Teacher's Remarks

Well, I figured I might as well try to document the arguments my various teachers propose to the class and see if anybody has any illumination behind it.

First one is from my sociology professor. We got into society’s values being reflected in the prices and effort in various projects. He went on a 5 minute speech talking about pathetic and misprioritized our civilization in America is. He bases his argument on the fact that teachers are paid no where near as much as they should, and yet people would spend 700 dollars for a ticket in a billion dollar stadium (Dallas) to watch million dollar players play a little boys game while first grade teachers who set the stage for literacy in the youth are so underpaid.

Now, I’m probably very wrong, but from my economic point of view, the salary of teachers in comparison to the baseball players is because of the abundance of teachers that can impart teaching. We don’t choose between all the learning and all the entertainment in the world. We choose between various units, marginal units. We have so many teachers already, not including those inspired to be. Football players have a specialized field that not many people can reach. One could say that a relative wage discrepancy is due to the abundance of teaching in the country. Now, the quality of the teaching can definitely be improved. But my point remains teh same.

Now this one, maybe someone could elaborate on. My political economy teacher talks about how laissez-faire capitalism leads to managed capitalism. Corporations from capitalism apparently realize the power they have. Their location affects local jobs and packing up and moving can direct and allocate jobs in a way that they can hold back and charge prices in cities because they have the power to actually influence the demand of buyers and workers themselves. Anyone?

I would say to your sociology teacher that he shouldn’t have choosen to work as a teacher if he thinks that. Teachers get paid enough to live comfortably but they are obviously not rich. If your teacher is complaining about the pay of his job compared to football players, then he shouldn’t have choosen to become a teacher, and instead, should have choosen to become a football player. No one forced him to become a teacher. I hate when teachers pull that “I don’t get paid enough” crap, if they dont like the pay, then choose something else. All people training to become educators know that they are not going to get a high pay, so stop complaining about it. I am in school to become a teacher, and I know that the pay isn’t that high but that is something I am not too concerned about. I much rather educate students than complain about my wage to students.

Coporatism involves the influence of a State and the State alone… I do not know how your political econ teacher came up with the conclusion that free markets have anything with that…

By any good measure, teachers and professors are generally overpaid.