No human being can MAKE any other human being believe in anything they do not want to.
The only way a parent can ENSURE that home work gets done is to do it for them.
Teach pay is what the market will bear for a job that only works 66% of the year.
And about the B ... ok you have a point there.
The UGLY truth is that providing and education is one thing... it deals with opportunity. GETTING an education is something else and requires the student be motivated. There are many things a parent can do to encourage student motivation and facilitate the opportunity to learn. But parents can't MAKE a child learn. And the system needs to be prepared to allow such students to FAIL.
You hit the nail on the head. Universities should be so difficult that many more students fail, and then this should trickle down to high schools and middle schools. The “self-esteem” movement is killing any educational baseline, let alone educational excellence. And there is little parents can do to swim upstream against this torrent. The result, ironically, is that the typical student suffers - because sea level is so level - and intelligent students learn to reign themselves in. Quite sad.
True - no human can make someone believe something they don’t want to. But if the parents don’t work to instill the value of an education, do you really think the teachers stand a chance?
As for the pay, please show me a teacher who only works 66% of the year. Most I know work from mid-August to mid-June (10 months, not 8 as you claim), and during that time they’re putting in at least 9 hours a day. You may think its what the market will bear, but at that price, the teachers you get are what the market will supply. If you want highly qualified teachers, you have to pay.
For example, Ohio requires all teachers to get their master’s degrees to keep their licenses. Subsequently, masters level pay fell off a cliff in most school districts. The increase in pay from bachelors to masters doesn’t even cover servicing of the student loan to get the masters in most districts.
So if I get a Masters in Physics, I could be very well qualified for teaching science courses in the high school. But those jobs will pay $30k starting vs. 65-70k starting in the private sector. Where do you think most people go?
Sure, you work 2 months more per year, but that’s the only real thing you’ll give up. The teachers’ pension plans even are a lousy deal - they make social security look good.
Please stop repeating union talking points:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3438676.html
Economist Richard Vedder has observed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation Survey shows that teachers earn “more per hour than architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, statisticians, biological and life scientists, atmospheric and space scientists, registered nurses, physical therapists, university-level foreign-language teachers, [and] librarians.” In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the average pay per hour for all workers in the “professional specialty” category in 2001 was $27.49, while public secondary school teachers earned $30.48 and elementary teachers $30.52 — or about 10 percent more than the typical professional.