assignment 17- logan cox- speech

                                                Future of Education

When you ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up, what do you hear? Astronaut, professional athlete, president. You rarely hear a kid say that they want to be a teacher when they grow up. Long hours with bratty kids that don’t listen, not a large salary and a long college education. Sounds like the life doesn’t it? I believe that teachers should be paid more money because of their education level and their devotion to putting up with disrespectful kids for multiple hours a day.

Teachers are responsible for education our youth, our future. Yet they make a measly average annual salary of only around $36,000, according to the NEA. This means that we are only investing $36,000 in our future while someone like a doctor makes at least $184,000 a year. Some teachers go to school longer than doctors but make significantly less. This is because we don’t value our education system and therefore the education of our future. For those of you that didn’t know, my mom is a professor at Georgetown University. She has her doctorate and went to school for 12 years to get the full education she needed to become a college professor. An average medical professional goes to school for around 10 years and makes an average salary of around $184,000. While an average college professor goes to school as long as or longer than a medical professional, they make maybe one fourth of what a medical professional makes. Why is this? Yes teachers are paid through taxes and medical professionals are paid through whatever company they work for which is why they make so much more but shouldn’t this be changed? It won’t be an easy or quick change but it’s something that needs to be pondered and eventually changed. Teachers put in a lot of time into helping kids learn but what motivation do people have to be a teacher if you get paid very little and get to be in debt from 10 or more years of education. Even for teachers at a lower level they require at least 4 years of a college education. No one wants to be in debt and not be able to get out of it because you don’t make enough money. So let’s invest in our future and raise teachers’ salaries.

Teachers have to babysit a good amount of the time in school. When you get a class, like Mr. Popes 6^th hour, which never shuts up, it can be very annoying and stressful to be a teacher. Teachers have to deal with entitled kids that do not want to be there day after day but yet, they make a very small amount of money. Who would want to ever do that? Have to break up fights between kids like Mr. Behler had to do last year when a fight broke out in his English class, cough cough James. What motivation do teachers have to teach and keep control over there class when they make less than a garbage man does. We need to invest in our future, and our future is being decided by teachers so isn’t it reasonable to invest some money into paying teachers? I’m not offering a solution to this problem but I do think that it needs to be brought to people’s attention and that eventually the government will need to do something about it.

Teachers are the educators of the future. They work long hours with disrespectful kids just to be under paid. Let’s give kids a reason to want to be a teacher when they are young, so when you ask them what they want to be when they grow up they respond with “I want to be a teacher”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                Source

Average Starting Teacher Salaries by State." Rss. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2014.

Smith, Jacquelyn. "The Best- And Worst-Paying Jobs For Doctors." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 20 July 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2014.

Waiting for "superman" Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Perf. Michelle Rhee and Geoffrey Canada. 2010. Documentary.

 

Cox, Angie. "Education." Personal interview. 12 Dec. 2014.