What is your opinion on education and teaching?

Question

Do you think teachers deserve more pay/encentives? Do you think that your country/state's educational system needs improvement? What, in your opinion, could be done to improve education and the perception of teaching as a profession?

Answer 1

In this community, for a 180 day work year, teachers are compensated at a rate that equals twice the average income in the county. That's not an indicator that the pay is too low.

Where we have a problem in this country is that "teacher" is now seen as a socio-economic class mobility career step. That is, working class blue collar Joe's kids can get a degree in 4-years and immediately step into middle class white collar world.

When people in an occupation begin to be more concerned "about the money" than about the dedication required to excel in the profession - the profession suffers.

The perception is starting to lean toward "it's about the money" and not "it's about the kids" so the general perception is going to decline until we force a correction.

As for solving the main problems with the systems - get the politicians out of it. Let professional educators make the redesign and get the "feel good, fluffy bunny" politicians out of the picture. Then, and only then, will the system improve.

Imagine if your community said "let's elect 8 untrained citizens to oversea all of the doctor's offices and tell them what to do, but let's not elect any doctors to the board" what would happen to medical care in the community? But we think that's fine with a school board why?

Answer 2

I'm an Englishman living in Arkansas, in the USA. In that capacity, I speak from first hand experience of American students and teachers.

The educational standards in (the USA) teaching today are appalling.
One only has to read the messages on the Internet to see that teachers are NOT doing their job at primary level. So many teenagers cannot spell; and I offer my condolences to prospective employers for the future; as the pool of students that are illiterate is far grater than it has ever been since the introduction of mass education for all.
Many of today's students do not know how to use punctuation; and fail miserably when it comes to the use of capital letters for names and places. By the way.... there are only 11 words where I before E, except after C, is used in English.

I an acquainted with many teachers; many of whom (with few a exceptions) are as ignorant with English as those they purport to teach.

B4 i go i want to say that i despair

Kind regards
Antony

Answer 3

They certainly do. For instance in Australia they are greatly undervalued in monetary terms. In Australia we should switch over to a Federal system that runs all schools in the entire country. Outcomes need to be set for all children to achieve and students should be able to work towards those in their own time ie make the lessons suitable for the child's ability and interests.