The Greatest Threat to Our Country

[liberalogic]

I bolded this part of your reply. I have to say for the education that teachers have and the time that they are actually in class with students is more than fair compensation.

Look at it this way the average school teacher works 180 days a year and has on average 6-6.5 hours of contact time with students that equals out to 1080 hours a year of work the average full time worker in the US is 2080 hours a year. So they are working half the time as a full time employee.

The average starting salary for a teacher in Indiana is $25,000 that is 25.00 dollars an hour for a bachelors degree(not to bad). Lets not forget that they also do not pay into their retirement and also have very good health insurance. They also recieve vacation, Sick, and other beneffits these total about $0.35 cents on every dollar spent in salary so actually their annual starting pay is closer to 34,000 for the first year.

The average teacher in Indiana recieves in excess of 45,000 dollars a year plus beneffits, plus free retirement. How many of us can say the same.

You can argue with me till your blue in the face about teachers staying late and doing work at home and I for one will tell you I just dont buy it. I know for a fact that within 15 minutes of my children getting on the school bus for home the parking lot at the school in empty and there is no one around to answer a phone..

So what I am saying is that for the time that teachers work and the beneffits they recieve they are properly compensated. Most other people can not say the same yet we dont go around saying poor us give us more money and we can fix all your problems. If teachers wnat more money kick the damn union out and take back the money you give them!!!!!

I'm right behind you in eliminating the union. But for what a teacher should be (even though we are often shortchanged), a higher salary is necessary. Yes, they do have the summer off, but the amount of work that they should be bringing home to grade combined with the time that they should be spending to offer extra help basically compensates for this. Not to mention, as Kathianne said, they should be spending some time over the summer preparing for the following year.

Besides all of that, though, you underestimate the value of teaching in society. It's one of the most important jobs in the world and it literally constitutes the foundation of our country. If we don't learn, if we don't become more aware of the world around us, how are we supposed to contribute to society? How are we supposed to preserve our own extistence?

Since teaching is such an important profession, how are we supposed to ensure that we are hiring qualified individuals to carry out the intent of education? In most cases (excluding the few who simply have a passion for teaching and/or some sort of financial stability), you are going to get shit if you pay shit.

In no way am I calling for an increase in all teacher's salaries-- that would be ridiculous considering the level of comfort that the union provides. But if we somehow did away with the union and teachers were hired and fired based solely on merit, then they would all deserve a lot more money than they earn.

 

[Nienna]

I'm right behind you in eliminating the union. But for what a teacher should be (even though we are often shortchanged), a higher salary is necessary. Yes, they do have the summer off, but the amount of work that they should be bringing home to grade combined with the time that they should be spending to offer extra help basically compensates for this. Not to mention, as Kathianne said, they should be spending some time over the summer preparing for the following year.

Really only a couple weeks that GOOD teachers are truly off-duty, with all the outside work. And some are required to have their Master's degree within a certain time frame as a condition of employment. This is paid for out-of-pocket, and eats up MUCH of a teacher's "free" time.

...you are going to get shit if you pay shit.
In no way am I calling for an increase in all teacher's salaries-- that would be ridiculous considering the level of comfort that the union provides. But if we somehow did away with the union and teachers were hired and fired based solely on merit, then they would all deserve a lot more money than they earn.

"Free market" salaries would be a good solution to the problem of finding quality teachers, and it would also increase the amount of money the teachers got to keep in their pockets.

 

[Unkotare]

Why is this thread in the education section, you may ask? Shouldn't a thread about terrorists or illegal immigrants be in another forum? Well, yeah, but this thread isn't about those things. While they both pose a grave threat to this nation, their threat is more obvious and short term than what I think poses the single greatest threat to the future of this country. That threat is teachers' unions.

"But Hobbit," some of you may ask, "What the hell can teachers' unions do to us that's so much worse than illegals who wreck our economy and terrorists who blow us up?" Well, I'll tell you. First off, teachers' unions don't care about you. All they care about is making sure that no teacher is ever fired and never actually has to do anything, that and misuse millions of dollars in dues coerced by goverment mandated membership to campaign for values that a minority of their membership actually agrees with. For years, politicians have been trying to find a way to improve schools, and any time the solution is anything that would force teachers to do a good job, such things as vouchers, national standards, stricter requirements, and privatization, the teachers' unions have spent millions in dues to oppose these bills, even though, as people who care about their students, most of their members support the bills. Since every other thing has been tried, more funding, better equipment, more funding, smaller class sizes, more funding, higher teacher pay, more funding, standardized testing, and more funding, this leaves me to believe that the one sacred aspect to education that has been left untouched, forcing teachers to compete for their jobs, must be the only solution that will work, if anything works.

"But Hobbit," some of you still ask, "Why is this such a big threat?" Well, get this for a domino effect. Right now, more people are on welfare than ever before. Few citizens have an even elementary understanding of economics or government. Even fewer people even think about their taxes in terms other than their refunds (should I really be that excited that the government not only took too much of my money, but that they don't pay interest for the year that they kept it from me?). We are also becoming a weak nation that can't stomach hardships. All of this is because students aren't even required to try any more because giving all children A's is easier than talking to pissed off parents. The schools created by the teachers' unions are graduating generation after generation of undereducated, illiterate morons who can't even handle the stresses of the real world because they didn't even have to handle what should have been the stresses of growing up. All of this because teachers' unions don't want the people charged with training your child for the workplace to have to do any real work.

Then, it has created generation after generation of apathetic citizens who are uninterested and unlearned concerning the government. Only those with little real education can possibly think that a progressive income tax, inheritance tax, windfall profits tax, 'pussyfist' (pacifist) foreign policy, and unregulated social welfare could ever possibly be good ideas. What happens when these uneducated become the majority? We will have a communist oligarchy, a 'father knows best' state, that doesn't have the will to protect its own borders and lets the international community browbeat it into poverty. Believe you me, folks, if the teachers' unions are allowed to continue to run rampant, they will wreak so much damage against this country that some terroristic towelhead would have a wet dream just thinking about it.

You want to see America fall just like the once mighty Rome in less than 50 years? Just let the unions keep running the skrewls.

One more added note: I will take three jobs AND homeschool before I let my kids set one foot in one of those propoganda and wussification centers they call a public school.

This topic really brings out the hyperbole in some people.