Teachers deserve more credit than given

By: Alex Sanders

Posted: 10/14/08

On average, a college professor will make approximately $37,197 in his first year on the job, while the average plastic surgeon will make about $123,151 in his first year on the job, according to PayScale.com.

Teachers have an enormous responsibility. They provide insight, alternative perspectives and practically hand students the future. In contrast, plastic surgeons can provide reconstructive surgery, but the overall demand calls mostly for superficial alterations to the body. While one career pays significantly more, it affects the general population less, assuming that more people attend school than choose to get plastic surgery. The qualifications are different as well as the risk to people's lives, but the gain to people's lives is different too. Teaching affects every life, some more than others, but there is no denying that teachers help sculpt people's thinking and possibly behavior. Teachers' salaries should be up there with doctors' and lawyers' salaries.

They have the ability to impact peoples' lives and change their futures. Finally, a school in New York is paying teachers the salaries they deserve. According to The New York Times, The Equity Project Charter School will open in September 2009 in Manhattan's Washington Heights community for the purpose of helping middle school students at risk of academic failure and it will pay teachers $125,000 as a starting salary.

The school is paying teachers that much in the name of good education. The more money that schools offer, the pickier they can be about hiring competent teachers. Schools everywhere should start raising the bar for education, paying teachers more and hiring capable, knowledgeable teachers.

Aside from parents, teachers contribute to peoples' lives more than anyone in any other profession. It is about time that they start getting compensated for the duty they pay to society. Also, society will value teachers more if they are held to higher esteem.

The education system should be reformed in general to allow for a higher salary for teachers. If teachers received higher salaries, they would likely be more dedicated to their job. In the teaching profession, due to the low salary, there is generally an intrinsic desire to teach. A higher salary will provide more extrinsic rewards, which will hopefully encourage teachers to do things like stay after school longer and help students in need or hold more office hours if they teach in a college setting.

The Equity Project Charter School is offering teachers a $25,000 bonus in conjunction with expanding the school day and work year for teachers. This additional bonus will hopefully encourage dedication among teachers as well as help weed out teachers who don't have an intrinsic love of teaching and the drive to work longer hours.

With the economy in shambles, now would not be the best time to raise teachers' salaries. In many schools across the nation, including UConn, we don't have enough teachers to meet a reasonable student-teacher ratio as it is. However, when and if the economy is ever reconstructed to a point of quasi-stability, education should be a priority. Schooling teaches people useful subject matter that can be applied to the rest of their lives. It is possible for people to learn and find a career without schooling, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. Now, to get to the top and make a reasonable amount of money, students need to climb higher ranks in education, all involving learning from the experts: teachers.

Students rely on them to lead them down a path that will hopefully result in promising future. And teachers, in turn, give their thoughts, knowledge and opinions to students to make their lives better and grant them knowledge that will hopefully stick with them for the rest of their lives.

Teachers do receive benefits, but the bonuses are usually not monetary. It is time that schools start a budgeting plan to allocate more money for teachers as the charter school in New York is doing. When the economy is stable, the government should help improve the educational system by hiring an adequate number of teachers and raising salaries to give teachers credit where credit is due.