The Atlas Asylum of absurd/ignorant posts IX

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I motion we rename the thread.

Leave it to public school teachers to be dramatic af.

Maybe if we were given an iota of respect and paid more than 50% of what engineers are paid, we wouldn’t have to be.

Maybe, if they want to be paid more, then they should be engineers?  Take really hard classes in school for four years, operate under very strict project timelines, and and spend all day on CAD?  instead of, y'know, spending all their time with kids, and getting 2 weeks off at Christmas + the summer, and having virtually no accountability in their positions?

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What's extremely absurd about that post?
It's a bit condescending I'd say.

The job description for teachers. Saying teachers just “spend time with kids” is about as accurate as saying doctors “hang out with patients.” The vacation part is very misleading, and saying we have virtually no accountability is wrong on many levels.

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What's extremely absurd about that post?
It's a bit condescending I'd say.

The job description for teachers. Saying teachers just “spend time with kids” is about as accurate as saying doctors “hang out with patients.” The vacation part is very misleading, and saying we have virtually no accountability is wrong on many levels.

What's absurd is you insinuating you should have an engineer's salary, when the two jobs require no comparable type/level of training, technical aptitude or daily work environment.   

If you want an engineer's salary, you should have studied to be an engineer.

First of all, I didn’t even insinuate that (my words were “more than 50%”), and please, lecture me on how simple and not rigorous training for teachers is. I could write several paragraphs on how a Master’s in Teaching is incredibly demanding, draining, and advanced work. Considering many districts essentially require new teachers to have at least a Master’s in this day and age (or, at the very least, give enormous preference to candidates who have a Master’s), I really don’t think it’s that far off of a comparison. And as for daily work environment... have you ever tried teaching? If not, I highly doubt you’re the least bit aware of just how many hidden responsibilities we have that often force us to work significantly beyond our paid work hours. If you’re not at least willing to consider that teaching is more demanding and challenging than it might seem to most at first, I see no point in explaining why.

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What's extremely absurd about that post?
It's a bit condescending I'd say.

The job description for teachers. Saying teachers just “spend time with kids” is about as accurate as saying doctors “hang out with patients.” The vacation part is very misleading, and saying we have virtually no accountability is wrong on many levels.

What's absurd is you insinuating you should have an engineer's salary, when the two jobs require no comparable type/level of training, technical aptitude or daily work environment.   

If you want an engineer's salary, you should have studied to be an engineer.

First of all, I didn’t even insinuate that (my words were “more than 50%”), and please, lecture me on how simple and not rigorous training for teachers is. I could write several paragraphs on how a Master’s in Teaching is incredibly demanding, draining, and advanced work. Considering many districts essentially require new teachers to have at least a Master’s in this day and age (or, at the very least, give enormous preference to candidates who have a Master’s), I really don’t think it’s that far off of a comparison. And as for daily work environment... have you ever tried teaching? If not, I highly doubt you’re the least bit aware of just how many hidden responsibilities we have that often force us to work significantly beyond our paid work hours. If you’re not at least willing to consider that teaching is more demanding and challenging than it might seem to most at first, I see no point in explaining why.

My mom and sister are both teachers and I respect what they do. My mom in particular does a job I would be very bad at - teaching special reading to K-2 nd graders. Due to the silly credentials arms race you mention, my mom went back to get her Master's while I was in undergrad. It was a complete joke of a degree that only exists as a money-making scheme. She showed me the homework from her most difficult class, which was statistics, and it was taught basically at a high school level. I don't blame the teachers for that, but I do blame whoever thought requiring a Master's was a good idea when said Master's essentially just another money-making scheme/hoop to jump through.

It really depends on the program. The program I enrolled in was certainly worthwhile, although I would’ve enjoyed it if my student teaching had lasted longer, and doing the TPA for the majority of the time that I was in the classroom. Some programs don’t offer enough hands-on experience, though, and that’s certainly a problem. My most difficult class was essentially writing and defending a thesis, so I’d say there was certainly some intellectually challenging work.

What's extremely absurd about that post?
It's a bit condescending I'd say.

The job description for teachers. Saying teachers just “spend time with kids” is about as accurate as saying doctors “hang out with patients.” The vacation part is very misleading, and saying we have virtually no accountability is wrong on many levels.

What's absurd is you insinuating you should have an engineer's salary, when the two jobs require no comparable type/level of training, technical aptitude or daily work environment.   

If you want an engineer's salary, you should have studied to be an engineer.

First of all, I didn’t even insinuate that (my words were “more than 50%”), and please, lecture me on how simple and not rigorous training for teachers is. I could write several paragraphs on how a Master’s in Teaching is incredibly demanding, draining, and advanced work. Considering many districts essentially require new teachers to have at least a Master’s in this day and age (or, at the very least, give enormous preference to candidates who have a Master’s), I really don’t think it’s that far off of a comparison. And as for daily work environment... have you ever tried teaching? If not, I highly doubt you’re the least bit aware of just how many hidden responsibilities we have that often force us to work significantly beyond our paid work hours. If you’re not at least willing to consider that teaching is more demanding and challenging than it might seem to most at first, I see no point in explaining why.

I have never said that teaching is undemanding or un-challenging; every position is demanding or challenging in its own way.  My simple point was that the credentials/working environments for teachers is not comparable to those of many higher-paid professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.)  Based on your own description in the other thread, teachers are not assessed based on the results they generate, and that's an example of a pretty glaring difference between teaching and other professions, among others.  Some other glaring differences (no way is this list comprehensive):

1.  Unlike many engineers, doctors or lawyers; public school teachers are not employed in private practice.  They do not have to worry about running a business or soliciting "customers"  There is considerably more security in their positions due to this.  In general, this is a major reason why public employees are paid less than private sector employees in similar positions.   

2.  Being a doctor or lawyer requires a terminal degree (7+ years of schooling for any entry-level position), and many engineering programs are noted for their quantitative or technical rigor.  These aren't "fun" things to study.  As a result, there's a sort of "higher entry cost" to the profession, which fuels higher salaries.

3.  Generous pension plans and other benefits, as have been mentioned extensively elsewhere.

What you're paid has nothing to do with "working hard".  It has everything to do with how many people are standing behind you ready/able to take your job if you were to quit.  The education/certification requirements for teachers (at least compared to engineers, or other high-salary professions) are low, and admission into teaching programs is generally non-competitive.   

Your quote which I posted here certainly sounded like you were saying that teachers have it easy. Yeah, most teachers don’t need nearly as much training and doctors or lawyers, but in my district, it is comparable to engineers and other professional jobs which get higher pay (often significantly higher) than teachers. And as for assessment, that’s at least partially because it’s so subjective. There’s a difference between saying that teachers aren’t only assessed on their students’ grades and saying that there’s no accountability. We do have to provide significant evidence and justification for our practice, and that’s another hidden time sink (for principals as well.)

True, thanks to unions, teachers have some security, but our stipends, as well as funding for classroom supplies, field trips, etc. are not as stable. In too many districts, teachers have to use their own money to pay for classroom supplies. Another solution is to apply for a grant, but that’s an enormous time sink, and most teachers realistically work 55-70 hours a week.

I’m not arguing that doctors and lawyers shouldn’t be paid well or somewhat better than teachers. Simply that teachers are underpaid, even in cities where their salaries seem good (but actually barely keep up with the cost of living.) And plenty of the preparation in programs for teachers isn’t “fun”, either. (Creating a year-long curriculum for an elementary program even though I teach at the secondary level wasn’t a walk in the park.)

I’m very aware that pay has nothing to do with how hard one works, believe me. I can say that if teachers were paid better, teaching programs would be more competitive. As for replacements, it depends on the position. Finding a music teacher who can teach choir, guitar, piano, and general music to students who aren’t native English speakers and many of whom have trauma or IEPs and 504s would not be easy, and finding someone who would stay more than a year or part of a year would be challenging. And don’t get me started on how poorly subs and long-term subs are paid, because custodians literally make way more than subs.

I realize that this has gotten off topic, so I’ll discuss this on another thread if necessary.

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Well, the people of Kentucky would have been better off today, had they elected Bevin instead of this incompetent hack Beshear.

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They haven’t polled the Miami-Dade districts where Biden is doing 15 points worse than HRC.

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From a user who has “improved greatly”, lol.

It seems that New Hampshire (Chris Sununu), Nevada (Adam Laxalt), Arizona (Mark Brnovich), and Georgia (Herschel Walker) are guaranteed pickups for the Republicans

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The inmates control the asylum now when it comes to human interaction. It wouldn't surprise me if a good few of the red avatars in this thread would call a simple and innocent email to a student from a teacher a "threatening abuse of power dynamics" or whatever words they use.

Apparently, teachers drinking and/or getting drunk with underage students is as inoffensive as sending an email, and anyone who disagrees belongs in an asylum.

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Probably Catherine Cortez Masto narrowly. Adam Laxalt has all the other counties in Nevada locked up however.

Even Clark?

Yeah. There is a lot of voter anger regarding the lockdowns. That anger coupled with Republican gains with African Americans and Hispanics should be enough for Adam Laxalt to win Clark County by a 5% margin.

Unfunny concern troll concern trolls in an unfunny way.

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This whole thread. The absurd immaturity on display is just really disheartening.

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FF (GOP). The difference between these truckers and the BLM protestors is that these truckers are opposing government tyranny (mandates) while the BLM protestors were protesting a myth (systematic racism). Exception being that it's still bad to stop police/firefighters etc of course, but I don't think these truckers are doing that.

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I don't really think people are evil for doing this considering how vile Pregnancy Crisis Centers are, but this kind of thing probably isn't great for society.

Pregnancy Crisis Centers do more good for mothers and their children than places like Planned Parenthood have ever done.

Maybe if you believe a mindless clump of cells should be treated like a thinking feeling conscious human being, but I don't live in that world.

You should also be banned from posting in this thread.

Somebody's upset.

Dude, I just want this thread to be about genuinely terrible posts and not just any opinion reactionaries don't like.

To be fair, it's always been the case that 50% of posts in this thread are simply posts that the person in question strongly disagrees with.

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My math may be wrong. But Peltola only won because so many Begich voters did not put a second choice, exhausting their ballot

I showed in my first post that this was most likely not the case. Saying "Palin would have won all the exhausted votes" is pretty lazy.

Palin only needed 5,000 votes to win.  Hard not to imagine a scenario under a traditional system where that wouldn't have happened.  A lot of people simply didn't know how the system worked.  It's essentially a form of voter fraud by disenfranchising Republican voters.

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We literally have people ackshullying about being friends with Nazis. Few things surprise me these days, but I did not expect this forum to fall this far.

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The best way to almost completely eliminate illegal immigration would be to make legal immigration much easier.

This is like saying “The best way to reduce murder is to make killing people legal.”