No need to take my word for it: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/15/us/teacher-pay-myth-misconcep...
I’m not sure how to interpret this. Are you saying they indoctrinate kids? Do they exist to teach kids __how__ to think or __what__ to think?
Which current failures are they fighting?
As to my previous comment about “grifters”, I’ll admit that was too cynical and over the top. I don’t think individual teachers are. However, their unions are pretty close.
Depending on the teacher and school, everything from kids coming to school hungry or without supplies to obesity to discipline problems to cheating to bullying/cyberbullying to child abuse to uninvolved parents to mental health problems to anxiety to drugs to deficiencies in the curriculum to achievement gaps between genders, classes and races to lack of good role models to gang culture.
That's not to say every teacher works to address all those things at once - at some schools they might not contend with any at all! But I've seen people call on the education system to do almost everything you'd otherwise expect parents to do.
Public schools are a part of the system and the system has only continued to grow larger and larger over the last 75+ years. So what is the solution, to make the system even larger? More of the same failed therapeutic?
More and more "solutions" have been added to an outdated school system and has continued to show worse and worse results. This is quantitatively proven. Yet, we continue to tinker and politicize public schooling. To your point, we've decided to inject more and more social issues into schools, expanding scope of all things except effective learning.
And the teachers unions are a huge part of this. They support unaccountable teachers, pay for time and not for merit, and combined with the progressive wing of the country they are allied with countless special interests which are all too eager to continue to have their interests blended into the curriculum. Because no time to make a customer for life then when they're young.
So yes, the system is failing and the solution has continued to be "Add more system". We spend more and more every year and get worse and worse results. We should dissolve the public school system (government should not be in this business at all) and grant each student a sum of money that parents can use to place kids in private schools of their choice that suit their child's abilities and the parents aspirations.
This is a good breakdown on how some teachers are in fact a big part of the problem with educating kids:
https://fee.org/articles/the-failure-of-american-public-educ...
Typically full-time and usually year round, though some work seasonally for about 3/4 year (but still full-time), with commensurately reduced annual pay.
Except your calculations support exactly what I said.
> It’s 3 months off.
Yes, it's typically 3 months off if they don't work summer session in a traditional schedule.
Which most who are able to (there are reduced available positions) do.
Hence, the full-time but, for some, 3/4-year seasonal full-time that I stated.
But they get golden health care, pension, and early retirement. Good for them. This is why teachers aren’t suckers as the OP suggested. They’re in on a great scam. Good for them.
The sucker working retail could only dream.
No, it's full-time seasonal work.
> The sucker working retail could only dream.
Retail generally doesn't require a four-year degree, plus a post-graduate credential as a basic qualification. Compared to professions that do, schoolteachers pay and benefits are between unremarkable and substandard.
They have public sector unions that negotiate their compensation. I don’t think it’s teachers that are being bullied here.
Let's not; considering it doesn't make their total pay and benefita particularly good for the entry requirements, though it makes it somewhat less bad, leaving them only 11.1 percent behind comparable professions instead of 18.7 percent considering pay alone, as of 2017.
Many already have, as the local and state governments that control these pensions and benefits are constantly changing.