asheris | (no subject)

This is an oldie but goodie- no idea who wrote it, but my dad (a teacher) passed it on several years ago. I like to post it every now and then.

TEACHERS ARE PAID TOO MUCH!

I'm fed up with teachers and their hefty salary guides. What we need here is a little perspective.

If I had my way, I'd pay these teachers myself - I'd pay them baby sitting wages. That's right --- instead of paying these outrageous taxes, I'd give them $3.00 an hour right out of my own pocket.

And I'm only going to pay them for the 5 hours, not coffee breaks. That would be $15.00 a day - each parent should pay $15.00 a day for these teachers to baby sit their child. Even if they have more than one child, that's a lot cheaper than private day care.

Now, how many children do they teach every day - maybe twenty? That's $15.00 X 20 = $300.00 a day. But remember they only work 180 days a year! I'm not going to pay them for all those vacations. $300.00 X 180 = $54,000

(Just a minute, I think my calculator needs batteries.)

I know now you teachers will say what about those who have ten years experience and a Master's degree? Well, maybe they could get the minimum wage and instead of just baby sitting, they could read the kids a story. We can round that off to about $5.00 an hour, times five, times twenty children. That's $500 per day times 180 days. That's $90,000 - Huh?

Wait a minute; let's get a little perspective here.

Baby sitting wages are too good for these teachers. Did anyone see a salary guide around here?

Of course, with today's average class sizes, those numbers would be more like 30-35 students per class (we'll say 32 on average; some places it's far higher), so:
$15.00 X 32 = $480.00, $480.00 X 180 = $86,400
and
$25.00 X 32 = $800.00, $800.00 X 180 = $144,000

So, damn those overpaid teachers making $20-30,000, eh? Or the ones with decades of exerience and master's degrees making a whopping $40-50,000. The people who shape our children's lives shouldn't be making such a whopping huge profit on it, right.

(I won't even start my rant about those supposed "vacations", or the alleged 5-hour working days- though when the hell do the people who make those kinds of claims think tests get written and papers corrected? In the middle of lectures? Which get planned- when?)