Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - World Affairs / Debate - Teachers: Over- or Under-paid?
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Ran-chan
Posts: 6938/12781 |
"And honestly, there is a shortage of teachers in Sweden. Due it not being a attractive job..."
It can be because they |
Ailure
Posts: 7409/11162 |
In Sweden, they are definaitly underpaid. At least some of the good working ones, I can understand a few type of teachers having a lower salery than other but... 
And honestly, there is a shortage of teachers in Sweden. Due it not being a attractive job... |
Kefka
Posts: 2580/3392 |
Originally posted by Samur4iX
I went to a catholic school (btw im not catholic) for 8 years, and you always knew they were underpaid (its kinda implied). Nevertheless, i believe they were way better teachers then the overpaid ones here in CA (dude, its obious they are overpaid when they have porshes, vipers, etc) Ironnically, under the system here, some of my favorite teachers are paid the least (Japanese, Orchestra, and English)
Um, not all of CA has wealth. If you happen to be going to a private institution (which I assume you are, because they offer Jap), yes, the teachers are paid a little more there. But in the public schools, the funding is diminishing, and therefore the salaries are becoming less on average.
Btw, how the hell do you know exactly how much your teachers make?  |
Samur4iX
Posts: 14/28 |
I went to a catholic school (btw im not catholic) for 8 years, and you always knew they were underpaid (its kinda implied). Nevertheless, i believe they were way better teachers then the overpaid ones here in CA (dude, its obious they are overpaid when they have porshes, vipers, etc) Ironnically, under the system here, some of my favorite teachers are paid the least (Japanese, Orchestra, and English) |
Halo2-tankwhore
Posts: 2/30 |
Sorry this post is kind of off-topic, but this is how I feel. As much as every person I know hates their teachers, it is a blatant outrage that the men and women that educate the future leaders of our world are paid as though they're convenient store clerks. |
Generation Terrorist
Posts: 14/18 |
Well, they do it cause they love kids and want to make the kids contribute to society one day. Or at least the good ones do. They are not "cool with it" in many places. In fact, last year, in my own school district, there was a 2 day period where teachers went on strike against the district office for not giving anyone a raise in TEN YEARS. And they still havent had the raise.
Once again, they're weighing their career enjoyment against their monetary needs. We can complain about actors or football players making more money, but that's because they're not being paid in tax money. Tax money is finite, and it has to go to books, administration staff, custodians, custodial equipment, utilities, etc... Public schools are always scrounging for money (as I know, coming from a school in Northern Georgia), and generally don't have anything extra to give to teachers. I think somewhere along the line we're going to have to agree that there's nothing we can do given our present means, and that teachers aren't exactly getting minimum wage here. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 2308/5458 |
Nope. No relation to NAZIs or Hitler. The fascist German state exist prior to the announcement of the Enabling act. |
Zarathud
Posts: 49/55 |
"People are not commodities."
This has actually been a straw man from the beginning and I can't believe I didn't explicitly point it out: it's not the children themselves that are commoditized, it's the education. Education and health care are services. Human time, effort and talent is indeed a commodity that people buy and sell every day. The entire economy is based on it. All I'm talking about is recognizing this fact and treating these goods and services (which are finite like everything else) as they actually are and then building as optimal a system of supply as we can manage on that assumption.
"You are forcing people, against their will, to submit basic rights, like education and healthcare, to become private property."
If you think about it for a moment rather than frothing, it might occur to you that 1) health care and education are not "rights", though we can argue over wether they should be, 2) nobody here is proposing depriving people of these things, only trying to provide them in what we think would be better ways, and 3) both theory and practice have shown that systems based on private property nearly always work better than ones based on a commons.
"This is intrinsically evil."
No such thing.
"This is exactly what fascist Italy and Germany wanted."
Okay, now do I get to invoke Godwin? |
alte Hexe
Posts: 2299/5458 |
You people have taken what Adam Smith proposed and destroyed it!
People are not commodities. You are forcing people, against their will, to submit basic rights, like education and healthcare, to become private property. This is intrinsically evil. This is exactly what fascist Italy and Germany wanted. |
Zarathud
Posts: 47/55 |
Don't be so damn lazy Ziff. Slavery was bad because it was forcing people to do things against their will. We commodify ourselves every time we get a job or go on contract for our skills. Commodification!=slavery. "Duh," as they say. You should know better.
Nothing escapes economics. Not school, health care, the military, whatever. If you pretend that the standard rules that apply to every good and service somehow magically don't apply to this one, you're going end up with inefficiency. Period. Recognizing this fact doesn't make people any less human. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 2291/5458 |
No, it is quite easily defendable.
The last time we really turned people into traded commodities it was called slavery. |
hhallahh
Posts: 477/607 |
An "efficient" education system in no way dictates that only rich students would receive good education, nor would it necessarily dictate that any fewer students should get higher education. I'm not really sure what it would dictate, since the cost/benefit problem of educating each student is quite complex. Normally we'd let the free market solve such problems, but this doesn't work with education, since education is a public good and the free market will always underallocate public goods. Hence there is an argument for subsidized education, even in a system that commodifies children. But the structure of this educational system will have efficiency as its goal, is all.
If the most efficient system were the one we have now, then we would say it should be kept because of its efficiency - hence, one might say that children are being commodified at the moment. Of course, this fact wouldn't entail a need for some socialistic reform. Associating commodification with things like a necessary loss of individual attention or meritocracy is indefensible. |
Kefka
Posts: 2394/3392 |
Originally posted by hhallahh
It's to the detriment of society's well-being if we don't treat children like commodities.
But if we treat them as just commodities, then the American school system would be nothing more than an assembly line that produces high school graduates. Only about 2/10 students entering high school end up with a college degree. Do you not find a problem in that? We worry too much about just shipping everyone through and giving them a high school deploma, and not enough time worrying about how everyone can be helped after they graduate. There are a few public schools, like the Met, that accept low level income students that have had hope lost for them and turn them into successful high school students (100% of the school's graduates accepted into college, 70% end up with college degree). "The Big Picture" schools are quite good at this. Now, if they can do it with somewhat limited resources, why can't others? The curriculum there is VERY individualized and it helps everyone become better thinkers, and not better memorizers. So, because I can see that kids can be taught to be outstanding thinkers and individuals, and this happens through an individual education, I think it is wrong to view us all as commodities.
"Normative argument based on the need for equity and desert are easily negated by pointing out that it's also morally unpalatable to make some pay for the education of others."
If you didn't want to pay for the education of others, you would have to completely privatize education, no? Otherwise, there is bound to be tax money going into school funds.
--------------------------
If the school system itself was a bit more individualized and not based on everyone learning the same things at the same time in a given classroom (because there are always bound to be kids who won't catch on as quickly or catch on much faster, so it will hurt both groups), then the system would be way better, and we would be seeing America become smarter, and not a bunch of TV-watching slugs. If there was a standard like this in education, lower level income kids would have a hell of a lot better chance of being successful as adults. Also, if there was an affirmative action-like system based on income levels as opposed to race... but that's a different topic.
I strayed off topic. And I probably missed half of what was said. Sorry. |
hhallahh
Posts: 476/607 |
It's to the detriment of society's well-being if we don't treat children like commodities. It may revolt one's sensibilities, but... that is definately an insufficient justification for any kind of government intervention. If it's "dehumanizing", then your problem is with the capitalist system, and... well, that's your loss. Normative argument based on the need for equity and desert are easily negated by pointing out that it's also morally unpalatable to make some pay for the education of others.
The problem isn't the commodification of children... the solution is the commodification of children. As long as it's done well. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 2279/5458 |
Zarathud, when you have children, I pray that your views change.
To turn your children into nothing more than a commodity is dehumanizing at best.
The American education system is a wreck of a thing. I have had many family members who went South. They told my family not to bother. The greener pastures were hardly pastures at all. In Canada we have standardized education by province, some better than the others (Ontario standing as a shining example, despite some glaring flaws in implimentation due to Conservative stupidity). If we're thinking of the same reputation system, similar to what guides the tuition of US universities, that is disgusting. A fair and even education is deserved by all, this voucher program directly eliminates that. I don't care what you say, this program leaves holes that will inevitably hurt the poor and underpriviliged.
As for your views on healthcare, handing out vouchers only at "catastrophic" events will probably not cover things like pneumonia or ailments that can have standing effects, especially on children. It will cause more harm than good when people have to pay for their own eye treatments and chiropracter (and other physio-therapies) when they work low-wage jobs that cause physical effects like this.
As for "excessive government meddling" the failure of our systems is due to attempts by the Conservative wings of Canadian politics to ruin education and shift the social aspects of it to the right wing. |
Zarathud
Posts: 39/55 |
"So are we talking about a market system with no government involvement, or are we talking about spreading the welfare and paternalism around more widely?"
I picture socialized education as being analogous to socialized health care. What I have in mind would be more like the government giving poor people vouchers for mandatory catastrophic health insurance, but otherwise totally staying out of the health care/schooling market. I'd only advocate government paternalism to enforce a baseline minimum education in things like math and writing in schools, perhaps via standardized testing (I'm also all in favour of a reputation system of some kind).
"Also, you speak of "local control" but to me that's a significant problem in the US as it is. Schools' standards vary wildly at least partly BECAUSE there's such local control - schools in affluent areas are better funded, because they generate a lot of funds through local property taxes that go directly to the school's budgets."
What differences are we talking about here, in quality of teaching or in material funding? If the former, then that has very little to do with location. If you're talking about the latter then I would think that the kind of system I'm talking about would actually be an improvement over the current one. As it is now, students get assigned a school based on their location and that's that. Giving students and their parents greater freedom to shop around and choose from a greater geographical area of schools would help alleviate this problem, since the money the schools got would depend more on how many people chose their school and less on location.
"Who thought it was a good idea to let the crankiest and most ideoligical citizens, with the biggest axes to grind, practically run schooling systems with little oversight? To let them install bigass wireless networks and huge stadiums and fancy shiny buildings in schools that have to share textbooks? To let them shriek and piss and moan about evolution and sex-education rather than, you know, administer and manage the schools in their area?"
To me this would be another benefit of school choice: right now schools are politicized and generally guided by the crankiest and most meddlesome with too much time on their hands (as you rightly point out), and whatever they collectively decide on is what everybody is forced to deal with. Parents can have a "voice" in the process, but in the end have to submit to the will of the committee. In a market, people have "exit" and can vote with their feet if they don't like the way a particular school is run.
"To me the two biggest things the US could do to fix its system is regulate and fund the system at a state instead of local level, to reduce the influence of loopy agenda-driven cranks, and reduce the vast inequities that come from letting schools directly reap their local property taxes."
Aren't you just shifting the problem one level up in this scenario? Either way the schools are going to be regulated by someone, and I don't see any convincing reason to believe that a more distant and more centralized bureaucracy is going to be any more efficient than local one. You may not necissarily get the exact same problems, but you'll likely get a host of new ones. State-level regulation is subject to pretty much the same public choice problems as local regulation, it just has less situational knowledge. You'll still get lobby groups and whatnot affecting the process, and if anything, the further regulation gets from "ground level", the slower it is to recognize problems and act accordingly.
"It's really kinda difficult to aruge this really well, because Australia's public education system is quite different to the US's, and I'm coming into this with a different set of assumptions and experiences. My prescriptions for the US system are basically rooted in what seems to work here, you lot probably think we're all desperately socialist and stuff, whereas from where I'm sitting your health and education systems look like expensive anarchy."
Well hey, I've lived most of my life in the People's Republic of Canada, so I think we're about on the same footing. US health and education are a mess, but then they're a bit of a mess up here too (though the schools less so and the health care more so). I would just argue that it's a mess due to excessive (rather than insufficient) government meddling. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 2261/5458 |
Originally posted by Arwon
Becuase parents are reluctant to move kids from school to school because of disruption to social life, separating from friends, different cirriculums, and so forth?
Apparently people who aren't used to moving schools every 2 or so years (I am a military brat) find the idea of moving schools as scary as moving house.
One grade school change every 2 years for me, also. Didn't impact me too much.
Luckily with high schools, in Canada, if you have your parents permission and the transportation arranged you can go to any school in the Region that you live in. I chose to go to my high school because of its well known activist population (which incidentally has died out, leaving me one of the too true few) and the excellent academics (they pulled funding when I got there, and fired the better teachers). Yet, with all the faults that my school has (like chipping lead paint) I am getting the same information as other teens.
Standarized public curriculums rock! |
Kefka
Posts: 2385/3392 |
Originally posted by Generation Terrorist
I'm neutral on the teacher question. They're paid what the state thinks it can afford, and the teachers are cool with that, or else they wouldn't be teaching.
Well, they do it cause they love kids and want to make the kids contribute to society one day. Or at least the good ones do. They are not "cool with it" in many places. In fact, last year, in my own school district, there was a 2 day period where teachers went on strike against the district office for not giving anyone a raise in TEN YEARS. And they still havent had the raise.
Oh, and did anyone actually say overpaid?  I would be surprised if they did.
Oh, and a lot of us wish, I'm sure, that all schools had the same standard of curriculum as particular private schools do... too bad that won't happen anytime soon.  |
Arwon
Posts: 242/506 |
Becuase parents are reluctant to move kids from school to school because of disruption to social life, separating from friends, different cirriculums, and so forth?
Apparently people who aren't used to moving schools every 2 or so years (I am a military brat) find the idea of moving schools as scary as moving house. |
hhallahh
Posts: 475/607 |
One thing that needs to be considered in economic analyses of schools is the school as a natural monopoly, at least in many communities (which I'm sure Arwon is concerned about).... I don't have time to go into things, but the dynamics would work differently in those markets. |
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