"The Culture of Fear is Epidemic"

That's because in teaching, a principal can literally destroy it with utterly no consequences for his or her actions.

I know exactly how this young teacher feels because I was kicked to the curb for the flimsiest of reasons--really, NO reason at all except to protect people higher up on the "career ladder" when they screwed up.

I believe this person is in the UK, but it is the same if not worse situation here in this country.

Hatred Towards Education Has ALWAYS Been About Sexism

When the vast majority of K-12 teachers, and a very large percentage of administrators, are women, and when the entire field is denigrated by both men and women, especially those in the "elite" fields, you goddamned right it's about hatred toward women in general.

And thus it always has been, but in the past at least it wasn't being used as formal federal policy to commit occupational genocide against an entire group of workers. Now it is, and these people don't even give a shit.

Of course they won't go after police and fire not just because those are male-dominated fields, but also because those fields are concerned with public safety. Them who has the guns has the power and all of that.

The ultimate goal, I believe, is to create a caste system of the very few people who will have any kind of education at all, and a mass of uneducated, even illiterate workers, and the return of child labor to facilitate that end. These neoliberals and billionaires are pure evil and would repeal the last 150-200 years of the United States if they succeed.

Key to this goal was infiltrating the Democratic Party via fakes like Obama, Booker, and Duncan.

Actually, Teaching is a "Pink-Collar" Occupation

That's because blue-collar jobs, especially in the trades, pay what has been known as "family-wage" pay. That was a notion that became popular in the earlier part of the twentieth century, with the rise of labor unions. The idea was men were the primary breadwinners of families, while their wives stayed home with the kids, and therefore men should be making enough to support their families. Of course, it wasn't just limited to blue-collar jobs; the whole sexist idea that only men deserved higher pay was the rule throughout the economy. The notion of a "family wage" sounded good, unless you were a woman who needed to work, especially if you were a single woman. Women not only made less money in the same kinds of jobs as men, but jobs that women dominated, such as K-12 teaching, nursing, and clerical work, paid "secondary" wages or salaries. Women just worked for "pin money," after all, not because they HAD to.

"Experts" over the years tried to make phony-baloney arguments as to why women did and continue to make much less money than men, such as their education levels, workforce participation, and the like. However, the "family wage" concept is the REAL reason traditional women's work has been denigrated, even by so-called feminists who should know better. Women are assumed to be supported by men, and God forbid if you remain single and opt for a career in a field like education. You might do better than women who are in jobs not requiring a degree, but you still can't buy a house and fund a decent retirement on a teacher's salary. You still have to have a man support you financially to have a semblance of a decent standard of living.

Given this reality, this article falls short of the argument because teaching is NOT a blue-collar job. Blue-collar jobs by definition do not require a college degree and they are not considered part of the professions.

The author needs to read Louise Kapp Howe's 1977 classic on "women's work" called Pink-Collar Workers. Howe sadly died in 1984 of cancer, aged only 49, so she wasn't able to do a follow-up or a sequel to her classic work. Had she lived, she likely would have written about the decline of the standard of living for BOTH men and women. The "family wage" concept is almost totally extinct because businesses found that by flooding the labor market with women workers, they could in "good conscience" pay men far less so that both adults in a married household would work for what one worker used to be paid. Businesses also successfully undercut labor unions, so workers had even less say over their pay, benefits, and working conditions.

I fully expect child labor laws to be repealed if public education becomes completely privatized. Those parents who can't afford a private school education for their first-graders can send those kids off to the sweatshops of tomorrow.

Teaching Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be

Another casualty, called a teacher, speaks out about his horrendous experience.

It appears horror stories are the rule, NOT the exception, in public education teaching these days:

Administrators! And now to uncork my particular wrath for the administrators! First, there are far too many of them. Far, far too many. A lot too many. A toiletful too many. Put ‘em out to pasture. Paying for early retirement has got to be cheaper than paying for their mistakes. As they say about the government in general: If you hate the problem, wait ’til you see our solution!

Second, they are all, in my experience, more or less the same interchangeable, vaporous nonentity. Drifting through the halls with a walkie-talkie, unburdened by care or shame, hurrying off to some monumentally inconsequential three-hour off-site meeting, with nothing but a pot of coffee and two brain cells between them, where a plan will be hatched with no purpose, no effect and no follow-through. Leadership begins at the top — simple as that. Schools drift in the fog as a direct result of the log-rolling incompetence of our erstwhile captains and their first mates.

You can tell by the blasé, sour, glassy-eyed look on their faces that they’re simply marking time. I can think of but rare instances to which they added any positive value. To the contrary, they appear at times to be deliberately undermining our best efforts. A suggestion: Maybe at a faculty meeting one of them could vaguely suggest that it’s possible that some of us are perhaps doing an adequate job? A little encouragement? A compliment? And by the way, a five dollar Scratcher at the annual “Faculty Appreciation Day,” or whatever it is, doesn’t mean anything. I don’t want to spend any more time cogitatin’ upon those molecules. It all goes without saying.

I had two assholes like that who somehow are still employed by my old district regardless of their malfeasance or incompetence.

Only Those Who Have Never Done It Think It Is Easy

Teaching is harder than hell because dealing with dozens of kids during the course of a day or a class of 20-30 or more a day is difficult.

Little of the job can be delegated, and you must be "on" all the time. There is no time to mentally "remove" yourself from your work, unlike business or other public sector jobs. Then, especially in the elementary grades, is the specter of always getting sick. Eventually that takes a toll on a teacher's body.

You have to not only be familiar at least with your subject matter, but it is vital to know which methods of teaching work best with different students. In special education classes, it's like a three-ring circus and is difficult to manage. You have to know HOW to teach, which is more important than WHAT to teach. You have to understand child development to be able to do the job.

The hardest and worst part of the job is putting up with idiot or insane administrators. You have utterly no control over your job.

The Truth About Teaching in the 21st Century

It ain't about the kids, and administrators are the absolute shits, worse than ever.

Somebody in Illinois finally had her bellyful of this "reform" nonsense:

So Much for It Being a "Profession"

One should not have to go to school for years on end and wind up working for poverty salaries.  Oh, I know, teaching is a "calling," a "mission," and to hell with paying teachers professional salaries.  That's because it is female-dominated, and female teachers especially put up with a lot of shit to be able to work with kids. Their opinions aren't valued by politicians and reformers because the field is female-dominated.

However, there are bills to be paid, families to support.  No way can a teacher even in this economy can make enough to even buy a house unless married.  I never could in Nevada; housing in the lower-income area where I lived was priced in the 300k range before the economy tanked and I was fired by a no-good, incompetent piece of shit.

Anyway, here is an article about somebody who cannot survive as a teacher:

I am a teacher, and I am the new face of the working semi-poor. We live from month to month, from paycheck to paycheck. It doesn't matter how hard I work, what new ideas I present to my students, what classes I offer for enrichment or how thoroughly I prepare my students: I am paid a salary, divided by 12 months -- no less, no more. "You're lucky to have a job!" "Teaching is a vocation!" "Think of the impact you have on the future!" These public arguments, like all fallacies, contain some meager germs of truth. My job is one of importance, philosophically. Not economically. Financially, teachers are unimportant. Monetarily inconsequential. Our great nation does not esteem teaching, learning or education.

Yep, and it is getting much, much worse.