”
Its not that teachers being underpaid is “liberal”, it is the “evil corporate fat cat” angle that is one of the standard liberal templates though. Besides how can you discuss “What society values” without considering celebrity entertainers? Who do YOU think society values more: an ad executive or a rich and famous celebrity? As far a the original cartoon its fine and I am sure it works as intended.
I’m in a California credential program right now for the multiple sub. teaching credential. Among the 30 in our program, we have 2 lawyers and one economist changing professions to become teachers. This is the most demanding program they claim they have ever been a part of. I have nothing to compare it to, in terms of other academic or training programs, but my work load, classroom time and instruction time totals about 45-50 hours a week. And this program is designed for those who work full time.
I know plenty of people who get paid a LOT more than I will ever reach at the top of my pay scale, who do not have great intellectual ability.
As for Robert’s comment re; the intellectual abilities of teachers, I think my head just exploded with rage.
Spend a week in charge of a classroom of 20-30 kids and then talk to me about intellectual abilities. Teaching isn’t just a matter of knowing your subject areas (although no one I know would argue that understanding what you teach is unimportant–on the contrary, it’s very important). Look, just because one might be an intellectual cone head does NOT mean one can TEACH! Teaching is a set of skills unto itself.
I agree that our teacher prep programs need an overhaul, but not b/c they are churning out intellectual inferiors…they are struggling with how to teach teacher how to teach effectively. Most prep programs don’t do a good job at that. The program I am in is EXTREMELY demanding and it is a profound injustice that my pay scale will not reflect the tremendous amount of learning and preparation I will have done in the last year.
When speaking about pay for teachers, the other issue is that teachers work many more hours/week than they are paid. If you really want to calculate the pay of teachers you would need take a comprehensive look at the hours teachers spend outside of school (on weekends/holidays/summer) and come up with what they average. Most teachers never do such a thing b/c it would be depressing. Lastly, teachers subsidize the supplies they need in their classrooms. Most teachers I know easily spend $1000 of their own pay each year to buy needed items the school district can’t or won’t cover.
What’s really missing as far as improving the teaching profession is accountability. When there is some objective way in which teachers can be evaluated for effectiveness (not just the stupid STAR test), the teacher prep programs are strictly correlated with how teachers will be evaluated, when there is a consistent way in which to track student outcomes OVER TIME!!!!(NOT just year to year), and parents are brought into the equation as partners in the educational process with explicit responsibilities they agree to, then teachers will be more easily able to demand higher pay. More easily. But really, if teachers just refused to work more hours than they are paid to work, they would effectively communicate their message regarding wanting higher pay. I think many, many people would be shocked at what didn’t get done. It would illustrate quite clearly all that teachers do, essentially for free.
Bethka –
I am sure there are many excellent minds going into teaching, and it is within the bounds of possibility that there are genuinely demanding ed schools out there. That doesn’t change what’s happening in the bulk of the teaching population.
They’re not stupid people, per se; they’re just at the bottom end of the class of people able to hold any type of “knowledge” job. (And their pay is equally at the bottom end, which is pretty much what we would expect.) I work in and around higher ed, and my alma mater has an ed school. My personal experiences match what my readings tell me.
Robert:>>We pay very high salaries to teachers, when you consider the starkly limited intellectual abilities of most education school graduates, and especially when you consider how little real education even someone with a PhD in education has.
I believe that the teaching profession needs a radical overhaul. Teaching needs to become a high-wage, high-skill job. This will mean that most of the people who are currently teachers will have to find new jobs, more appropriate to their modest mental talents.>>
The education credentialling program not controlled by prospective teachers, so it’s unfair to penalize the teachers for its idiocies. If my mom and her colleagues are at all representative, they’re not any happier about the process than we are.
Moreover, there’s a huge difference between “evaluated by stupid criteria” and “stupid.” It takes a great deal of effort and ingenuity both to negotiate the credentialling process, and then to manage the workload with which public school teachers are burdened.
I actually agree to some degree that education as an academic field of study has some serious problems.
But Robert, you’ve asserted repeatedly that most teachers are quite bad at their jobs. This is a remarkable assertion to make without providing a scintilla of evidence to support your conclusion. Please, share with us the source of your knowledge.
Teaching needs to become a high-wage, high-skill job.
As someone who’s looking to go into teaching, I think I agree with the sentiment. A lot of people who would make great teachers are turned off by the lousy pay and even worse status and go on to become, maybe not pornographers but better-paid, higher-status private-sector employees. So the only ones who go into teaching are the gems who are moved by a true sense of vocation and the ones who would struggle to make it in anothe job. Something – and I don’t pretend to have all the answers – needs to be done to make teaching more attractive to those who really have something to offer.
So, Robert, youi are allowed to argue that Joe Schmo is better off now than then by pointing to all the “stuff” he has, but I am not to counter with all the “stuff” he doesn’t have? How did you draw the long half of the straw?
Apparently, the high point of salaries wasn’t the 50’s though. Apparently it was 1973, and real dollar wages have been declining since. http://www.lawmall.com/rpa/chap9.html
Amanda, I’m not drawing the long half of the straw. Arguing “Joe Schmo doesn’t have health care and thus is poorer than he was in 1950” (as an example), is invalid if he didn’t have health care in 1950, either.
Analysis of real dollar wages is useful but insufficient. You also have to take into account what is available for purchase from those wages. For example, in 1973 if you spent several months salary on a computer, you would get some horrible hand-wired Altair do-nothing machine. Today you get a really hot box that will do all kinds of things undreamt of 30 years ago.
Another example would be access to music, art, and cultural entertainment (both high and low). A member of the working poor today has the ability to enrich his/her mind and soul that kings and emperors of the past could only dream about. That’s a huge increase in material well-being, and it simply doesn’t show up on income figures.
DJW, I haven’t said they were bad at their jobs. I said they were at the bottom of the knowledge worker pool, and thus earning salaries appropriate for their merit. (Nick Kiddle appropriately dichotomizes the teaching population – saints who aren’t doing it for the money, and regular mortals who are getting the best job their skills equip them for.)
There are a number of statistical indicators that will demonstrate the bottom-of-the-bucket assertion. What will you accept as evidence of that proposition?
“I enjoy erotica. You watch sexually-explicit material. She consumes pornography.”
Oh great, the trite old line of “It’s erotica if I enjoy it and porn if I don’t.” Such a brilliantly neat and tidy way to ignore the humiliation and intentional mean-spiritedness in pornography by equating all things porn with all things sex. Naked women’s breasts = horse cocksucking Asian teen cunts, and anyone who says otherwise is just being pointlessly subjective.
The differences between rape and sex are subjective too, and lots of people confuse those as well. Penis in, penis out, it’s all the same when you look at the mechanics, no need to look at anything else, really.
You photograph nude women without “abuse or degradation in a manner that appears to endorse, condone, or encourage such behavior”, but if you must have your place in the very fashionable pimpiarchy by calling yourself a pornographer, then pornographer you are. Just try to recognize how Amp’s cartoon relies on the “sexism” part of what makes pornography pornography before proudly joining their ranks despite its ill fit for your photography.
Re Bethka’s Post;
First off let me start off by saying that I spent 15 years as a classified employee in one of California’s k-8 school districts with over 20 schools.
Let’s start off from the top of this post.
California schools is a great example of what’s wrong with public schools and teachers in general. The idea of puting someone in a position as a teacher after only one year is nothing short of a crime. The only thing this does is fill a position with a warm body, a babysitter in place of where a teacher should be.
BTW, speaking of babysitters. I’ve heard teachers cry about how we pay our babysitters better. Maybe, just maybe it’s because THEY DO THE JOB WE ARE PAYING THEM TO DO!
As far as other professionals entering the rank and files of ‘teacher’ Could it be that they just couldn’t cut it in whatever profession they came from. Other professions have real standards to live up too or, as the Donald would say “your fired!” Anyone with 4 years of collage or in your case with only one, can become a teacher. Can a teacher with a 4 year degree become a lawyer? I don’t think so.
Speaking of other professions and schools, esp in California, If a law firm had the failure rate that California schools have they would have to close their doors due to lack of clients. I’m also sure several of the lawyers would be sued, if not disbared for incompetence. If a hospital had the failure rate of the schools in California it would be shut down due to a high mortality rate and the doctors would be sued for malpratice.
Teachers in general have no real accountabilty. Teachers unions, administrators, teachers all get up on there knuckles when they so much as hear wispers of making teachers accountable. It’s no wonder why. When schools are allowed to teach to methods like ‘New Math’ and ‘Out Come Based Education’
I think we have all heard of and laughed about ‘New Math’ but what about ‘Out come Based Education’ (OBE). This is the method of education that California schools used for a generation and a half in the k-8 system. I’ll give you an idea of what ‘OBE’ was about.
When I was in elementry and secondary school (mid 60’s thru early 70’s), and math question might have been asked. ‘a man can go into the woods and cut down 10 trees and hour. How may trees can that man cut down in 8 hours?’ …answer; 80. During the ‘New Math era. ‘A man can go into the woods and cut down 10 trees an hour. How is it that he is able to cut down 86 trees in 8 hours?’ …Answer; (I’m unable to answer this because I never studied or understood ‘new math’ but somehow they made it work). Under ‘OBE’ that question would go like this. ‘A man can go into the woods and cut down 10 trees and hour. How do you feel about this?
OBE wasn’t about learning. It was about how a child felt about him/herself. The two basic points points to OBE were 1. All children CAN learn and since all children can learn… 2. There are NO Failures. California schools used OBE for over 12 years. It didn’t matter if a child couldn’t read in the 6th grade as long as they felt good about themselves.
Teachers never stood up as a whole to speak up about against this. When was the last time you heard of ‘teachers’ speaking up against curriculuim. When was the last time you heard of teachers speak up against anything or threating to strike over anything short of wages and benifits. I’ll tell you when. When people started looking at schools and teachers and asking where is our money going too? Why is lil Johnny still unable to read in the 6th grade? How come my Mary can’t do simple math the 5th grade but is still ‘Student of The Month’?
Schools get plenty of money. Teachers are payed plenty for the product they produce. Do you want to see where your education dollars are? Walk into any school and see for yourselves. Teachers allowed to cover the walls in the classroom (…and I mean every square inch!), with heavy butcher paper just because they don’t like the color of the room. Schools spend 10’s of thousands of dollars in order find colors that are calming and enhances a learning enviroment only to be all be thrown out the window because the teacher prefers another color. Walk down the halls and look into the classroom. See how have real life size faux trees made of the same butcher paper. BTW, Many of these expensive decorations are against California fire code and when teachers and administrators are made aware of this nothing is done.
Look some of the programs that are in our schools. I know of 5 schools where at the start of the school year a form is sent out telling parents to fill this out and you child/children will get not only a free lunch but also breakfast as well without question! These are not ‘getto’ schools or neighborhoods.
How many times have we heard teachers and schools cry about no support from parents. Yes, as a parent we should help but the fact is we pay teachers to teach! I guess that since teachers feel free to impose there own political and social views on our children and not just how 5×15=75 that we as parents should be will to do a part of the job we pay them to do as well. Many parents are unable to spend much time ‘helping’, many working two jobs in order to support themselves and give there families a better life and have a slice of american pie, not to mention pay taxes that goes to pay the wages of teachers.
Reform is needed. Teachers do need to be held accountable. Schools in general do need to be held to a much higher standard. The cost is much too high to keep things as they are.
…As far as how ‘things are’. The only thing that would have happened if that teacher had became a photographer, we would have bad pictures!
Ron,
I have completed several years of undergraduate work, 2 BA’s, and I spent 10 years working as an Instructional AssistantII, teaching ESL to all K-5th graders who qualified. So, please don’t condescend to me about what I may or may not know. We obviously have greater differences than just the state of CA schools, the causes, and the remedies. So, I am just going to stick with correcting your fallacious assumptions about me. Oh, and the ridiculous myth that those who can’t make it in their own fields become teachers is certainly NOT true for the students in my credential program, nor for any number of those who I’ve encountered over the years. I realize this is anecdotal, but for each anecdotal reference you can make, I’m sure I can match it in opposite terms. Probably not a very useful conversation.
Teachers never stood up as a whole to speak up about against this. When was the last time you heard of ‘teachers’ speaking up against curriculum. When was the last time you heard of teachers speak up against anything or threating to strike over anything short of wages and benefits.
Ron, I’ve listened to more hours of “my god, how the hell did this become the curriculum?” discussions than any sane person should endure. It’s a popular complaint among all the teachers I’ve ever been around. Why they teach it usually boils down to a simple reason: they’re forced to.
The state adopts guidelines that districts and teachers much match, no matter how nonsensical. Most teachers have contempt for “new math”, were suspicious of phonics, and distrust all of the other placeboes that are presented as the saving grace of education. They don’t get to choose what they teach– it’s set by the state, and implemented by school boards. Note that there is no requirement, save living in a district, for election to a school board. That’s a huge source of frustration– people who’ve never set foot in a classroom dictate which text books will be purchased, how discipline should be handled, and the like. Legislators, enamored of the quick fix, push “solution” after “solution”, each pushing whatever works best for their particular child onto every student in the state.
Recently even more hate has been directed against endless testing. When you spend six weeks of the year on the various tests (state, federal, and district proficiency tests), and have principals relentlessly pushing test scores (rather than knowledge learned) as the goal… yeah, I know too many teachers. I empathize.
I’m an engineer, and only when I dream of making a more direct contribution to society do I imagine teaching. For now, I’ll stick to building things… at least my boss doesn’t kowtow to each parent, undercutting solid design every time someone raises their voice. [Yeah, weak administration is another hobby horse I’ve heard too much about.]
Doesn’t surprise me that’s your sister. My first thought reading it was that it looked like you! :)
Er, Samantha–that’s a joke. “Conjugate” means are saying exactly, but: what I do is positive, what you do is neutral, what he/she does is negative.
I’m afraid I didn’t understand what you were talking about in the rest of your rant. It’s only pornography if it’s sexist? Photos of nude women are impossible to take without joining the pimparchy? Ya lost me.
Robert, what is the ‘knowledge worker pool’ and in what way, other than salary, are teachers at the bottom? I’d argue that your criterion–getting a higher degree without getting much ‘education–applies to, say, business-school grads and lawyers. Their median income whomps teachers’, though.
Robert, the problem with the hyper-focus on our toys vs. their toys is that discussion distracts from whether or not someone can buy “big ticket” items. It’s well-understood that your average person owns more toys than they would have in the 70’s is because they can’t afford things like a retirement account, college, etc. Say I make enough to save up $1,500 in a year. I can’t go to college or anything with that money. But I can buy a laptop.
By your reckoning, I am somehow therefore better off than someone like me in the 70’s–because college existed then and now, but only I can buy a laptop. But that person could go to college.
I got the joke, and I also didn’t miss your underlying message about the differences between porn and erotica being purely in the minds of judgemental beholders. I believe refocusing from the sexual aspects of porn to the portrayals of sadistically enjoying mistreating people (mostly women and feminized men) brings the important differences from erotica to the forefront..
Like I said, you can call yourself a pornographer if you’d like, but I’ll still wonder why you would want to.
Mythago –
The knowledge worker pool is the pool of people whose work is primarily the mental manipulation of abstract symbols. (A truck driver’s work is primarily mental, but not symbolic. A writer’s work is primarily mental, and deals with symbols.)
Teachers (more specifically, education school students and graduates) have the lowest standardized test scores and the lowest IQ scores of people in this broad professional group.
I don’t know what lawyers learn, but business school graduates get a grounding in psychology, sociology, statistics, analysis, ethics, law, “people skills”, and other knowledge bases useful in managing an enterprise.
Amanda –
I am not focusing on toys. I am focusing on what you can and cannot buy. The working poor were not richer in terms of what they could buy in 1950 than they are today. This isn’t a question of opinion or perception, it’s a question of fact. People in the working poor were not able to go to college (easily) in 1950; they are much more likely to be able to go today. The working poor were not able to get guaranteed health coverage in 1950; they are much more likely to be able to get coverage today. Their ability to get these things today may not be GOOD, but that does not mean that it was better in the past. On top of that analysis, you have to look at the things that are available widely today that simply were not available then; technology produces a real increase in the material well being of people at the bottom of society.
No coherent analysis will show you members of the working poor being materially better off in the 1950s than they are today.
Robert, should you get anywhere near a link to an actual study that supports any one of your increasingly dubious points and assertions–preferably a study or link not funded/endorsed by Freepers– feel free to share it.
Alsis38, I’d be delighted to.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt133.asp
This is median SAT scores for college-bound seniors, broken out by intended undergraduate major. Some highlights from 2002/2003 data:
Major Combined Score
Biological science 1096
Business/commerce 1001
Computer/info science 1038
Education 965
Engineering 1099
Mathematics 1171
Philosophy/religion 1106
Surely some groups score lower than ed school destinees? Well, the agriculture majors are close, at 966.
The only two groups that score lower are home ec students, with 924. And the vo-tech crowd, at 891.
If you’d like to look at post-graduate work, then I suggest you pay a visit to your local comprehensive university. Ask what the admission criteria are for their graduate schools of engineering, nursing, science, and education. Guess which school will have the lowest requirements.
and I also didn’t miss your underlying message about the differences between porn and erotica being purely in the minds of judgemental beholders
Actually, the punchline of the joke (it’s dead now, might as well) is that people draw lines so that what they like and do is carefully excised from the ‘bad’. aka, That’s Different.
Why would I want to call myself a pornographer? Because I find it ridiculous to judge sexually-explicit material by its explicitness, rather than whether it’s sexist or hateful. I don’t, sorry, buy the “gaze is male” argument, or feel that as long as there’s enough soft-focus lighting it’s ‘erotica’ but show actual female orgasms and we’re into ‘porn.’
Call it reclaiming.
I don’t know what lawyers learn, but business school graduates get a grounding in psychology, sociology, statistics, analysis, ethics, law, “people skills”, and other knowledge bases useful in managing an enterprise.
I do know what lawyers learn, and having gone to school with a lot of business-school grads (or those who planned to get an MBA after business school), it’s truly the same as a teacher’s degree. You learn the theory and learning practical skills comes later, as any new law-school grad in his first real job can tell you.
That aside, wouldn’t market theory tell you that if you want better teachers, you should offer more money? That’s why law schools and business schools can have high admissions standards, after all: their grads will make good money, therefore there is more competition, therefore higher criteria to get in.
Looks like teachers’ salaries are actually improving.
Years ago, Berkeley Breathed drew a Bloom County cartoon where a teacher explained fractions using his own salary as an example. The last panel showed that he got paid diddly/squat.
And since I read the rest of the entries, I now know that it’s all that butcher paper I cover my classroom walls with that is the cause of California’s educational woes.
Robert, I don’t want to say that you’re wrong, but I do think your experiences are not very typical of California education.
I’ve been teaching for over 15 years, in 4 different school districts, and everybody is concerned with the curricula in our schools. We are constantly looking for better ways to teach our students, we attend training on our own time, we meet with each other after school and compare teaching strategies. The thing that bothers me and my coworkers the most is when elected officials, who haven’t stepped foot inside a classroom since the Kennedy was president, presume to tell us, the professionals, how best to do our job. Or they design tests for our 4th graders that they couldn’t even pass themselves.
The only time teachers in our district have ever talked of striking is when we’ve been working without a contract for a length of time. Right now, I’ve been working without a contract for over 5 months. Do I keep showing up because I love the color of butcher paper on my walls? No, like the professional I claim to be, I show up because I care about my students.
Weighed against the standards we must reach and the responsibilities we have, we are extremely underpaid. But until our community fills a 10,000 seat auditorium at $35 a pop just to watch me teach fractions, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Uncle Mike, that was possibly my favorite *Bloom County* ever, although the one about the (same) teacher explicating a piece of abstract art titled “A Pink Snow Bunny” is also up there.
Ron and Robert,
My mother is a teacher, and the one thing I have learned (other than that I do not want her job) is that, with teachers, at least in this state, accountability is SO not a problem. She’s accountable to her principal. She’s accountable to the school board. She’s accountable to the parents of the students. She’s accountable to the NCLB Act. She’s accountable to the three or four grant committees to which she has to appeal EVERY YEAR to get enough money to keep the school library functional, because if she doesn’t produce results, that money won’t come her way the next year. She’s accountable to the district webmaster. She’s accountable to the other teachers, whose computers she fixes on a daily basis.
These are the groups that make the most noise, and that noise often isn’t in the best interest of the students; but she knows she’s accountable to the students, and that what she does needs to benefit their education–they’re the ones she’s doing all of this for, and she hasn’t forgotten it. She’s gone to bat to get books kept in the library that parents found objectionable so the students could have at least half an opportunity to read them. For a $100 stipend, she’s completely redesigned and remade, down to every last link, the school’s webpage, making it usable (you should have seen the old one) and turning it into an efficient source for research that students can use from the school library, the public library, or home, should they be lucky enough to have a home computer (most of them are not). Find me a web designer who will do that amount of work for that amount of money, in addition to a more-than-full-time job they already have.
Does she get paid enough? I don’t know. For the amount of work she’s put into her job this year, she’s making about $10.00 an hour–less than I make, and I’m a secretary with an AA degree. Does she make a living wage? You bet. But she doesn’t have time for a life. She’s been doing this for about 20 years now, so, as you can imagine, I’ve spent rather a lot of time around teachers. I’ve yet to meet a teacher that works only 40-hour work week. I’ve yet to meet a teacher that works only a 50-hour work week.
No one would argue that my mother does not have the sheer capacity for memorization to become a doctor. She doesn’t have the intelligence to become a lawyer. That HARDLY means she’s stupid, though. I will thank everyone to remember that the words “as a general rule,” when applied to people, are often a nice way of presenting racism, or sexism, or an assumption the writer has made about a people because those people belong to a certain group.
I know police officers who have never abused the power given to them by their position. I know men who are appalled by sexism and who work actively to stop it. I know white middle-class Americans who forego TV or automobile upgrades in favor of using their money to help people who aren’t white and who aren’t middle-class and who aren’t American. And, obviously, I know teachers who are doing a hell of a lot more than just their jobs. I grant freely that there are many people more intelligent than every teacher I’ve ever known; and I grant freely that there are some shitty teachers–I’ve had a few. But please don’t discard ore in your (rightful) hatred for dirt.
“people draw lines so that what they like and do is carefully excised from the ‘bad’ ”
That’s just a rephrasing of what I said, your underlying message about the differences between porn and erotica being purely in the minds of judgemental beholders. I didn’t say I liked or disliked your photography, just that it is qualitatively very different from porn.
I already addressed how this cliche diminishes substantive examination and critiques of the pornography’s contents because it falsely accuses all people of being too biased to make rational distinctions. Not only is it very possible to tell the differences between porn and erotica, I have noted what the most salient difference is.
“Because I find it ridiculous to judge sexually-explicit material by its explicitness, rather than whether it’s sexist or hateful.”
I’ve said that twice now, that it’s not about being bothered by sexual explicitness but humilation, indignity, violence, intentional cruely meant to bring sadistic pleasure to others. What I have also done is question why you prefer being labeled with what you know overwhelmingly promotes sexism and hatred of women when you could more accurately (and with less normalizing and legitimizing of pornography’s severe sexism) call yourself a photographer. IRL do you answer photographer or pornographer when someone asks you about it?
“”soft-focus lighting it’s ‘erotica’ but show actual female orgasms and we’re into ‘porn.'”
Once again, it’s not about the sex. Forget about the sex. It’s not about the lighting, the orgasm, the breasts. It’a about a porn movie titled “Anally Ripped Whores” selling itself with “Chicks being assfucked til their sphincters are pink, puffy, and totally blown out! Adults diapers may be in order for these cock sockets when their whoring work is done.” I know you see the differences, so I don’t understand your need to blur them, make me seem biased and judgemental for seperating the sex stuff from the disrespectfully demeaning stuff.
“Call it reclaiming”
I call it knee-jerk defensiveness, too reflexive to see the clear distinctions I’ve spelled out. You’re comments don’t show you’ve considered sincerely what I’ve written, it’s Friday, and I think this has run its course so we’ll discuss more another time, mythago, as this topic will surely some up again someday.
Just wanted to add I didn’t intend that last part as a cold-turkey “don’t bother replying” thing, just that I prefer to wind this up today.
As we’re not the only two people on the thread, I’m sure you can jump back in when you feel ready, hopefully when you can see the distinction between disagreeing and “not considered sincerely.” Assuming that anyone who disagrees with you simply didn’t listen is a pretty amateur error.
By the way, I’m not a photographer. There are all kinds of pornography. To say that the label really means “sexually explicit misogynistic photos” and nothing else is a bit like saying that the label “feminist” really means hairy-legged man-hating militants and therefore we should all pick another label.
This is median SAT scores for college-bound seniors, broken out by intended undergraduate major.
Oh, please, Robert. First of all, SAT scores by themselves are hardly the ultimate in determining a person’s fitness to teach, or to do anything else, for that matter. Second of all, these scores tell us nothing of what career, if any, the test-takers ended up in.
Alsis38, I didn’t claim any of those things, so my failure to establish them does not distress me.
You asked me to provide a citation backing up what I was saying. One of the things I was saying was that the test scores for teachers were on the low end of the range.
Let’s turn it around.
You provide the evidence and the statistics that indicate that teachers are underpaid relative to the mental skills they possess.
“You provide the evidence and the statistics that indicate that teachers are underpaid relative to the mental skills they possess.”
The October issue of NEA (Nat’l Education Association) has an article using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Leveling Criteria to compare teacher pay with “comparable” occupations. For example:
Occupation Skill Points Wages/Weekly
Elementary teacher 1,743 $811
Clergy 1,855 $699
Accountants and auditors 1,689 $932
Editors and reporters 1,711 929
Computer programmers1,727 1,171
http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0410/teachercomp.html
For the sake of argument, let’s say that Robert’s claims are true, and that on average teachers are the least-brightest bulbs in the knowledge-worker attic (though specific cases are certainly different – my girlfriend’s a teacher, and she has my 1290 SAT score beat but bad . . . oh, and I’m in an accelerated career-changing teacher recruitment program)
This would only reinforce the argument that teacher pay should be increased, in order to attract better teachers! If Robert’s claims are accurate, then presumably the college-bound seniors with high SAT scores (since the only empirical evidence offered deals with people who have yet to deal with ed. departments/programs) are going into other fields, because of prestige and pay issues (low on both counts). In this scenario, the only bright people you end up with are complete idealists, which may explain why the burnout rate is so high . . .
Now it *would* be interesting to see average scores/grades etc. for teachers with over 3-5 years experience.. .
Also: if this is true – whatever SAT scores are a proxy for – how well does this correlate to good teaching? Everyone’s who’s been to college has noticed the ‘brillant mind, can’t teach worth squat’ phenomena. This issue is even more important in the lower grades. Whatever skills are involved in getting a class full of middle-schoolers to be quiet, stay in their seats, and learn don’t necessarily have a direct relationship to SAT scores. Since most people just don’t seem to be equally strong in all areas, I wonder if picking lots of really good interpersonal-relationship people would lower a field’s average SAT score . . .
Also, is there still a gap between girls and boys for SAT score? Because there are whole lot more high school girls going into ed. than boys . . . that might impact the statistics . . .
-Dan S.
This would only reinforce the argument that teacher pay should be increased, in order to attract better teachers!
Absolutely. When starting teachers make as much as starting lawyers or B-school graduates, guess which major will be in high demand and have high standards? It’s money that pulls in the talent. Surely we are more concerned about our children’s education than we are about making sure Top 100 law firms have a new crop of billable units every summer.
Which is exactly my contention. We need to pay teachers more. We just shouldn’t labor under the idea that the teachers we’d be paying more are the same people we’re paying now. (By and large.)
Robert –
was a big bad teacher mean to you as a child?
But seriously, this is a complex issue that deserves more than blanket proclamations about the “modest mental talents” of teachers and a list of SAT scores.
If no more real data is forthcoming, I’d like to continue on a theme mentioned above by me and others. You claim that teachers are essentially the dregs of the knowledge class – “the bottom end of the class of people able to hold any type of “knowledge” job.” Whether or not this is accurate, we should question whether teaching (especially elementary ed.) should be classified as a knowledge job at all – or at least redefined as some sort of mixed category. Anybody with a basic awareness of what teaching actually entails would realize that it differs in many respects from most “knowledge jobs” as usually understood, and demands skills and abilities not always called for in these fields. Certainly, a clear understanding of the material to be taught is a sort of absolute baseline, while expertise, love of learning, and the ability to inspire are what is really needed. However, good teaching requires a whole lot more – excellent interpersonal skills, etc., etc. Whatever job category you’d put teaching in, it is very close to the top – the queen of the social occupations, perhaps. At the same time, there is a drive to repackage teaching as the technicians of the knowledge field, through the use of prepackaged, literally scripted (one teaches using a prepared script) curricula that teachers are meant to blindly (and blandly) apply. Now, nobody wants that! (except perhaps the companies involved . . .)
Robert – ever tried teaching? It’s *very* different from most other thing “in and around higher ed” – which is where ed programs run into trouble, to be fair.
One major issue is higher salaries specifically for urban teachers, to attract and retain qualified people, which are alway in short supply since conditions are very tough, rewards can be increasingly hard to see, pay is low, and professional respect is at a minimum, all conditions which are usually reversed in adjacent suburbs.
Where were you educated, by the way?
-Dan S.
Dan –
I have been homeschooling my two older children for the past two years. Currently I teach language arts and math. I’m pretty good at it.
I went to Oberlin (with Ampersand) for a couple of years, then dropped out to pursue a career in IT. I am just now finishing a BS in business administration at the University of Colorado. Next year I will be starting a doctoral program and hopefully becoming a professor.
I agree that the subject of education is complex. Complex subjects are hard enough to assess without the additional burden of playing make-believe about the competencies of the people involved.
“I have been homeschooling my two older children for the past two years. Currently I teach language arts and math. I’m pretty good at it.”
I believe you, and I’m sure it’s hard work. Now multiply that by about 15. [this following hypothetical is set in a disadvantaged urban elementary or middle school] You probably already have a decent range of abilities – strengths and weaknesses – in just your two older kids. Keep that; you want a range of at least three grade levels. If they’re middle-school age, for lit. you might want to imagine a few struggling to sound out words in grade-level text, and doing almost no voluntary reading outside of basic environmental text, a few happily reading material of various difficulty levels whenever they can, and most spread out somewhere in the middle. A few may have limited English language proficiency. Others may have recently transfered from other schools, possibly for discliplinary issues. Remember, you are not their parent. Even nominal respect or obedience is not a given. Likewise, you may not be able to count on the cooperation of parents/guardians, for various reasons; worse case, they may refuse to be involved, actively undermine your authority, or even (*very* rarely) physically attack you. This last may also be a risk with a few of your students (again, rarely). Most or all of the students will have home lives that are very different from yours. While these differences can help enhance instruction, in some cases they may be undeniably negative. Some students will have significant distruptions in their lives, from illness to abuse. You will catch flashes of brillance and talent in the most unexpected places, and too often miss your chance to build on them. You will be subjected to a number of rules and regulations, some eminently reasonable – lesson plans submitted in advance – others decidedly less so. Looming over it all is the spector of NCLB legislation. You will face a working environment that is – like most jobs – strongly determined by the quality of administration. If you are like most teachers, you may feel some sense of isolation from colleagues. You will not have much of a life, or more accurately, teaching will be your life. Much of your time after work will be spent in school-related tasks, whether or not you physically remain in the building. Especially in your first few years, you will spend a significant portion of your paycheck providing both extra perks and basic supplies. Along with lesson planning, grading, etc., you will often be involved in some sort of continuing education. As you have learned, teaching can be an exciting, even inspiring profession. However, as the years go by you may find yourself vulnerable to fatalism, weariness, or even despair. Just going by anecdotal evidence, you may be at an increased risk of various stress-related conditions. . .
And so on, and so on. I am painting perhaps an overly bleak picture, but if you want to talk about competencies, we should be clear what it is they are to be competent at.
Good luck with the doctoral program. I almost went to Oberlin, but ended up at Vassar instead – which has a little-heralded but quite good ed program, if anyone’s interested. It requires all students to major in another subject. I meant to ask about your earlier education, though. Do you feel your childhood teachers were of limited mental capacity?
I’ve met teachers that do seem to fit your description; I’ve met others that definitely don’t. Some may not be as narrowly academically inclined as, say, me (my light reading consists largely of the products of various university presses), but are consumate professionals, well aware of developments in the field, and in a word, wise. I’m still working on those aspects. My general liberal arts education comes in handy, Foucault less so. One wants teachers that 1) are really excited (and deeply knowledgeable) about what they’re teaching and 2) are able to communicate that excitement, but there’s a lot more than that. Additionally, the younger the kids, the more complicated, in some ways, the job becomes; it deals much more with learning social skills, school expectations, even motor skills, while the strictly academic content *better be* well within the grasp of most college graduates.
“Complex subjects are hard enough to assess without the additional burden of playing make-believe about the competencies of the people involved.”
I agree. Please stop doing so – you are, inadvertantly, insulting me, my fiancee, and both my parents – without evidence to back up these claims. I would especially like to see figures involving teachers that have remained in the profession past the first few years (ideally in comparison with those who failed to do so).
We agree that teaching should become a high-paid, high-skilled position. We differ, I think, on the nature of the skills. I also think the majority of teachers are more highly skilled than you realize; also, teaching bashing is poor form, especially if not clearly backed up by an understanding of what actual teaching is like.
Looking back over previous posts –
“The knowledge worker pool is the pool of people whose work is primarily the mental manipulation of abstract symbols.”
To beat a dead horse – this doesn’t really fit what teachers do especially well. While this is a large part of their work, interpersonal actions are such a major component that this would seem to put them in a different pool altogether (but I am not familiar with this construct).
-Dan S.
We just shouldn’t labor under the idea that the teachers we’d be paying more are the same people we’re paying now. (By and large.)
“By and large” many of them would, indeed, be the same. We’d also be paying a lot of people who are in it for the money and perhaps shouldn’t be teaching kids, but them’s the breaks.
We homeschool two of our kids as well, Robert, but it’s not because we’ve had problems with public-school teachers’ incompetence. We started homeschooling our middle child when it became clear that no matter how competent and dedicated her teachers were (and indeed they were), there simply weren’t enough of them to handle the workload.
I love this. Very, very intersting blog. You will be blogrolled at my next update, and are being dropped into my feed now.
Dan –
My sister, mother, aunt, uncle, and grandmother are or were teachers. I know just as much about the school system as you do. I’m sorry you feel insulted; that was not my intention.
Your post on the challenges facing the public school teacher is an excellent summary of why a government public model is a lousy model for education. I take it we can expect you at the next privatize-them-all meeting.
Interpersonal relationships are part of all jobs, weather station operator excepted, perhaps. The most amazingly skilled interpersonal communicator will still make a lousy teacher if he or she doesn’t know how to find the length of the hypotenuse or who Jackson was or how to articulate those ideas. The differentially relevant skills for teaching are knowledge-based, not interpersonal. (I will acknowledge that there is definitely a minimum level of interpersonal skill needed to be an effective teacher – but that is true of almost every job.)
Mythago –
We aren’t homeschooling because the school teachers are incompetent. In fact, the teachers our kids had when they were in the state system were generally good. (That does not contradict anything I have written before. If you think it does, please quote it and I will be glad to clarify.)
We homeschool because our kids have mental issues that make them very difficult for a school system to handle. Basically if they have an adult one on one, they do fine; if they are in a group, they short-circuit. The school system can’t afford to give them one teacher apiece, but we can. So that’s why we do it. (And also it’s a lot more convenient for values education; we don’t have to worry about what the ACLU thinks, or about what the fundamentalists across the street think, either.)
“My sister, mother, aunt, uncle, and grandmother are or were teachers.”
Wow – regular family business; I am impressed. Do they share your feelings?
“Your post on the challenges facing the public school teacher is an excellent summary of why a government public model is a lousy model for education. I take it we can expect you at the next privatize-them-all meeting.”
Um – no, and no. Our system of free public education is a valuable achievement. My post is a summary of why pervasive inequality in educational funding – in concert with pervasive economic and social inequalities – brutally undermines the strengths of that model. I’ve talked with advocates of the privatization/charter strands of school reform who are impressively direct about what they see as the main benefit of such a change; good/advantaged kids will be able to thrive, while all those who present problems can be dumped elsewhere. Public schooling’s commitment to equality of opportunity does make the job harder, but these difficulties could be largely mitigated with decent funding.
Here in Philly, we had years of Harrisburg (state capital) insisting that our school system didn’t need additional funding because look! it had so much more money than the surrounding suburban districts! As far as I can tell, it was only recently, with the publishing of detailed data for the area, that they realized/admitted that the Philly school district had many, many more children than any of the others, so per-pupil funding was far lower. Many problems with schooling go far beyond teacher abilities; there is a constant and unhelpful refusal to consider reality (we can certainly agree on that, if not the details!)
In regard to relevant teaching skills, I’m sorry, but you’re just wrong; knowledge skills are important, but it is undeniably some sort of mixed occupation. I’m thinking of elementary education though, not secondary, which attracts a fairly different group of people – perhaps that is the cause of this disagreement. The knowledge base in the lower grades is fairly, well, basic, and the important skills deal much more with child management in various ways. Not only does the job involve constant immediate interaction with other people as the point of the job, not as a byproduct of staff arrangements (working from home not an option under most circumstances), they’re *little* people, and thus rather odd, something that persists (if in different ways) through middle school).
” In fact, the teachers our kids had when they were in the state system were generally good.”
You claim this doesn’t contradict any prior comments. Is this because that you “haven’t said they were bad at their jobs. I said they were at the bottom of the knowledge worker pool, and thus earning salaries appropriate for their merit,” or because you allow that there may be rather bright teachers, but they don’t represent the bulk of the profession?
And this bit about salaries appropriate to their merit – that’s just silly.
-Dan S.
My sister feels the same way; I suspect my aunt does too. My mother is neutral, having retired from teaching a good twenty years ago. My uncle is deceased, and we can’t ask him.
I didn’t say they were bad at their jobs, I said they were at the bottom of the rankings and thus being paid (roughly) appropriately. Not sure what’s silly about that.
“Its not that teachers being underpaid is “liberal”, it is the “evil corporate fat cat” angle that is one of the standard liberal templates though. Besides how can you discuss “What society values” without considering celebrity entertainers? Who do YOU think society values more: an ad executive or a rich and famous celebrity? As far a the original cartoon its fine and I am sure it works as intended.”
larry – just who do you think controls the rich and famous celebrities? who makes the most money when their endeavours suceed? who controls the stores they shop in, the venues their movies and concerts are shown in, the companies who make and sell their mechandise, the banks they put their money in, the endless commercials that are their interviews, music videos, outfits, and sometimes even the very work they contribute to the world…
i must say, you are either very naieve or very stupid to think that a celebrity is anything more than an evil corporate fat cat (or stooge) who gets to sign autographs. and the people who choose not to participate in this horrible farce are vilified as pinkocommiehippies. wake up, larry. every time you put a major radio station on, turn on the television, pick up a magazine, read the newspaper – you are being sold to. by everyone. and people who don’t realize that may as well wander around munching grass and saying “baaaaaa”.
I said they were at the bottom of the rankings and thus being paid (roughly) appropriately.
They are paid appropriately if we like the idea of our children being taught by people “at the bottom of the rankings” and prefer to keep it that way. They are not being paid appropriately if we wish to attract qualified, dedicated people who will stay in their jobs and be excellent educators.
Private schools, in my experience, have worse teachers than public schools do. The only reason private schools do better overall is that they can cherry-pick in a way public schools generally can’t.
The cost of education (at least a bachelor’s) and the time that teachers must dedicate to continuing education is not reflected in a teacher’s pay. Another issue lies in the lack of respect for the position. Reading through these postings, many containing commments belittling the intellect of teachers, I can see how easy it is for someone who may love children and would be a perfect teacher would choose not to. Not only is the pay terrible, you are not given the same respect as a degree holding citizen as others in business, psychology or any other field would be. As a college student studying special education and someone who graduated at the top of my class and continues to take challenging course work I am often discouraged by the lack of respect I recieve as someone who is passionate for serving students with special needs, the one challenge that I find to be the most difficult but rewarding.
This is very true because the media helps make this a fact. Women’s bodies are seen as something that they have just to entertain men. When did it become okay for little girls to go on diets in elementary and middle school? Well that is how it is now, they are going on diets at a young age because the media feed everyone’s minds with the idea that a girl has to have a skinny little body frame or she is not pretty. First of all everyone does not have the same body structure and being skinny is not always healthy and it is not what makes a woman beautiful. This is a big issue because there is women out there who have not open their eyes to see what is happening to the value of women.
Another problem is the fact that women are not realizing that they are being objectified. When all women stop feeding into the idea that they have to go beyond humanly possible just to fit into the ideal size and perfection of the media then they will become stronger. The funny thing is that the women that we see on the television are not as perfect as they seem. They go through hours and hours of make-up and preparation in order to look like what they think is perfect. Natural to me is perfect. There are women that we see on magazines that are not eve real they are made up of different body parts of different women like someone’s eyes, another’s nose, mouth and all of the above. This basically shows us that there is no such thing as a perfect magazine girl. There is only ½ percent in the world that actually looks like that. In the entire world! Now that basically shows that everyone is dieting and wearing tons of make up to look like a fantasy that is not even real or natural.
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can you please post the cartoon again I cant see it!
Thanks for letting me know — it’s been fixed!