leff@smu.UUCP (11/14/83)
#N:smu:12200001:000:1272
smu!leff Nov 12 18:23:00 1983
The answer to people complaining about low pay contributing to a shortage
of teachers (below college or cse or engineering) is this:
I have met many people studying for the ministry here at SMU. Many
have left good jobs such as engineering, accounting, computer science
to study for the ministry. Gettingistry degree requires as much
hardwork and years as a Ph. D. in C. S. There is little or no
financial aid and the pay when you get out is as bad as word as any
teaching job. They feel they have a calling and something they want
to do and do it.
Do we want teachers who are just in it for the money. Look at
various high paying fields and the number of incompetents or lazy people
in them.
Then what is causing the shortage: moronic administrators and the
inability to accomplish the desired goals (frustration). This is caused
by behavior problems, stupidity, refusal to learn, etc. However, I think
it is administrations and bureaucracy that cause the problem.
In a recent TV guide article associated with the 'Love Birds' pointed
out that most of the CAtholic priests who renounce their vows do so
because of inability to achieve professional goals, not the vow of
poverty or celibacy. The same is true of the teaching profession.
fran@cbscc.UUCP (Frank Webb) (11/14/83)
Bullcookies! For many teachers, the sincere desire to work with kids is only effective while they can support their families in the manner they feel they deserve. You don't get this on a teacher's salary. In many person's minds(?), the teacher is still either a part-time mother, supported by her husband's job, or a girl marking time until a Man comes along to take her away from all this. There are competents and incompetents. As long as the money is not there to squeeze out the incomps, they will find places to fill the needed teacher jobs. Look around your own area. Does one town pay more for teachers than most of the others? do they have a better reputation in education, in teacher quality? I'm bothered by the lack of some sort of merit pay arrangement, until I look at where the program would be administered. In my town, one of the better ones in ohio, the plan would probably have the administration recommending merit increases to the board of education, which must approve all funding measures. The board consists of a mixture of ax-grinders, representing the various parts of the communities, including the back-to-basics, the lets get a better football team, and the lets keep the pennies counted factions. They would probably only reward the non-innovative AK-ing representatives among the faculty. If there were a teacher, superior in every respect, but also demanding of better pay, working conditions, support from the board, etc., no way would they reward that teacher. Another reason that merit pay won't go is that the teachers are now in a union, even if they call them associations. Once they were driven into that role, by the neglect of the past, they will never come up with a suitable merit pay procedure. Frank Webb The Unruffled Sage (I married a teacher - she still teaches) <cbscc!fran>
ajy@hou2b.UUCP (11/15/83)
As a very real example of teachers needing more pay.... Several years ago, the teachers in my home town*, during negotiations for a new contract, were told by the school board to seek second jobs if they needed more money. The teachers responded by boycotting all extracuricular activities, including, I believe, tutoring and sports. It seems the impact was enough that the high school students, in a remarkable show of protest, walked out of classes and marched to the town hall. I'm sorry to say that I don't know how the conflict was resolved. Sure, we don't want mercenaries teaching our youngsters, but all the best teachers I ever knew were as active outside the class room as in to tutor, to advise, or just to talk. But survival comes first and teachers must be able to survive with their profession if they are to be the most effictive. Ken Kretsch * Amesbury, Mass.; I'm not afraid to name names 'cause the nuts on the school board and finance committee deserve all the ridicule they can get (They never did teach me to spell!)
ian@utcsstat.UUCP (Ian F. Darwin) (11/17/83)
They sure don't. If they were better paid, they might teach people the difference between writing a plural and writing a possessive.
notes@ucbcad.UUCP (11/19/83)
#R:smu:12200001:ucbesvax:28000001:000:703 ucbesvax!turner Nov 19 01:07:00 1983 Re: "teacher's don't need more pay" The comparison to people studying for the ministry is stretched, I think. I am an agnostic (and an atheist on my bad days), but I have some respect for the idea of a religious vocation as a call from God. However devoted a teacher might be (and I've met some saints in my time, believe me) one cannot compare a teacher to people who want to do what they perceive as the will of some God, however personally onerous it might be. Teachers are only human, and if their work is their main source of dignity, they will move on--or retreat from the absurdity of present responsibilities--when humiliated past a certain point. --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)
smh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Steven M. Haflich) (11/22/83)
FLAME --- FLAME --- FLAME --- FLAME --- FLAME
First, in preface, I am a long-time computer professional and
researcher who is now a `teacher' (of music), presently at MIT. With
19 years experience with computers, I may be somewhat of an anomaly in
liberal arts education -- usually, people migrate the other way -- but
I claim a particular right to comment, as if one needs a right to write
to Usenet...
Upon finishing graduate school I took employment as an assistant
professor in music at the University of Wisconsin with a starting
salary about 40% of offers from industry. I do not wish here to argue
the benefits of working in academia vs. the `real' world, but no matter
how committed one is to teaching, the attraction of higher pay is a
constant temptation. With a manufacturing and agricultural economy,
Wisconsin had a hard time during the past recession. A recession cuts
the tax base, so state funds for education were under extreme
pressure. I hear from former colleagues that UW avoided making faculty
cuts this past year only by putting a freeze on all faculty salaries.
My argument is economic: I will not presume that the economy hinges on
music theory, but at UW-Milwaukee a few years ago *four* computer
science faculty positions were vacant -- no competent people could be
found to fill them at the offered salary. Of course, the governor and
state legislature spouted great torrents about how committed they were
to upgrading the medium-industry smokestack economy to `high tech.'
Yet, it was up to a music professor to boot the first Unix system on
campus. (Not that Unix is so high-tech, but things are relative. :-)
Suppose the University were to --- let us exagerate --- quadruple [!]
professorial salaries in critical technologies. Superbly qualified
candidates would be fighting for those same positions. The general
`worker' population five or ten years from now would be far more suited
to high tech, and salaries of those workers would be far greater. I am
no economist, but I am certain that any reasonable investment in
education by a government would pay back handsome interest in income
and corporate taxes within, say, ten years.
Teaching is the great cultural amplifier. No price [within reasonable
bounds] is too high that we couldn't afford substantial capital gains
on our investment.* The real problem, as I see it, is that it takes
more than four years, sometimes *much* more, for the investment to
begin paying. Politicians in America are typically elected for 2, 4,
or 6 year terms.
Lest this flame seem to criticise my former colleagues at UW, I must
say that I found them to be both dedicated and absolutely competent.
However, they labored then (and I suspect continue) with entirely
insufficient facilities and support for the task at hand.
* - A paraphrase from a brilliant trumpeter who once said:
"No note is too high to be taken down an octave!"
Steve Haflich
MIT Experimental Music Studioleff@smu.UUCP (11/24/83)
#R:smu:12200001:smu:12200003:000:149 smu!leff Nov 23 17:06:00 1983 I am moving this discussion to net.religion since we are now comparing the power of religious convictions to more secular or humanistic convictions.
leff@smu.UUCP (11/28/83)
#R:cbosgd:-64100:smu:12200006:000:2334 smu!leff Nov 27 15:43:00 1983 Sounds like what you are describing is a classic case of supply and demand equilibrating itself. Salaries would go up to the point where people wouldn't pay any more to get more teachers. Thus there would be no vacancies for Ph.D's in computer science. The salaries would be no better. On a short term basis, we would see no more teachers only more money spent to get the existing supply of Ph.D's. Money that would be available to get equipment, give scholarships etc. would go to the teachers instead. ON a long term basis we would see more teachers attracted to the profession (within the three years that it takes to convert a M. S. to a Ph.D.) This would allow salaries to come down a bit. At four times the current salaries, teachers would make more than doctors. We would have a situation on the graduate level like in undergraduate engineering schools and in medical schools: either overcrowding or people who would make good teachers not being able to get in. To the music professor who booted UNIX, had teachers been paid properly, you would never have had the opportunity to boot it. Maybe you didn't want it but if there are less teachers and more turn over, graduate students and people from other professions have a chance to get in. At the city colleges, professors from unpopular areas like art or philosophy had two choices to teach computers or to teach developmental math or reading. Guess which they chose. Some were incompetent. On the other hand, my boss raved about her intro to programming teacher. Guess what his Ph. D. was in! Psychology. When I was working, I got an opportunity to teach as an adjunct lecturer. I still was working towards my masters. After four semesters, I achieved 4.7 out of 5 on my student evaluations. The first semester was a disaster area but that is another story. Had there been sufficiently high salaries to attract Ph. D's, then I would not have had the opportunity to teach. If there aren't enough faculty members, then graduate students get a whole course instead of grading papers or whatever. Some graduate students are lousy. I have known some (not who teach here but elsewhere) who were incompetent both as teachers and as professionals. However some are FANTASTIC. Here, a foreign graduate student won DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR from the students.