10 Mar
2000
10 Mar
'00
9:55 a.m.
At 01:50 PM 3/10/00 -0700, Dick wrote:
Allison, I believe you've been sold a bill of
goods.
First of all, look at what a teacher has to do for his/her education and
later for his/her salary as compared, say, to an engineering student.
I agree. I've found teachers and engineers get comparable salaries but
teachers put in about 40% less time.
From
what I've observed myself, and even more so from
what I hear from my boys,
both in college, the workload in a typical week for an engineering student
adds up to about what an education major does in a semester.
Correct. My wife has an educational degree and I have an engineering
degree. We both went to the same school and she spent a LOT less time with
school work than I did. For example, she never had one computer programming
assignment until she was working on her Masters degree. I had countless
ones for a BS degree. Her one programming assignment was so simple that I
did it in less than one evening. Many of her hamework assignements were to
make posters and the like.
Secondly, he
doesn't have to look forward to those 7 20-hour-day
work-weeks for the next
ten years, and he knows that he needn't worry about being fired, laid off,
or much of anything else that would rock the boat. Sure, he gets about $45K
after ten years, rather than the 60-75K the engineer will get,
I worked at THE largest aerospace engineering company in the world for 8
years and I was earning less than $45,000 when I left. And I know for a
fact that I was making more than most of the engineers that I worked with.
I have two BS degrees and was designated as one of three MUST HAVE
employees on the program that I was on.
but he only
has to work a 6-hour day, and he only has to do that
183 days a year to get
full salary and, ultimately a generous pension.
Secondly, look at the quality of those individuals. These are people who
didn't do so well in high school, mainly due to lack of ambition and
diligence, didn't want to work too hard in college, and, of course, couldn't
get into a good college. Fortunately, a good college isn't required. On
top of that, he's chosen a niche in which he only has to work a 6-hour day,
and he only has to do that 183 days a year to get full salary and,
ultimately a generous pension.
Of course he's not into it for the money. He doesn't want to work hard
enough to earn a lot of money.
Of course there are exceptions to this but it certainly fits the
majority!
My sister is a teacher and yes she doesn't make much money but she has
no ambition what so ever, she was a mediocre high school student, never
took any college courses and hasn't bothered to learn anything new in over
twenty years!
FWIW not all teachers have a lot of education. Here in Florida they LIKE
for the teachers to have at least one level higher degree than the courses
that they're teaching but if they're short handed they'll even wave that.
My wife was teaching sophomore level Business Law classes before she earned
her BA degree. Personally, I've found the best teachers don't have a lot of
formal education but they do have a lot of practicle experience.
Joe