I’ll often hear people saying this kind of thing:
“It’s ridiculous that some Hollywood actor – who does nothing more than provide entertainment – is paid zillions of dollars, while a public school teacher – perhaps one of the most valuable contributors to our society – is paid peanuts.“
Sometimes you’ll hear the same thing with football players or musicians plugged in instead of actors as the fancy-pants lot, but the spirit of it remains the same: It’s mostly meant to be a statement that champions the underdog. At first glance, a crisper way to say it might be “Teachers are underpaid!” But that’s an over-simplification. It leaves out the undertone, the subtext.
The under-meaning is that in addition to all the underpaid teachers, there are also some people that are overpaid. One might even say that there’s a not-so-subtle implication that the situation could be fixed if we did the Robin Hood thing – took from the rich and gave to the poor. After all, why should people who provide services that are more valuable be paid less?
Most of us either know a public school teacher or have been one ourselves (as I have) – so we know that it’s a shit-ton of work for very little money. And if we don’t happen to personally know a highly-paid actor, we may suspect that actors surely don’t work as hard as school teachers – so why should they get the big bucks?
All of this is rational, experience-based thinking, to be sure. But if we take an honest, helicopter view of the entire situation, I think some of our gut-level hunches about the apparent unfairness of teacher pay versus actor pay might crumble like day-old coffee cake. So let’s do that. Let’s take a look.
Robin Hood
Economics 101 says that higher pay will always be shelled out for more valuable services in a free market. That’s not wrong. It’s a fundamental tenet of Supply and Demand. So, when we’re presented with the case of Pat the Public School Teacher versus Sam the Hollywood Film Star, we’re stumped.
It’s awfully tempting to blame the “free market” for creating a monster economy where superfluous dandies are showered with riches while the educators of our children are living close to poverty level. It’s awfully tempting to wish for a Robin Hood to come save the day, to re-distribute the wealth more equitably. But I would strongly advise against giving in to such temptations, and instead take a closer look at the situation in hopes of seeing the real culprit.
It ain’t the failure of free market capitalism that’s causing school teachers to get the shaft. It’s tinkering with the free market that’s the problem. If anything’s to blame, it’s the antics of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. As it turns out, Robin Hood is truly a robbin’ hood, a socialist trickster. And public school teachers are getting screwed because they’ve become…well…wards of the State.
It’s probably good for us to understand this, lest we all fall victim to the same dirty tricks and traps.
The Sting
What it comes down to is this: Public school teachers are paid peanuts because they’re not earning their money in an open, fair, or free marketplace. Instead, they’re working inside what is, effectively, a socialist ecosystem. Believe me, I’m not trying to insult public school teachers by saying this. I figure most of ‘em have been properly duped. I am, however, happy to slam the institution that employs public school teachers by calling it out for what it really is.
The socialist working model to which the public school system adheres is inherently rigged against the teachers it employs. Here are just a few of the nasty aspects, bulleted for your consideration:
- The public School System – let’s call it the SS, just for fun – is entirely funded by the State. (Please don’t scold me for failing to account for bake sales and 50/50 raffles at high school football games and other quaint holdovers from Richie Cunningham days, which collectively contribute about zilch to the school coffers.) This State funding means that schools are not incentivized to do anything except suckle the teat that feeds them. And what might the State wish to feed the SS, you ask? Well, it ain’t natural breastmilk. It’s some kind of kooky formula, cooked up by “experts,” containing all the artificial ingredients that the State thinks best. It’s marketed and sold under this brand name: Curriculum.
- The State/SS model flows right on downstream and dumps itself into the teachers’ lounge. Teachers are not incentivized by the SS to invent anything or to be outstanding teachers of young minds. Teachers are incentivized to follow the Curriculum and to contribute a significant amount of their time and energy to the perpetuation of the SS. Ask any public school teacher what they despise most about their job other than their lousy pay, and I bet you’ll get an earful about how they don’t ever have enough time for teaching because they’re too busy with “Admin.” They mean “Administration,” which is just a fancy word for all the useless meetings, paper-pushing, and bullshit that’s inherent in any socialist system. Socialist systems are the ultimate bureaucracies with a twist: Like bureaucracies, they exist primarily so that they can keep existing, and the twist is that they believe that the purpose of their existence is to impose the will of the State. Bottom line: The SS is not in the business of supporting teachers (financially or otherwise) in the education of students. The SS is in the business of jumping through hoops to stay in the good graces of the State.
- If an outstanding teacher does emerge from the trenches, they’ll likely be whack-a-mole’d right back into place. They’re certainly not going to be paid more for doing better work or for providing more value to their employer. The State only gives the SS so much budget, you see, so it’s not the SS’s fault. Their hands are tied! Besides, an individual teacher doesn’t really have a voice that’s recognized by the SS. Sure, some teachers are recognized to be better servants of the SS because of seniority (the number of years they’ve kept their mouth shut and followed the rules), but the SS prefers to communicate with teachers in one big, faceless, nameless lump – as a collective, via the teacher’s union, a socialist sub-layer that does the bidding of the SS while pretending to represent all teachers. This basically means that all teachers are treated the same regardless of individual capabilities or competencies. As you can imagine, this does wonders for morale and creativity. And by the way – it’s worth mentioning that this union-imposed salary ceiling is why teachers can’t ever get ahead financially. It’s why we believe they’re underpaid. They are underpaid, and it’s because they’re constantly being priced down by their union in order to strike a deal with the SS. [Since we started off by comparing teacher pay to actor pay, here’s a little something on the side: Actors have a union too, called SAG-AFTRA (The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), but their union only tinkers with collective bargaining for health care and retirement plans and contract negotiations and such. SAG-AFTRA does not sell actors, as a collective, into an employment pool for film studios and theater companies and whatnot. Can you imagine how much shit would hit the fan if SAG-AFTRA went into cahoots with, say, Netflix, and imposed a flat pay scale for all actors, such that all actors would be paid the same regardless of their capabilities or star ranking? Absurd, right? I mean, duh, you can’t pay all actors the same because some have better chops, some are better at their jobs than others. All the A-listers would abandon ship, for cryin’ out loud. Oh…wait.]
- It’s really hard for public school teachers to break away from the SS model, especially after they’ve been swimming in it for a few years. They become dependent upon it psychologically, if not financially. The same thing happens to them that happens anyone living under a socialist regime: They lose their will. And with that goes their imagination about leaving their current situation in order to create a better life for themselves. They have so much invested in it, you see? It’s all they’ve ever known, you see? Retirement is just around the corner, and that’ll be when life can really begin, you see? The pay is pitiful but it must be so much worse “out there,” outside academia, you see? It’s no different from Eastern Kentucky coal miners in the 1930s. Why didn’t they just drop their shovels and walk over the hill to that little town down by the river and try to make a go of something there? “St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go, I owe my soul to the company store.”
I could go on, believe me. But I’ll park it there in order to save room for the juicy, conspiratorial bit down below. The main take-away so far, if there is one, might be this: If we really want public school teachers to be paid more, the answer isn’t to yammer on and on about it and scoff at people in different professions whom we imagine to be overpaid. The answer is that we need to tear down the whole crappy SS and start from scratch.
It’s a serious task, but not one that’s impossible to envision. Imagine not having to pay any taxes for school anymore. Imagine figuring out a different way to educate kids that would nurture their creativity rather than their compliance. Imagine if there was a way to incentivize teachers to be the best teachers they can possibly be. After all, this is supposed to be all about the kids, is it not? And…dare to dream… If we dared to undertake a new way of doing things, maybe we’d get it right this time. Maybe some superstar teachers would naturally, organically emerge – with superstar paychecks to match.
Phil’s Two Cents
Up above I mentioned having a conspiratorial tidbit to share. It’s true. Here it be:
I really don’t think it’s any accident that socialism has grown such deep roots in our educational system. And I don’t think this business of turning teachers, the educators of our children, into wage slaves is an accident either. This swings right back around to the question posed above about what the State might wish to feed the SS, who, in turn, feed teachers, who in turn feed our children. I never really answered that question directly. I just left it by saying that there’s this thing called Curriculum, some kind of kooky, secret suckling formula, but didn’t have a go at what’s in it.
Since I strongly suspected that the main ingredients are not Readin’ or Writin’ or ‘Rithmetic, I went ahead and asked the guys down at the lab to run some tests for us, and you know what they found?
Curriculum, as currently doled out by the SS, consists of 50% DoS (Dependency on the State), 40% OtS (Obedience to the State), and 10% UI (Unknown Ingredient(s)). Don’t believe me? This is straight from the lab report. What, are you some sort of science denier or something?
Hey, don’t worry. If it makes you feel any better, I was a little surprised at first too. But then I got to thinking about it and something clicked. It all started to makes sense. Hear me out on this: If you were the State, who would you want down there on the front lines of interaction with the next generation of kids? Would you want a bunch of highly-incentivized go-getters to be the primary influence? Not a chance. Not if you want to keep your precious State intact.
– “Phil”
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Postscript, Feb 1, 2022:
I just stumbled upon an interesting substack article by a (Canadian) public school teacher named Stacey Lance. It’s a heart-wrenching read. It’s about how she’s witnessing, first-hand, how her students’ development has been stunted by the loss of human connection imposed by the covid pandemic. Her students are anxious and depressed and lost. It’s just plain awful. She mentions several examples that will just break your heart if you can stomach it.
She mentions that one of her students has become terrified of ever taking off her mask because she’s afraid that it might kill someone. Here’s what Lance writes about this particular student:
“What am I supposed to say? That 23 children have died from Covid in Canada during the whole of the pandemic and she is much more likely to kill someone driving a car? That kids in Scandinavia, Sweden, and the Netherlands largely haven’t had to wear masks at school and haven’t seen outbreaks because of it? That masks are not a magic shield against the virus, and that even if she were to pass it along to a classmate, the risk of them getting seriously sick is minuscule? I want to tell her that she can remove her mask, and socialize with her friends without being worried. But I am expected to enforce the rules.”
I don’t know what saddens me more. Is it reading about these poor students who are having their minds warped by the psychopaths orchestrating the covid show? Or is it reading the words of this intelligent, compassionate, and well-informed public school teacher who has seemingly checked out. She just can’t imagine actually sharing what she knows with her students, face-to-face. She is unable to be a real teacher, to say out loud what’s in her heart. She can only act as an “enforcer of the rules.”
I’m glad she wrote about it. That’s giving it voice. Maybe some of her students will read her article. Maybe she’ll get up the nerve to hike over the hill and see what’s in that little town down by the river.
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