oaf@mit-vax.UUCP (Oded Feingold) (06/28/85)
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--but I think the lower salaries for this (math, science) type of
teacher is held down artificially by the salaries for "liberal arts"
teachers (at least at the secondary school level).
I mean, could you justify to your local school board paying
a math teacher double the salary the English teacher makes?
Most of the other teachers would howl...
Scott J. Berry
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I couldn't justify it to myself, let alone school boards. I believe
such narrow-mindedness (math and science are good, English sucks) is
bad for discussion and bad for living. I find it symptomatic of
rigid, narrow attitudes that permit all sorts of distortions in our
value systems. Mr. Berry, I don't think you can quantify humanity and
human experience, so studying math and science won't give you a handle
on what makes life worth living.
I've trimmed the header on your broadband mailing to net.women for a
couple of reasons:
1. Net.politics is too full of (pro- and anti-libertarian)
bullshit for any good to come of it, ever.
2. No way this stuff belongs in net.social.
Kee-rist, why must every cockamamy crumb of controversial crapola
proliferate through all the newsgroups?
Why do I leave net.women in? I think discussion in this newsgroup has
been dominated by quantitative interjections (70# boxes, 100-lb
victims, 200-woman rapists, 6-shot Colts, 51% quotas) when the focus
should be on basic attitudes people have toward each other. If some
of us made better use of the time we studied English in their youths,
they would not be so fast to misapprehend what others are saying, nor
so likely to make obscure(*) or disjointed replies. The point of
English education is (or should be) learning to understand what people
say, and learning to say understandable things, to oneself as well as
to others. If people made more efforts in that direction we'd see
more light and less heat. I would much prefer a situation where
people do NOT engage in witless, recursive mis-perception.
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(*) "Obscur(ant)" has been used to characterize a member
of this newsgroup. My use of the word is not directed at
her, nor am I passing judgment about the appropriateness
of that appellation. This is a disclaimer.
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Lest I be accused of deliberately misunderstanding Mr. Berry's
comment, hence hoist by my own petard, I'll note that I don't care
about supply-and-demand nor relative teachers' salaries per se, but I
*do* object to seeing postings about them on net.women. What bothers
me is how closely such ill-found measures of relative worth reflect
incongruities in the discussions on this newsgroup.
You read this far? Amazing.
--
Oded Feingold {decvax, harvard}!mitvax!oaf
MIT AI Lab oaf%oz@mit-mc.ARPA
545 Tech Sq. 617-253-8598 work
Cambridge, Mass. 02139 617-371-1796 home