Posted on 04/23/2014 1:13:34 PM PDT by servo1969
I've commented before about the way in which America's teachers paint themselves as the hardest working, most pathetically abused people in America. In 2011, I noted that today's teachers work fewer hours and are paid more than my dad's generation of teachers, but the latter didn't whine all the time. Last year, I posited a reason for the unusual deference teachers get, and it's not because they're the overworked saints of their own heated imaginations:
At National Review, Jason Richwine points out that this martyrdom shtick benefits them in intangible ways, and is the flip side of the disdain with which doctors are increasingly treated in our society. This got me thinking about the fact that, in every society that socialized its medicine, doctor’s status instantly degraded. This is true whether you’re looking at the Soviet Union, Cuba, England, Canada, France, or anywhere else. This is true even though doctors have the longest education and apprenticeship of any job in America and, once they’re working, they truly hold our lives in their hands. Likewise, in every socialized society, teachers’ status improves. This is true despite the fact that their training places a moderate demand on their time and they don’t hold our lives in their hands.
Thinking about it, of course, this socialist inversion makes perfect sense. Teachers produce the next generation of socialists; doctors cost money by saving the lives of old socialists who no longer contribute to the commune. The relative values assigned these jobs in a socialist society has nothing to do with their contributions to the individual and everything to do with their contributions to the state.
Richwine and I aren't the only ones paying attention to this teacher worship phenomenon. Writing at The Federalist, Daniel Payne, a homeschooling parent, also asks “Why Do Teachers Complain So Much?” His theory is that teachers lack backbone. Products themselves of America's public school system, they have no ability to face adversity.
Reading his post, it also occurred to me that today's teachers, unlike teachers of yore and homeschooling parents today, have an infinitely harder time teaching, not because students are inherently worse behaved than they were 50 years ago, but because their pedagogical tools are so poor. Whole language is sneaking its way back into the classroom, despite a thirty year run of failures that saw the pendulum swing, way too briefly, back to phonics teaching. Since we have a phonetic alphabet, the latter is the only teaching methodology that makes sense. And those countries, such as China, that do not have phonetic alphabets, spend way more than 45 minutes per day, 5 days a week, making sure their students master “whole word” recognition.
Math too is becoming increasingly impossible because Common Core has also abandoned common sense. In addition, where teachers once taught English classes that focused on language and composition and history classes that spoke admiringly of our own country, their English classes are now Left value propaganda and their history classes are deeply depressing diatribes about how evil we are. Kids don't want to learn this stuff, and no wonder.
My conclusion would be that today's teachers whine partly because they're not as tough as past generations were, and partly because they teach in a socialized system that simultaneously elevates their status even as it makes teaching an impossible, demoralizing, and depressing job. The cognitive dissonance this forces on the teachers is an uncomfortable mental realm to inhabit.
Our system would be a lot better if there were more male teachers.
If coal mining followed the downtrend in education over the last hundred years, we’d have to be burying firewood in the back yard and waiting if we wanted coal.
I have thought for some time that teachers are on a campaign to be paid as well as doctors because they teach the next generation.
Our system would work better if there were more male teachers.
It would also work better if more of the students in the schools were raised by male-female families instead of by single mothers.
IF teachers were actually as useful as doctors then maybe the market would pay them that way. Teachers ‘work’ 9 months out of the year. Teachers get all sorts of days off so their real work schedule is like 190 days. Teachers get ridiculous pay and benefits for their ‘work’. Teachers have a failing system that seems incapable of correcting itself.
Doctors work ALL year long, if in private practice they do not get paid vacation days. Many docs work long, odd hours doing thankless and hard work. (Think pediatrician exposed to all of the kids who come in sick). If a doc has a ‘negative’ outcome they get sued and potentially lose their license to practice.
Teachers used to be well respected members of the local community. Now they are viewed as union stooges
I have far more respect for coal miners than teachers.
totally agree. I can’t think of a single good female teacher or professor or instructor I have ever had. None.
I never recall any of them whining about it and most of them had a wide variety of outside experience to add to their school resume.
One of them even got together with other members of his family and started a vitamin company which became highly successful, and from which I still buy today. All of this in one of the most obscure school districts in the nation!
Are you serious? I had lots of awesome woman teachers. What age are you?
Doesn’t matter the age. Throughout the ages I don’t think there have been very good women teachers.
so you’d have preferred a dude for your kindergarten teacher?
No, they portray themselves as one step removed from coal miners, they THINK of themselves as one step removed from God.
Teachers stink.
Yep. But teachers don’t like it when you point out that they get full time yearly wages and only work about 9 months of the year. Plus they get BOATLOADS of days off with holidays, teacher organization days, etc. and they frequently do more lib indoctrination than actually imparting knowledge
Had a woman and a man. I remember them both very well. The woman was a crybaby neurotic nutcase and screamed a lot. The man was very attentive and had a calm class. (I remember this because I dated his daughter many years later. Knew them most of my life.)
“they portray themselves as one step removed from coal miners, they THINK of themselves as one step removed from God.”
Exactly. They have those stupid bumper stickers, “If you can read this, thank a teacher.” Actually, I can thank my sister who taught me. The teachers were terrible at it.
Teachers used to be some of the most educated folks around....yeah I know back in the dark ages. These days they seem to be nothing more than community organizers.... very few are even trained in any of the hard sciences (and that includes those that should have been)
Some of the teachers I see on FB are light-weight airheaded liberal ranters. I am shocked that they state their teaching position and school district on their home page for all to see.
They want to be ‘friends’ with their students....that and they have less common sense than a pile of rocks
One of my neighbors in soviet Red Hampshire has that bumper sticker; makes me want to puke...my mother taught me how to read; she would buy me lots of books.
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