We get what we pay for

[Diamond Dog]

No one seems to make the connection between this idiot substitute teacher and the fact that teachers aren't paid enough to attract our society's best and brightest.

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=67203&eddate=11/21/2006

[Unions Were Good]

Academia's best and brightest teach at colleges and universities. Not at elementary or high schools. Always been the case. The teachers here are paid fairly for essentially a nine month a year six hour a day job. Have we heard of any teacher shortages? If they're paid so low, why won't the unions publish their pay scale? They won't. They're paid more then well enough.

Supply is meeting demand.

[richael says]

I'm a little confused what your argument then is, Unions Were Good, for why "academia's best and brightest teach at colleges and universities" and not elementary or secondary schools. You're saying they're paid well what they're worth, especially considering their hours. Why did you say, then, that they are not teaching in our elementary schools??

Beyond that, I think you're forgetting that those nine months per year and six hours per day do not consider (for the summer) review and assesment of current curriculum and changing and improving it, curriculum development for new courses and programs, and (day to day) preparing lectures, grading student work, meeting with parents and students after school hours, etc. This is more than a full-time job, demanding much more intellectual work in a day than most professions demand in a year. Teachers, whether paid $60K, $80K, or even $100K are underpaid. Period.

Soceity no longer monetarily rewards the people appropriately to their social value. Teachers, police, social workers, public attorneys, etc. are all paid very little while their value to our society far exceeds that of football and baseball players and corporate officers. What are we telling our kids? What will they think when they see us paying millions to players like Barry Bonds, who suck down steroids, while we pay our first grade teachers less than $100K? Something is fundamentally wrong here.