Somebody who teaches rhetoric sat through multiple debates about the so-called paradox of tolerance without thinking about the social contract once? Maybe I should just teach, I'm also incompetent at everything I do.
Having worked in public education for nearly a decade now, I absolutely hate your response and how much it validates those entitled parents who call my coworkers overpaid babysitters.
On the other hand, I hate even more the fact that your comment perfectly represents the career choices of about 7-10% of the teachers I know. That's far too high a number of people who decided to influence the life-path of children because they figured it's easy if you're complacent and callous enough.
I have nothing but respect for teachers that actually want to help kids learn and grow, and it sucks really bad for them but it needs to be harder to become qualified to teach, and also it needs to be an extremely well paid profession. Like 120k minimum
Agreed, but the words you're looking for are "more rigorous," not "harder." Becoming a teacher is already relatively hard, unless you're willing to accept lifelong debt, take tons of meaningless tests, pay for your own trainings, and learn how to trade your ambitions for potentially oppressive discipline.
Obviously the parents you deal with are morons who won't raise their little shits properly, that's not in question at all, but your comment comes across as "I hate your response because it's offensive, but also because it's accurate". Was it ever in doubt? Teaching has been deliberately underfunded into being an objectively terrible career path, you get treated like shit and paid like it too. The only people who will do that job now are:
Incompetent morons who are willing to work for peanuts after being fired from half a dozen hospitality industry jobs, because school districts will hire anyone with a pulse who's willing to take abuse (Indiana will let you teach with a fucking Business degree now, cosmetology certifications for teaching math can't be far away)
Sociopathic sadists who just want to be bullies but aren't willing to be correctional officers
Miserable, jaded cynics who don't care at all and phone it in every day
Idealistic lifers who actually believe in idealistically Helping The Children, 100% of whom will be beaten down into becoming number 3 within 10 years, except for the ones who quit for a job where they'll make more money and get treated better, such as waiting tables or driving a forklift
Is it any surprise I trashed the teacher in the OP? If anything I was being charitable in assuming incompetence, since we're rapidly approaching the point where malicious conduct will be statistically the most likely and will have to be assumed. Some MAGA-infested districts are already there.
My wife is a middle school public English teacher. She was one of the idealists who got into it to help kids. She has been so beat down by her pants on head retarded administration, shit pay, awful students and parents that she has gone from the idealist that wants to help the next generation to the miserable jaded teacher that just gets through the day as quickly as possible while looking for another career.
That's the modern system working as intended right there. And the people who ensure this is done have their kids in private religious schools, so they're well pleased.
Stop it! Get out of my head! I've had this exact conversation with many of my peers. I've told a number of very good teachers that I'll never hang out with them in a private setting because the fact that they choose to do what they do for what they're paid shows that they're mentally unstable.