I'll give you the other side. Think of this from a developing country perspective - we don't have enough teachers. But we have a billion people. We need to educate them.
We can't train teachers fast enough. Not to mention the 20 different languages that India has.
i don't believe this is true in the actual sense of the words. the problem is rather that we are not spending enough money on education. we could get many more teachers if that would change.
and it has to change regardless. with automation replacing all manual un-educated labor, education is the only way to avoid unemployment for a large number of people.
we need more teachers. many more teachers, and more effective teaching methods. but i believe financially this is all solvable if we are willing to solve it.
Agreed. Both of my sisters became teachers. Both of them left the profession after a few years. One even went back to college, negating the “we cant train them fast enough”. She already had a masters degree but still went back to college for more education to get away from teaching.
This is speaking from an American perspective but teaching is absolute hell. Teachers are more and more expected to pay for their own supplies, work 12 hour days, become counselors and therapists, plus advocates for special needs or abused children. Many students coming into kindergarten cannot read or recite the alphabet, but even worse many are not potty trained. The parents expect the schools to take care of 100% of the child’s education. And more and more in America, teachers are expected to shield students from real, actual bullets. One of my sisters left the profession when the state started talking about giving teachers guns.
All for $30-$40k per year. It’s not worth it. It’s too much work for too little money. Your job is constantly under fire and political scrutiny. It’s not even education anymore.
Former teacher here with a similar experience. It's not only that it's not worth it, teaching for the most part doesn't even pay a living wage. You can't make up the difference with a summer job since the "summer vacation" has gotten shorter and shorter over time it seems. In addition, teachers usually have to do professional development over the summer as well as we always started back before the students did.
One of the districts I worked at didn't have an attendance policy and allowed students to do credit recovery with online courses. It's incredibly difficult to convince middle and high school students to struggle through learning when they know from their fellow students they can make up the credit later and just google all the answers since the proctors for credit recovery didn't really pay attention. They all had their phones on their leg under the table searching for all the answers while the proctor sat and ignored them.
what's really sad is, it's been like this for decades. when i was in highschool in the US in the 80s i was told that teachers salaries were very low.
now i had fantastic and very motivated teachers, and at that time i concluded that the low salary would help select for teachers that really believe in their work, and weed out those who are in it just for the money.
but paying less than a living wage is likely only attract the desperate who can't get a better job.
We can't train teachers fast enough. Not to mention the 20 different languages that India has.
We need this to work.