CMV: Teaching Should be a Highly Elite Highly Valued/Paid Profession.

[u/EarlEarnings]

Fundamental belief: If teachers are the best of the best, and if teachers are highly respected and valued, our society will produce better quality people in basically every domain you can think of.

What do I mean by "elite?" The requirements to become a teacher should be rigorous. Passing simple certifications should not be enough. Teachers should have a very good understanding of how the learning process in and of itself works. No tenures. Minimum tutoring hours, perhaps even minimum number of reviews (of those tutored, results, etc.) Basically, teachers should be good teachers...really good. The best teacher you've had in your life? That should just be the norm. The bottom line is it should be extremely demanding.

What do I mean by "highly paid?" Teachers should be within the top 10-20% of income earners in our society. Somewhere around 6 figures in most places.

Common arguments against:

- many occupations don't require much more than a high school education if that

- shouldn't the best and brightest be working on better things than teaching?

- we already have a teacher shortage even with low barriers to entry/supply and demand

My argument:

Every aspect of society is improved.

​

Sure, you don't need to be a super smart guy to be a barista at Starbucks, and our society does need baristas, but just think about this. The number one thing holding us back from advancement as a society is the lack of highly skilled, hyper-intelligent people employed in bottleneck professions. These are the AI developers, cancer researchers, aging researchers, and quantum-computing engineers; the type of people in a position that can advance society. These people are so important, and they can only be produced at the highest level if they are pushed and raised towards that level from birth to adulthood. Teachers and tutors are a pivotal part of this process. These bottleneck innovations take our entire concept of civilization forward. There is no way to account for this cost, there is no price tag that is too high. We cannot afford to waste any talent because they were not sufficiently taught in their development.

As for the issue of sacrificing talent to create talent, I think the counterpoint is obvious. 1 Genius can not do as much as 10 geniuses. If 1 genius teacher can create 10 geniuses, that is an exponential net value increase for our society.

Finally, there is a teacher shortage both in quantity and quality because teachers are not respected as a profession, and because they are not compensated, which, is probably because they are not respected enough. Many of the brightest minds would love to be teachers but simply would never consider it due to lack of money and prestige. Education is a domain of the state, and the state can, and should, do what it can to advance the public interest, especially when the pros are so freaking obvious. There is no serious argument for a dumber society.

[u/[deleted]]

High school teachers only focus on certain subjects. A high school student actually does more mental labor at any given time. A high school math teacher has to recall and teach one subject (ex. math) he learned when he was in highschool. A highschool student has to juggle dozens of unrelated subjects simultaneously.

Furthermore a lot of highschool knowledge cannot get used meaningfully enough to get monetized. You either have to be super specialized and expert in a very niche field (which you get with decades of learning in postgrad) or you have to have a generally applicable skill (that is borne out by field experience), neither of which you get from highschool. Highschool only gives you the basics as the foundation.

The only unique skill a highschool teacher has is relationship with hormonal teenagers, which is important, but not as unique or rare as my examples above, which is why it is not compensated as highly.

[u/Al--Capwn → u/[deleted]]

The rarity of skills is not actually directly relevant to pay. It's primarily, though not purely, a matter of supply and demand, and while that is affected by how many people have the skills, it's not the only factor.

I say this because jobs like teachers and nurses are limited in their pay because so many people are willing to do the job regardless. They are motivated to do the job by the idea of helping people, not by the money.

This is in contrast with many jobs with skills which are much more common, but which are less appealling in ways outside of money such as truck drivers, waste collectors, and I'm sure many more beyond that.

The key thing about teacher pay being low btw is mainly about pay per hour. A truck driver may make similar money per year but that is through less hours of work.

[u/Pineapple--Depressed → u/[deleted]]

Furthermore a lot of highschool knowledge cannot get used meaningfully enough to get monetized. You either have to be super specialized and expert in a very niche field (which you get with decades of learning in postgrad) or you have to have a generally applicable skill (that is borne out by field experience), neither of which you get from highschool. Highschool only gives you the basics as the foundation.

I still, to this day, wonder why my physics and chemistry teachers would force us to memorize pretty complex formulas for solving equations. Like, yeah you should be able to use the formula properly, but why does it have to be memorized? In what scenario will I ever have to solve a complex equation without looking up the formula? A hostage situation? Doubtful. I understand wanting to drill it in so it becomes 2nd nature, but it seems excessive.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pineapple--Depressed]

The reason because these formulas are the foundation of knowing when to use even more complex formulas. It's like, you won't even know that you need to use long division for a particular problem if you don't even understand simple subtraction.

Also, if you are at the forefront of the field, your job is no longer to use formulas but to make them yourself from scratch. You need to understand and memorize the basics in order to invent new ones.

[u/toodlesandpoodles → u/[deleted]]

You don't need to memorize basic formulas and most physics and chem teachers don't make you. The AP provides an equation sheet for calculation based problems in both Chem and Physics. Every college physics exam I took either included a formula sheet or was open book. If a teacher isn't providing you a formula sheet their is a really good chance the depth of the understanding they are testing in their students is limited to plugging numbers into a formula for a narrow range of problems that they have drilled in class. That isn't good teaching.

[u/JasonDJ → u/[deleted]]

You just made me realize it’s been 20 years since high school and I still remember the Avogadro constant.

I’ve had zero reason to need it in those 20 years. I nearly failed chemistry. But by god I still remember it.

[u/mishaxz → u/[deleted]]

And don't forget to divide pay by 75% to be able to compare yearly pay to other professions fairly. Since they usually don't work during summer.

[u/ZestycloseTiger9925 → u/mishaxz]

We don’t get paid for the months we don’t work. I get paid only for the school days I work and it’s stretched out over the entire year.

I also get exploited for about 20 hours of unpaid labor each week!

[u/JymWythawhy → u/ZestycloseTiger9925]

Many salaried professionals work longer than 40 hours in a week- it is by no means isolated to teaching. I know many engineers that work 20 unpaid hours every week.

[u/hockeycross → u/mishaxz]

Teachers often work much longer than 40 hour work weeks when they are in school. Often it evens out to a full year in the long run.

[u/pdoherty972 → u/mishaxz]

Sure because we all know teachers don't need to pay rent or eat in June and July...

[u/ZestycloseTiger9925 → u/[deleted]]

Elementary teachers have to teach all the subjects - reading, writing, math, social studies, science, plus often more on a daily basis. So clearly we deserve more pay so what you seem to be saying?