American teachers spend on average 1,080 hours teaching each year. Across the O.E.C.D., the average is 794 hours on primary education, 709 hours on lower secondary education, and 653 hours on upper secondary education general programs.Why?
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American teachers’ pay is more middling. The average public primary-school teacher who has worked 15 years and has received the minimum amount of training, for example, earns $43,633, compared to the O.E.C.D. average of $39,007.
See the charts at the link.
Because ... I see a parallel to the cognitive dissonance of the old Madonna/whore complex... teachers, so often women in authority "correcting" and/or disciplining in a quasi-parental role, both hated and adored, but their "work" seen as meant to be free, free as the natural love of a mother ... and so, those who have had some difficulty with school express resentment of the "cost" of that primary relationship with hostility, a refusal to pay teachers respectfully all the while harboring some moment of adoration of a teacher, a special exceptional one in their memory that allows them not to acknowledge the inconsistencies, to say, "oh, I love teachers," while creating policy that oppresses, underpays, denigrates the whole third oldest profession. These tend to be the same people who bemoan the "nanny state" (ummmm, the nanny is critical to you being away from your children, able to focus on making money instead of actually being a parent), who belittle anyone in care-giving professions, who expect all "women's work" to be free because, after all, God made women to be "help-meets" to men, not equals. Sad, that these people continue to work out their "issues" at the expense of other peoples' children.
ReplyDeleteMarthe, I expect you're right. Teaching children is traditionally a woman's role, and there are those who still do not respect women's work - witness the disparity in pay for the same work that exists today and the glass ceiling in certain occupations, which may have cracks but is still there.
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