Of Course It's An Easy Job

to anyone who has never done it and wouldn't do it if offered because it is anything but easy.

It's one hell of a note when there are articles like this one having to defend a cornerstone of our democracy or republic or representative democracy or whatever the hell you want to call it.

But is teaching actually overcompensated? It’s hard to imagine how. The New York Times points out that “The average primary-school teacher in the United States earns about 67 percent of the salary of an average college-educated worker in the United States.” (And given the student debt bubble currently crippling so many young people, this is and will remain an area of real concern for recruiting future teachers.) And notably, the Times points out, the ratio of teacher pay to that of other college graduates is wider in the U.S. than in most other developed countries.

Well, yeah. And because it is a salaried job, there are lots and lots and lots of hours put in beyond contracted hours for which there is NO pay. Try lesson planning and mountains of paperwork, the latter especially onerous for secondary ed teachers. I think of English teachers and those teaching social science where they can require lots of essays from as many as 150 students. I would bet the real pay of teachers, if one included the non-compensated hours, would be closer to minimum wage than to any kind of cushy job in the private sector.