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We need good educators. But the incentives for good educators in this racket, is not good.
Personally, I never had YOUTUBE when I was growing up. That said, I have learned so much more from YOUTUBE in the past 5 years or so, and at the pace I wanted to learn. I learned C++ programming, wireless power transmission, and many other things which have let me sell over a million dollars of products into the marketplace- and all from YOUTUBE. I learned those things at the time I learned them because I WANTED to understand them, not because someone TAUGHT me.
If I had a kid today, I would NOT send them to public school, but would find ways to help THEM learn what they are interested in.
Is that teacher implying that she (or is that a long-haired he) will teach better if paid better?
That teacher must have tenure. If me dino ran a board of education of a college, methinks I'd want to fire teacher who would wave a sign like that.
The way I think (analytical/ cynical) is-
if students deserve better, then those now teaching are not doing a proper job.
Rather than attempt to pay/bribe the same ones to work better,
sack them and bring in people who know what the job is and want to do it.
The biggest problem with today's schools is a lack of student discipline - which is tied directly back to parental involvement, which studies repeatedly demonstrate is the single biggest determining factor in educational success. (It is the largest factor in explaining why Utah has the highest return on education dollars spent.)
Between the free meals and the reprimands to teachers who attempt to rein in bad behavior, schools have become publicly funded daycares. My mother-in-law taught Kindergarten until health issues forced her retirement. All it takes is one bad apple to disrupt things for all other students and she had plenty of stories about the bad apples. The problem is that it was nearly impossible to get the rowdy ones kicked out of the school. And because the teachers aren't allowed to discipline the students (which is what the students need), the problematic ones just bounce around from class to class and school to school.
This can all be solved by allowing schools to choose who they are going to allow as students. My son's charter high school does it and there is a one-strike policy: if the student gets a D in class, they're gone and can never come back. Same thing for disciplinary issues: you disrupt class seriously and you are gone.
The sooner we stop treating education like a mandatory public option, the sooner parents will be forced to either take an interest in both their own and their childrens' lives. Only then will education in this nation improve.
Teachers are continuing to ask for more pay for only working less than full time. It may be an admiral job to teach our children, but if they want a full time salary, they need to work full time. Currently they get school vacations, summers off, MEA during the school year, and want full time salary. We need to end the summer vacation time off so our children can catch up.
If there is an option to provide free college education, then we only extend the problem from High School levels where we need to pay again to teach the same thing to them again and again. Only when the student has some skin in the game and need to pay for it themselves will they value the education that the are getting.
If teachers don't like what they are being paid, they are free to work somewhere else. No one is pointing a gun at them and forcing them to work as teachers. The province where I live is pushing the minimum wage up to $15 pr hour. In essence, they are pointing a gun at business owners thus forcing them to pay more while no one is forcing the workers to work for more or less. A job at lower wages is better than no job at all.
Teachers on average will work 171.5 days per year. Their compensation plus their pensions - normally 30% of the salary cost... it is very generous for less than 6 months of work each year.
With that said I accept the wages offered knowing full well what I will be bringing home. If for some reason I don't find the wage acceptable I am free to move to another industry.
Honestly, the greatest benefit that could and I believe should be offered would be for the system to make a teachers student loan payments while the teacher is teaching. This would also attract better people (at least as long as those loans are over their heads) to the profession as many cannot afford to be teachers and pay their loans.
Damn it, doesn't anyone tell the truth anymore?
Underpaid teachers are as often talked about as Trump's Porno affair.
Since college I have “learned” a lot, because I needed the knowledge and sought it out when I needed it. I wish I would have had the freedom to learn when I was a kid in public school.
Perhaps People learn on their own when they open the brain door because they want to know, and then look around for a way to understand things so they can fit it into their brains in some coherent way that can be retrieved when needed.
So we shouldn’t think “teachers”, but rather “learning facilitators” who help others to understand what they want to understand when they want to know.
I have learned more from YouTube and Netflix than I ever did in public school
No wonder the leftists want to control education The hidden agendas become obvious only later, and maybe never
The rest are liberals.
So the argument on teacher pay leads to one of two conclusions. Either the current teachers are purposely under performing until they are paid more OR the current teachers will be replaced with better teachers (from somewhere.) The GEIC proponents will never acknowledge either conclusion.
If, through the political processes of elections, etc., you decide that teachers deserve the "average" wage (however defined), then you cannot complain when you get only "average" teachers who provide your children with an "average" outcome.
In point of fact, many people choose where to live based on the achievements of the school district in which they buy (or rent) their home. Those districts tend to excel and continue to excel.
In areas, neighborhoods, cities, states where people do not care, they get the result of that choice, also.
One aside: I have been a judge at our regional science fairs for seven consecutive years. My experience only underscores what I learned some years before elsewhere: it does not matter how much money per student is invested, but whether the parents have a strong interaction (good PTA or whatever) with the school. If the parents care, the kids do well. I see this year after year as the Jewish and Muslim kids from Austin's private schools out-perform the kids from small towns in the surrounding counties. That rural anti-intellectual tradition is common here in the Gulch where it is an easy win to put down liberal snowflake social justice warriors. We place laurels on the heads of engineers because they are "practical" i.e., not intellectual.
Oklahoma has a "back door" method to allow wanted charter schools. If the local board refuses to grant a charter, the parents can petition the state education agency for approval. One county recently succeeded in getting a charter school permit from the state, after the local board and teachers' union opposed it.
It isn't that rural folk are anti-intellectual so much as the fact that they lack influence with government centers where the money decisions are made. Oklahoma should be applauded for giving them the chance to have an even stake in the game.
What's an example of this?
tax collector," Other examples might include approving business mergers, or enforcing religious doctrine.
Now, the free market theory is that the buyer is informed. I want to avoid much of that false argument because I believe that there is no such thing as "insider trading." All buyers think that they have special knowledge. So, too, with public schools. The people who set the wages do not actually teach and they do not actually shop for educated partners (employees, etc.). When you buy a car or a refrigerator, you might not actually know much, but we accept that you know what you want.
With education, that is not the case. "We" don't know what "we" want because "we" are an anonymous personification called "the public."
You can demand that kids today should know algebra and American history. But how do you shop for that? It is not like going to a couple of appliance stores looking at fridges or visiting car lots and kicking tires. My daughter broke up with a guy because they both wanted cars at the same time; and she read Consumer Reports while he asked his friends what they were buying. They broke up over their different information models, but, again, we do not have that with education. People here complain about "public education" but if you put the words "refrigerator" or "automobile" in there, you see the weaknesses.
Wherever you live, you can choose the Chevy Volt or Dodge Ram, a Mercedes or a Hyundai or whatever. But we do not have that with education. There is no differentiated market competition available across geographies. Whatever competing theories of education may exist are not branded and sold that way. (Montessori is an exception, though it is abused.)
Asking whether teachers are paid too much or not enough would make no sense if it were like asking if refrigerators cost too much or not enough.
If it was up to me, I would get rid of public education in its entirety, along with the taxes that fund it. Let the parents choose how to let their children learn what they need to survive. I bet they do a better job.
You certainly must have had a range of teachers yourself, most fair to middling, some great, a few awful. How is that different from bus drivers or brain surgeons?
We all agree here that tax-funded mandatory public education is the wrong model. An open market would be better.
The fact that teacher salaries are set by publlic policy forces them to address their issues in public forums. In a rational market, individuals are paid differently even when the same person does the same work. Teachers do not have that opportunity. See my earlier reply below https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post....
As for welfare, while I can see the Rawlesian argument, it remains that there are other agencies in society. During Hurricane Sandy, the Baptist Men made one million sandwiches (truly), which they delivered to the Salvation Army for distribution to people in Red Cross shelters. Those are all supported with voluntary contribuitions. I don't know about where you live, but here one of the Salvation Army stores is dedicated to reselling donated computers and peripherals.
I had never heard of Rawls until now, so I'm not educated on this. I read a blurb about him, and it seems like I disagree with him because his theories relate to just distribution of wealth. Distribution implies wealth is like a fixed deck of cards to be doled out, but wealth is created through people's work. If you make something, it seems to me you have a right to keep it.
My support of nutrition / welfare programs is based on the idea that when people live together inevitably they have to deal with the effects of people problems, i.e. mental illness, lack of jobs skills, abusive parents, untreated diseases. I'm intrigued by ideas of having unbiased policing and criminal justice funded without taxes, but the only model I've seen is we all pay taxes to fund a criminal justice system. Even if someone says she doesn't really need it because she lives in a remote place and provides her own protection, she cannot opt out of taxes because there is no practical way to opt out of the benefits of having criminals behind bars. If we accept all that, I see no reason not to accept "positive" actions aimed at similar goals, such as providing help that reduces the risk of criminal behavior and increases the chance of someone being a productive member of society.
I see the dangers of this turning into alms, calls for selflessness, and so on. Gov't powers to punish people, however, have their own set of dangers. I see nothing worse about constructive "helpful" approaches.
I too have seen how religious organization do a great job of helping the needy. They generally do not seem to be like those nuns in AS who were basically the same as Jim Taggart. At least as far as I can tell, they're cheerful people who just like living life, helping themselves, and sometimes helping others.
That gets back to the problem of taxation, the only model we all know. Even Ayn Rand said that while government is the servant of the people, it is not the unpaid servant.
*Uncle Sam the Monopoiy Man" by William C. Wooldridge chronicles working historical alternatives to public services, including private police and courts.
Suppose, though, we lived in an agricultural society and wealth was tied to arable land. Maybe stealing is just in that case, compared to feudal lords passing the wealth down within the family and everyone else subsisting working for them. I think this is why the world's religions often promote socialism. Many people ask, how can people be foolish enough to support socialism? The favorite answer is "pat yourself on the back because they're idiots and we're so bleeding smart." But I think the right answer goes back to societal and religious traditions that developed before industry and information technology.
Now that we have ability to create unlimited plenty, the reasons for the ancient religious support of socialism are no longer valid.
But you have me thinking about this. Even though individuals can now create unlimited wealth, it's hard to do it if you start in a troubled background, say in a family struggling to pay for basic medicines. But the idea of taxing people's money to provide those things can easily metastasize into gov't buying most healthcare expenditures. The same cam happen with housing or any basic need.
It takes me back to the non-utilitarian self-interested argument that we tax for policing protection from troubled people why can't we tax to help troubled people? You have me thinking, though, suppose we knew that a particular type of trouble would never hurt others. It would just result in a child being born into a unpleasant situation and eventually dying without harming anyone else. Suppose further we had a reliable way to help that person. Should an individual do it? Should the gov't use force to steal other's money to do it?
I'm realizing my non-utilitarian self-interested case is a cop out that avoid the Rawls' question.
Voluntary charity rests on the assumption of personal self-ownership. There is no way to contradict that and still be moral, rational, and real.
(More later...)
With public schools, the salaries are set by law by political process, not by the marketplace. In particular, every teacher is paid the same. Tha can be adjusted for seniority, perhaps. And it varies by states. And it can vary within a state by independent school district, if they have those. But it is still a political decision, the result of an elected board or an elected legislature; and it is all paid for by bonds voted for in open elections.
On the other hand, as a technical writer here in Austin, Texas, since 2012, I have worked for $50 per hour on a 1099 for a big company and $28 on a W-2 contracted to the State. (The state dodged the higher $38 per hour by classifiying me as a "document specialist" rather than a "technical writer." But I chose to work for $28 rather than not work at all.) This time around, I was offered $38 and $45 and a couple in between. I chose the lower rate, but it comes with an easier commute and a good learning experience. Money is like Number 5 on my Maslow Hierarchy. I have other needs: I am really big on self-actualization. Whatever my values are, though, I can shop for them, job by job. Since 2012, I have had ten different contracts. Glassdoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn not only bring me job offers, I can see the pay rates posted by others.
Teachers get none of that. It is a different world for them. And it would be for me, too, if my work were defined by law, and my wages were set by the government and approved by the voters.