It's not just USA, it's pretty much universal, as much as I've seen it. People like to pretend like it's some sort of noble profession, but I vividly remember having a conversation with recently graduated ex-classmates, where one of them was complaining that she failed to pass at every department she applied to, so she has no other choice than to apply for department of education (I guess? I don't know what is the name of the American equivalent of that thing: bachelor-level program for people who are going to be teachers). At that moment I felt suddenly validated in all my complaints about the system we just passed through.

In some countries teaching is a highly respected profession.

Switzerland and Finland comes to mind.

You can't eat respect.

They are well compensated.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss-salaries-teachers...

That article, after a very pushy illegal gdpr consent banner, says pay is stagnant and hours long

Hours are long for everyone in Switzerland.

110k in Switzerland is a good pay today. The article is from 2017.

In those places salary (and good public services) follows respect

Having lived in 'one of those places' no salary does not.

I went to public schools in middle class neighborhoods in California from the late sixties to the early eighties. My teachers were largely excellent. I think that was due to cultural and economic factors - teaching was considered a profession for idealistic folks to go into at the time and the spread between rich and poor was less dramatic in the 50s and 60s (when my teachers were deciding their professions). So the culture made it attractive and economics made it possible. Another critical thing we seem to have lost.

It was the tail end of when smart women had few intellectually stimulating options and teacher was a decent choice.

For hundreds of years, women could have amazing opportunities by pursuing a religious vocation, get fantastic education in their religious order, and then enjoy a fulfilling life-long ministry in health care, education, social services, etc. All her material and spiritual needs would be provided by her community. For life. Not merely until retirement. Until she died.

Furthermore, young lay women could start out as teachers, which is a fantastic way to learn how to care for young children, and when such a seasoned teacher would eventually marry and begin her childbearing years, she was quite well-prepared to care for children of her own.

Nowadays, fewer and fewer women know how to be homemakers, mothers, or wives, and so they just want to go straight into STEM and/or "girlboss" type stuff. Any women who actually wish to care for children, or educate them, is perceived as weak and reactionary.

It appears you think that giving women the same opportunities as men is a bad thing.

AStonesThrow has, err, strong opinions on this kind of thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41885547

I would question the utility of engaging.

What I take from this is that you dont like reading about history much, with clear exception of overly optimistic religious texts. The religious vocation frequently got you into pretty abusive situation and the #1 expectation was "obeisance". That was what you was supposed to do, primary. Not exactly what person you are responding to is writing about.

Moreover, women never needed to start out as teachers to "be ready for childcare". The childcare expectations were much lower at the time, but amount of chores at home massively higher.

Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. We educate everyone to be the smartest person in the class, and then we don't have jobs for them. And then we complain that education is not good enough. Shouldn't we conclude that education is already a bit too good?

> your retired CEO physics teacher who you loved was not a representative sample

Hey, he was Microsoft’s patent attorney who retired to teach calculus!

In Germany, you have to do the equivalent of a master's degree (and then a bunch) to teach in normal public schools

This selects for people willing to do 8 years of schooling to earn 60k EUR.

And yet a staggering percentage of them are incompetent (both in their subject and as educators generally).

"and then a bunch" is somewhat misleading. They in fact take easier and fewer classes in the subjects that they are studying for, but they have to take extra classes on education, which afaik are not that hard to pass. Getting a "Lehramt" degree is much easier than getting the regular degree in a subject, which is why many people that are simply not good enough for the real thing do it.

Also we have a teacher shortage and more and more teachers are not in fact people that received an education you usually have to get as a teacher, but are just regular people with either a degree in the subject they are teaching or a degree in almost anything (depends on how desperate the schools are and what subjects they are hiring for).

So how many hours have you spent as a teacher?

Because if you're putting forth the assertion "If they could make it elsewhere, they would." you've certainly had spent sometime teaching, yes?

I think it would be good to understand how much experience teaching it took for you to come to that conclusion.