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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Edwarda who wrote (68760)	12/26/1999 7:14:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, I was going to reply to Michael, but for both of you... I would say that there are certainly those dedicated individuals that don't care a hoot about whether they can afford their own apartment or a new car every 10 years, and those are probably the best teachers on earth. But when you are looking at the reality of a career in engineering vs. becoming a math teacher... a 10-fold or more salary difference... the contrast is so striking that I have to wonder who would make the choice of teacher - I wouldn't and I wouldn't encourage a family member to do so either, and its not just the paycheck in itself... it is the valuation that society puts on the teaching profession... lower then a secretary, lower than a technician, etc. - why subject yourself to that, if you are engineering management material (which a good teacher would be)? I agree with Michael that there are other issues with teaching such as corrupt administrations that don't care... but you have a chicken and egg situation really - something has to give - you're not going to get good people in there without decent salaries imo. In general I believe that the excessive $$ put into prisons recently would be better spent on upgrading school facilities in the inner cities too. I don't know about the east coast but out here the school facilities are an embarrassment and these dilapidated structures are sitting right beside beautiful corporate HQ's - another striking contrast - why not upgrade the buildings to show the kids they are worth something to society right off the bat..? On a related note, since I do my investment stuff on Sundays I see these political shows on TV... one day a topic of discussion was the extension of H1-B visa quotas (an issue I deal with every day). John McLaughlin suggested that employers should teach inner city youths how to work in IT as an alternative to importing workers from india. Incredible! These people that come in from India have the equivalent of PhD's in mathematics. If I had to train one of these inner-city youths to say, become an Oracle DBA I would not know where to start, really. These Washington pundits are really out of touch, imo.