Yeah, no arguments there. Everyone wants to have a superkid these days, but it seems like a lot of people forget that dedicated, focused time is what it takes to develop skills and talent. I don't envy teachers in the U.S.if you're a genius instructor with unlimited time, no problem.
Do you envy teachers somewhere else though? Is there a dream state or country that celebrates and rewards good teachers?
To answer the first question: no, not personally. To answer the second: that really depends on the person and what their dream in regard to teaching entails. What exactly do you mean by rewards? Financial rewards? A good teaching experience? Anyway, take a look at this infographic: I was a for-profit English as a Foreign Language Teacher, which meant that I had bottom lines to think about. I also had to figure out how to market the courses I created and how to keep asses in seats, plus creating an experience that was effective and enjoyable enough that students and corporate students/companies would talk about me to their friends. It's a lot different that teaching public or private school. That said, for-profit teachers have to deal with a lot of the same stuff that regular teachers do: class chemistry, how their student's days have affected their mood, administrators that don't know what they're talking about, unreasonable requests from parents, people expecting the best education humanly possible for the minimum amount of compensation . . . As I was a for-profit teacher, my line for that last part was, "OK, you only want to pay me half my rate? I'll teach you at half my ability." Anyway, I hear good things about Scandanavian countries as far as the balance of compensation and good experience with students. I guess I wouldn't mind teaching at the university level again, but if I did do it again, I'd definitely shop around a bit first.
I wonder if the US salaries are normalized for time off. In many other countries, school is a year round affair. In the US, teachers' salaries are based off a 9 month schedule (with ample time off during the year, as well). This makes their effective pay quite a bit higher than their nominal pay. Also, I would have to imagine that in other developed countries, teacher pay doesn't vary so wildly in different geographical regions. Generally, teachers in the Midwest and Northeast actually get paid decently (up to $80,000 for a teacher with a master's degree and a lot of experience), whereas in the South, they seem to think that teacher is the lowest rung of the professional world (despite all the evidence to the contrary).
Hmm, yeah I don't know how the information was compiled. I would take that infographic with a grain of salt to be sure. It was created using data from 2009 and who knows how many hands it passed through before becoming an image. Still, I thought it was a nice, general illustration. As far as variance in pay, I have no idea. What you say makes a certain amount of sense as conjecture, if only because most developed nations have a lower population and smaller geographic area than the U.S. I don't know for sure who is a teacher on hubski, but I know there are a few. Maybe we can ask them? I know that in the Northeast, teachers can definitely make a good wage, depending on district and whether or not they belong to the teacher's union. I know a woman who graduated a year ahead of me who was able to buy a lake house on Winnipesauke only a few years after she started working as a teacher because she got into the Boston teacher's union right away. Maybe it's just because I'm from snooty, old New England, but I'm not surprised to hear someone say that about the South. My only experience with the school systems in the South is from things my relatives in Florida have complained about. Is Florida considered a part of the South?
I just finished reading a book on economics for non-economists and basically it came down to: Prices drive everything No one does anything without incentives Price controls fuck shit up You get what you pay for and Human emotions make us forget a whole lot of these basic principles and because of that, we often fuck ourselves over. Florida is in the news for weird, dumb crimes often because: you get what you pay for.
They're missing one key component (perhaps the biggest component), which is that often people are unaware of all the information they need to clearly see which incentives are in their favor and which aren't (informational asymmetry, in the parlance). This can be willful, but normally is not. It has been the strategy of the neocon movement to obscure poor people's incentives as much as possible specifically by playing to their (mostly irrational) emotional state. In this article, the author points out how strongly his geographic location is united against the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that it has 26% poverty (an astronomical number, even third world-esque), pretty much all of whom are already, or would certainly now qualify for, government assistance. The branding and obscuring (done intentionally by monied interests) that these uneducated people are subjected to makes it pretty much impossible to determine a logical course of action.
I hear you. I don't think it's a coincidence that the country the created modern advertising also has such wily politicians. Alan Moore compares advertising people as essentially practitioners of magic that use their abilities to manipulate reality for financial gain and the detriment of all. Alan Moore is nuts, but once you get beyond his crazy exterior, he begins to make a lot of sense. I haven't checked that link out yet, but I will. I know a lot of people who are against the electoral college, but the intention of the electoral college as I understand it, was so that informed decisions could be ensured in regard to the vote. Of course, that's probably not exactly how it goes down for elections today, but "the way to hell is paved with good intentions" right? Edit: it's funny how "the War on Terror" is supposed to make Americans feel more secure and is supposed to be against extremists, but instead it turns out it's a war being waged by extremists and making people scared of their own shadows.