Progressive Education: Early August, and Kids Already in School
“Art and music teachers have the hardest job because they have to teach all grade levels.”
What can I say? Evidently you have not had much teaching experience in academics in the core subjects which are most important on a student’s college application transcripts, or maybe no experience in secondary education, for that matter. If you are assigning and grading the appropriate number of papers for your high school students, giving grades, which the students often tend to challenge, if you are a tough grader, you have a different level of challenge on your hands. How much do you penalize them (and is it the same for every student) for sentence fragments vs run-on sentences vs overall coherence, fresh ideas? How do you assign topics which students cannot just copy off the internet? How do you run a discussion with older adolescents, who are on any given day spacey, surly,or suddenly motivated and ready to work, with a varying combination each day. I do not mean to denigrate either art or music, but the level of academic competition, parental challenges, decisions about which books to teach papers to assign, skills to test, high-stakes tests to be prepared for, is almost a completely different world from that of music, art, and phys.ed teachers, all of whom have huge numbers of students, but relatively low involvement (of necessity) with any one of their students, unless they happen to be (to use a little hyperbole) a genius or a criminal.
Hey, it is quite possible that your hubby is an exceptional hard-working, brilliant, entrepreneurial guy with a very special skill set and work ethic that sets him off from almost any “employees.” I assume that he does that, rather than teach, because he wants to, and also plans to make a lot more money in the process. Good for him; but is your point that there are millions of people like him out there, being disrespected by our society which pays its teachers, firemen, policemen etc. a moderate living wage?
I certainly do not want any of them abusing the pension system and believe that pension reform may indeed, be appropriate, but society does need people to perform the tasks mentioned above. I will simply repeat my main point which is that if teaching is such an easy, well-paying job, then take it. You, evidently were in a position where you could afford to be a full-time volunteer for years, which puts you in a category almost by yourself. Tough to extrapolate much from that. And if you had volunteered to teach five high school classes full-time for four years, you would probably be the only person in the country to do so…and I’ll go out on a limb to say that you could not have done it. I wouldn’t bet against you being able to do it in art, but, otherwise, I’m thinking….NO.
I certainly approve of any programs and strategies which get better people into the classroom, but the better people have to want to go there.
