The Glade 4.0

http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/16/news/economy/college-degree-earnings/index.html?iid=Popular

- Education majors earn, by far, less money over their lifetimes than any other major.
- Education majors earn less than half the money that Engineering majors do.
- Education majors are about half as likely to be continuously employed as math or engineering majors.
- Education is the only major where the average public sector pay is higher than the average private sector pay, which means that despite being effectively subsidized by the government, it's still dead last.

Remember that next time you want to complain about teachers unions demanding supposedly "too high" salaries. If you have a 4-year degree, it's the worst-paying job in the country.

Even scarier is the fact that Education majors working in the service sector (read: Couldn't get a "real job" in their field, had to settle) actually make less money than individuals with only a high school diploma.

LOL "least likely to be employed year round" no ****.

Lowest paying and second most heavily populated. Wow couldn't have seen that coming.

Great reasons not to go into an education major.

And when people talk about teachers being paid too much it is usually considering : initial or average pay at a specific district. For example http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jo ... her/salary We aren't talking about the 35k person but the 83k person.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

My mom is a teacher. YES they are overpaid. Per Ohio state law they work 182 days out of the year. If you work in the private sector and have a normal 5 day work week you work 260 days. So teachers work 1/3 fewer days and spend 7 hours a day in the building (7:30-2:30 is typical, some are 7:45-2:45 etc) so if you add in time spent preparing lesson plans and grading assignments it still comes out to 25% fewer hours/days worked in a year.

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How much an education major earns is not an indicator of whether teachers are underpaid. Cashiers at McDonald's make less than teachers. Are cashiers at McDonald's underpaid?

Education majors earn less than other majors because, as a general rule, they are capable of less. Education is a bullshit degree.

Engineers, on the other hand, make more than everybody else because their field is extremely useful and in high demand. To put it bluntly, we're just worth more than everybody else. Speaking as an engineer who has taught in a public school, teachers can not do my job. They do not know what I know. I, on the other hand, know what they know, and more. I can do their job. Not only that, but I can do it better than most of them can. So yes, I'm going to make twice as much money with my engineering degree.

Now, as I've said before in another thread, if teaching in public schools paid more, I might consider it as a profession.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

What does it take to be a teacher? What does it take to be an engineer?

Sorry, man, but with the exception of music, home economics, and perhaps shop, I am confident I could effectively teach ANY class offered in high school or earlier with no more than a week's worth of preparation.

If there's a teacher that could do my job with a week's preparation, that dude is underpaid.

Ok, so the average teacher makes half of the average engineer? Well, they only work 3/4 of the year. So, per working day, they make 67% of the engineers. Not too bad, for what they do. What about benefits? How much do they make in comparison when you consider benefits?

I don't think they're overpaid, but I don't think they deserve what they think they do.

Coro is exactly right. Teachers are overpaid in relation to how $many of them there are. This is why private schools pay less, not because of " government subsidy" but because private schools don't have unions artificially jacking wages up.

In Ohio, I had a teaching license just based on my psychology degree. I could substitue up to 5 days in any classroom and up to a semester in Social Studies, and with no education training whatsoever. Like Coro, I've taught in public schools, as well as charter schools. Teachers are simply not doing anything that requires special trainiong. We'd be better of with people that just have degrees in their subject areas and a desire to teach.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Every instruction manual ever written by an engineer suggests otherwise.

In all seriousness, though, the ability to understand something and the ability to effectively impart that understanding to others involve different talents, skills and personalities. In my experience, most engineering types are not particularly good at teaching.

You believe education training ensures that ability?

I've had people who could teach and knew and they were good.

I've had people who could do but not teach and they were horrendous - I learned more slowly because it was all on my own.

I've had people who could teach but didn't know - I learned a bunch of stuff that was wrong and or useless.

I'd rather 1 or 2 than three.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Oh not at all. Nor is formal education training necessary. My brother is an excellent music and theater teacher, and his degree is in theater not education. I don't think an education degree should be a requirement to teach. I'm just objecting to the common "pfft! anyone can teach!" attitude Coro and Arathain were expressing.

The thing is though, its true. Almost anyone can teach, at least passably. On the other hand, you cannot ask just anyone to solve the problems a professional engineer would and expect to get a result that even approaches "passable".

Furthermore, the people who are teachers are not necessarily particularly good at it. Many people go into education simply because little kids are cute, or because its easy and there are jobs in the field as opposed to say political science where jobs directly using political science are comparatively rare.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yeah, because that's what I said.

What I said was that I could teach, and I expressed doubts that a teacher could do my job.

So, what's your opinion? Is it more likely that an engineer could teach, or that an educator could engineer?

To teach, it requires a respect for children, patience, love of a subject, knowledge of the subject, and the ability to convey that coherently.

No, it's not for everyone, but it's not a very tall order.

We need to cut the groupthink on this. Not all teachers are created equal. Ive worked in education and I've seen both ends of the spectrum: The Valuable and the outright worthless. The problem is the school board can't freely negotiate with the valuable. They have to via the union get shackled with the worthless as well. The teachers have put themselves in that boat.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Too bad they all act like they are. We'll cut it out when teachers admit that some of them are great and some of them **** suck.

See my edit Lenas.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Except given the standard of quality required to teach, it IS true that anyone could go in and teach.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

My sentiment is the same. Get rid of the unions and I'll be happy to pay good teachers more if it means we can fire the bad ones.

Not everyone can teach. In fact, a sizable chunk of our current teachers can't teach worth a damn.

Furthermore, an education major does not impart an ability to teach on any of its pursuants, nor is it the only way to acquire such experience. Many, many graduate students in other fields have teaching experience working as TAs throughout their Master's programs.

The myth that an education degree is the only thing that makes a qualified teacher is put forth by education departments across the country, who have no other skills.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This.

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Holy shitsnacks!

What a laughably inaccurate fact. Let's call it what it is: a lie.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Fair enough. My apologies if I misunderstood/misrepresented your view. It still sounds, though, like you're saying most any engineer, not just you, could teach effectively. The juxtaposition of the general professional group and the specific personal example in both your and Coro's posts suggested that you were holding yourselves out as being representative of the broader group:



I've known a lot of engineers (did 2 years of it in college, so I probably have a higher-than-average number of friends who are engineers), and most of them really wouldn't be very good at teaching. Doctors are the same way, actually. Again, I don't think an actual education degree is necessary, but I do think that STEM programs are less effective than Arts programs at developing the kind of communication skills that make for good teachers. And that makes sense, really, since there's much less emphasis on effective communication, particularly communication aimed at non-experts.

Anyway, when all is said and done, I think one of the reasons so many smart people think they could easily step in and be a better than average teacher is simply that there are so many lousy teachers.

I pulled that from the article, I didn't make it up :\

That's why I quoted the article (note the citation), not you. The facts are a fabrication based on every recent BOLS study on Public employee vs. Private employee income. Period.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

My opinion is easy... Bad teachers are in fact overpaid, good teachers can be grossly underpaid.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I think you guys are under-estimating the skills required to effectively teach a little. Of course a lot of teachers seem to lack those skills too, so I'm not sure what's going on there. But I don't think teaching is something trivial that anyone can do. A good example would be college, where most professors are not trained to teach. I would say half... heck, maybe most of them, aren't very good teachers. Most can get by on their students being somewhat motivated because it's college, but I bet if you put them in a middle school with lots of kids with a whole array of problems, most of whom have no interest in learning, they would be terrible.

I also don't think the engineering example is that good, because I've met lots of dumb engineers. I'm sure there are some smart teachers out there that could figure out their job in a week.