I loved teaching middle school, but putting in 70 hours a week, commuting 80 miles round trip a day (I couldn’t possibly live in the small town I was teaching in), being in the closet at work, struggling with conservative community ideals, and dealing with the poor discipline set out by the principal was too much for me. Of course, it didn’t help that I was getting paid just enough to pay for rent, gas, food, and some entertainment — not enough to really save money.
Tenured Radical today links to this New York Times article describing a new charter school in the Bronx that plans to pay middle school teachers $125,000. According to the article:
The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.
This salary is actually 5 times what I earned to teach in rural Iowa, and actually 5 times what I earn now. Granted, the cost of living is much greater in New York City than in rural Iowa or small town Oregon, and I wouldn’t advocate paying so much for teachers in places with a lower cost of living. But these teachers definitely deserve good pay.
Tenured Radical also raises some great points in regards to the different value given to primary and secondary teachers versus the value given to professors:
Why shouldn’t people with Ph.D.’s be teaching at the secondary level and be respected for it? Answer: because many of us in so-called higher education regard such teaching as low status work that returns few benefits. So instead we complain endlessly about the quality of students entering college today, and help new Ph.D.’s who don’t get jobs put together tenuous strategies for staying on the job market as long as they can reasonably afford to do so. Those who do not make it into a tenure-track job move around the country for one year positions, put together brutal adjunct teaching loads, and so on. Then, when that stops working for them, these intelligent, outgoing people who really wanted to be teachers go to law school. What if teaching high school or middle school were actually regarded as high status work that did not close the door to a university job in the future? I’m thinking.
I think it’s time that we started viewing public school teachers as intellectual workers, giving them more respect and status. Too often their villainized as inferior or viewed as baby-sitters. They’re over-worked and not given time for professional development, planning, and reflection that they deserve. As I noted in a comment on Alex Reid’s blog, this lack of respect for teacher’s time leads to sloppy teaching — at least in my experience.
I completely agree with you about the need to view teachers as intellectual workers.
But I wonder if we can have that and have the formal structures that come with unionizing. And while I know this is a touchy subject all around, it seems to me that if one wishes to have or feels the need for union protection, one is accepting the status of one’s work as comparable to other unionized workers – (read: blue collar, factory, service, etc.). This seems directly at odds with cultivating, especially in the public mind, a notion of teaching as truly intellectual work.
It would be interesting to have discussion about this topic that didn’t descend into a discussion of exploited labor and so forth. I’m not sure how we’d collectively go about it, but I do think we need that kind of conversation across education as a whole.
Thanks, Chris, and I kinda see your point. I think, though, that it’s possible for intellectual workers to be unionized, and perhaps the union is one of the possible routes for teachers to become intellectual workers.
As a former union member in a middle school, I didn’t see the actions of the union as making our work comparable to other work sectors. I might have not been able to see at the time (and still unable) if that was occurring, though. I wanted union protection largely because we lived in a litigious society, and the union would cover my court costs if a parent or student sued me, whereas unionized, I would have to pay those bills myself. I also didn’t believe I should be benefiting from their bargaining work (their labor) without financially supporting them.
Though, historically, your connection does stand, as unions came out of blue collar labor, if I remember my history correctly, and then extended toward white collar labor.
With that said, I don’t think unions are the best answer. Was it Althusser who criticized union ideology for continuing the separation of classes and not working toward solidarity of all classes? Or something like that? But I could still see them having a role.
Chris,
How do you explain college faculty that are unionized?
For example, those of Western Oregon, Eastern Oregon, or Southern Oregon universities (I mention them because I happen to know they are unionized and I’m from Oregon).
Not large schools, but four-year state universities, to be sure.
No, college faculty are not a majority of union members – but then again, they are certainly not a majority of the workforce, either.
I’d also disagree with you and suggest that intellectual work is still very much work/labor, and as such, is no less deserving of union protection than anything else (setting aside the Althusserian question).
Besides, in an age of globalization, unionization for white-collar workers seems to be becoming more and more necessary. (Though this talking point sounds old and stale, even to me.)