What about paying them decently? Other than some positions at Ivy-League, becoming a teacher is just bad math, financially speaking. Why would anyone intelligent want to become a teacher?
This is a statement of fact, not opinion of what ought to be. Part of what Gates (and others) are saying, I think, is that to have a better functioning society, we need to increase the value society puts on teaching.
If we provide the educational opportunity that Bill Gates, John Resig, or Larry Page got to every child in America, we will all be a lot better off.
And there are a lot of reasons other than financial, that people choose to become teachers.
From my observations on decent school systems (I haven't seen the TED speech yet), the biggest feature of schoolteachers is complacency. It's not that they aren't intelligent, it's that they aren't ambitious. People go into teaching in order to have a safe, comfortable, predictable career path. And in many cases that's what it is, and the result is that teachers wind up living in a different reality.
An important point is that the teachers in the 100k range have been teachers for 30 years. Starting salaries are much different.
And yes, starting salaries are much lower-- as they are for most graduates in most other industries.
I wasn't arguing that being a teacher is going to get you rich. But at least in NY, one makes enough to live comfortably. If you can handle dealing with kids on a daily basis, it isn't a bad career choice at all. Of course, NY State's public schools have a good reputation.
That being said, I've discussed this with my friends many times and I've gradually been convinced that more than anything - parents' involvement in their education was/is vitally important. A couple of them made it out of the ghetto.
Why Teachers Hate Parents, Time Magazine
"Ask teachers about the best part of their job, and most will say how much they love working with kids. Ask them about the most demanding part, and they will say dealing with parents. In fact, a new study finds that of all the challenges they face, new teachers rank handling parents at the top. According to preliminary results from the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, made available exclusively to TIME, parent management was a bigger struggle than finding enough funding or maintaining discipline or enduring the toils of testing. It's one reason, say the Consortium for Policy Research in Education and the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, that 40% to 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years. Even master teachers who love their work, says Harvard education professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, call this "the most treacherous part of their jobs."
"Perhaps the most complicated part of the conversation—beyond all the issues of race and class and culture, the growing pressures to succeed and arguments over how success should be defined—is the problem of memory. When they meet in that conference, parent and teacher bring their own school experiences with them—what went right and wrong, what they missed. They are determined for it to be different for the child they both care about. They go into that first-grade room and sit in the small chairs and can easily be small again themselves. It is so tempting to use the child's prospects to address their own regrets. So teachers learn to choose their words with care and hope that they can build a partnership with parents that works to everyone's advantage and comes at no one's expense. And parents over time may realize that when it comes to their children, they still have much to learn. "I think that we love our children so much that they make us a little loony at times," says Arch Montgomery, head of the Asheville School in North Carolina. He winces at parents who treat their child as a cocktail-party trophy or a vanity sticker for the window of their SUV, but he also understands their behavior. "I think most parents desperately want to do what is right for their kids. This does not bring out the better angels of our natures, but it is understandable, and it is forgivable."
http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=8834&...
Teaching has a couple of advantages:
- The entry requirements are not that high.
- The degree program is not that demanding.
- There is always employment (compare that with journalism or pharmacology in some countries).
- There is a huge shortage of teachers in 1st world countries. For immigration to some countries a teaching degree can count more than an engineering degree.
- In some countries there are fairly long (paid) holidays for teachers.
- There are a lot of half day (08h00-14h00) positions available. This is especially important for someone with children. - There are generally a lot of bursaries available to fund study and distance study is also a good option.
- Some countries allow abridging studies: a person with another degree can work as a teacher while doing a 1 to 2 year diploma that will make them a fully qualified teacher.
To begin, multiply teacher salaries by (12 months/year)/(9 months worked). Throw in the value of 3 consecutive months of vacation, great health plan, defined-benefit pensions (the pension plans that will soon bankrupt most states), and "can't get fired" job security. You'll find that teachers are paid quite nicely.