I was just listening to a discussion about handwriting on the radio and the expert on lefthandedness was this chap:
http://scholar.harvard.edu/joshuagoodman/home
I got quite the chuckle, I must say, after reading this thread.
I was just listening to a discussion about handwriting on the radio and the expert on lefthandedness was this chap:
http://scholar.harvard.edu/joshuagoodman/home
I got quite the chuckle, I must say, after reading this thread.
Why the chuckle? The man has obviously used his academic gifts. He must have recognized he was capable of higher education, so he sought it out and then obtained a job commensurate with his education. SAY would be proud. You would counter SAY if the man had stayed a math teacher, despite several advanced degrees, because he valued that job the most and was willing to forego any career benefits from his time and financial investment.
So let’s not put too fine a point on it, TheGFG. Is a SAHM a “waste” of her education? I mean, it’s not logically consistent of you to argue that it’s sub-optimal to take a “lesser” career but ok to drop out of the work force altogether. Either making the most $ is the criteria or it’s not.
Being a museum curator was just an example but that job has little in common with a HS teacher. The income range is 150-300k if a significant entity but it’s much more about the work you do, the environment, and the room for intellectual growth. The posters on this thread talk about HS’s as if the typical school is like Palo Alto HS. This is not reality. As I said before the average HS student is barely literate and 75% will not obtain a college degree. In a small percent of the top schools it can be a rewarding job but at the majority of the schools in the county it’s hardly stimulating. I suggest you take a look at the scores at any city school district in America. Overall I imagine one’s perspective comes from the education level of the parents. If they are educated as are the majority of the parents of the children enrolled in elite schools it just isn’t surprising they would hope their children obtain advanced degrees. After all in today’s economy most undergraduate degrees are more like HS diplomas of 50 years ago. Do you realize the person at the counter of Enterprise Rent a Car has a college degree? It is a mandatory requirement for employment. The world and economy have changed and knowledgable parents are aware of this and guide their children accordingly.
SAY says ‘The implosion of law schools is just the beginning. Eventually the students and families figured out that the debt required to graduate could not be justified by the level of income generated after graduation. The situation with elite colleges is very similar.’
It is true there are too many law school grads every year. It may also be true there are just too many college grads (of any major) every year. Jobs may be displaced or eliminated because of technology. All the more reason to go to elite colleges, to elite law schools. If the labor market is shrinking, where are companies and law firms going to go to recruit?
ITT just folded, Corinthian last year. Private colleges are closing, an average of five per year, which Moody’s expects to triple by 2017. State-supported universities can be increasingly more correctly defined as ‘state-affiliated’ due to shrinking funding.
I cannot predict 20, 50, 100 years into the future. But I’d bet that a degree from Yale or Michigan or Middlebury or Davidson, among dozens of others, will continue to hold its prestige, be a place for learning and interacting with other smart kids, and even be the springboard to a satisfying career, whether for STEM or medicine, teaching or curating.
I call shenanigans, @SAY.
Seriously, if you want to convince anybody of the validity of your claims (which you need to define better, by the way, but that’s a completely separate issue), you need to try using real statistics instead of those that a quick google verifies you’ve pulled out of your hat.
Department of Education and National Institute of Literacy numbers show that the illiteracy rate among high school graduates in the United States is 19%. And yes, that’s functional illiteracy, and thus fits your “barely literate” threshold—this isn’t being able to sound out the words on a stop sign and that’s it.
Please stop throwing around claims you haven’t taken the trouble to verify. It casts doubt on things you claim which might actually be correct.
First of all, I am currently working on a project related to my undergraduate education and past job experience. Secondly, in my post I acknowledged that family concerns and health issues are important caveats. For example, my youngest daughter has significant disabilities and has needed much more care than the average child–a consideration that greatly impacted my personal choice. Third, we are talking about young people choosing colleges and starting their careers–not moms in their late thirties like I was when she was born.
SAY, whether it’s stimulating or not isn’t for you to decide. It’s for the “holder” to decide.
Using the hs history teacher example, my S, if he were to choose that route, would wind up being one of those teachers who approach the subject with so much enthusiasm - and likely inspire students to care about the subject - that he’d be one of those dream teachers. It is consistent with everything he is as a person. Who are YOU to suggest that wouldn’t be as satisfying as, say, working in a political think tank or being a financial analyst or a museum curator? Isn’t that kind of arrogant on your part to decree what is satisfying and what isn’t? Lots of careers I didn’t have any interest in, but I’m not everybody. And neither are you.
At least she wasn’t a beauty school drop out.
You know what’s coming.
I got the chuckle because:
a) He took his elite Harvard bachelor’s degree not to Wall Street or an elite law or medical school but to the admittedly elite Cambridge to get a master’s not in physics (or another STEM field) but in (the horrors!) education.
b) He then proceeded to teach math in a public high school, which apparently some here would find a “waste” of both his talents AND his elite education.
I also assumed the things he learned in that public high school classroom may have helped inform what he studied in his doctoral program and helped mold him into the expert in his field he is today.
Nobody said you had to get a chuckle too.
@SAY, are you saying that working as a teacher in a low-performing school is not rewarding or stimulating? Some grads of elite colleges go to work specifically at schools in inner cites or rural areas. Before I became a SAHD at 40 (and wasted my education, I guess) I was a therapist in community mental health centers. Virtually none of my clients or their parents had been to college. Many lacked insurance. I wasn’t pulling down 150K a year like some firefighters in San Jose (that does sound outrageous to me in small-town NC but what do I know about California?), and it was not work I could sustain to support a family without a better-paid spouse. In fact, when I figured I was clearing $3000 per year after taxes and day care, I quit, as that was in every way the best decision for our family. But I’m glad I did that job before I was married.
Pizza some things are more interesting. Of course it’s up to the person but it’s a fact not my opinion. Driving a bus and flying a jet liner are both transportation jobs but Sully is a lot different from any bus driver. Pretending all jobs are equal does ones children no favors since they will find out the truth anyway. The educational system of today is very good at sorting people based on their IQ’s which wasn’t so true 50 years ago. Regardless of what parents want the vast majority of young people will end up in an occupations commensurate with their intelligence. There of course is plenty of variation but there are few if any potential jet pilots driving buses.
You may want to look up what entry level airline pilot pay is.
Ubc the key word in your sentence was entry. The job isn’t a good as it once was and like all well rewarded jobs it takes years to get there. But it’s quite different from the pay being based entirely on years of service and nothing else.
Referring to being a pilot, @SAY wrote:
Seriously, if you want to convince anybody of the validity of your claims, you need to try…
Oh, never mind.
Dbf I don’t need to convince anyone. Teacher seniority pay is a fact. As are rubber rooms and the fact that it’s almost impossible to fire a teacher once they obtain tenure.
@SAY, someone here doesn’t seem to exhibit the reading/reasoning ability/awareness that can be expected of graduates of those elite institutions you speak so fondly of.
How do you think pilot pay is determined?
I’m not sure if your first sentence includes teachers in its assertion. But teacher pay in my state is not solely based on seniority, though years of experience certainly play into it. The career ladder also includes things such as educational level, and “performance evaluations.” Not to say the whole thing doesn’t come with a certain amount of controversy, but it’s definitely not solely a function of how many years one stays in the profession. And I doubt my state is the only one that uses this kind of a system.
Gosh, based on my family members who are airline pilots, and one who is a retired USAF then commercial pilot, I’m going to go with
SENIORITY!
What does the mechanics by how teachers get paid have anything to do with anything, SAY?
I hope you enjoy your nice affluent California coastal town where everyone sits around one-upping one another on the schools they go to and checking to ensure one’s neighbor’s children have made the most money. It sounds just delightful.