Brief little rant: I'm currently a Toddler teacher and it's NOT okay what teachers get paid. I realize to most that Toddler and teacher do not go together in the same sentence and that to most I'm not teaching them addition, or how to analyze a story, or grammar, but those people would be wrong. Toddlers learn differently than school age children do; and so I teach them differently than school age children need to be taught.
When I leave that building at the end of the day, I'm not going home as just another citizen. I'm going home as a teacher. When I go out in public, I'm going out as a teacher. Those children and their families recognize me as a teacher. When I get on my computer, I'm getting on the computer as a teacher because I am dedicated to what I do and I enjoy researching how to teach better or to share information with others (teaching).
What strikes me is that this level of dedication: the fingerprinting, the censoring of yourself, the background checks, the moral compass that becomes habit to wear, is not rewarded in our culture. It's not valued as it should be. Teachers are expected to do this because they love doing it regardless of the money. Doctors and lawyers who are also dedicated to serving the public to varying degrees are paid a mint. It just makes me wonder what makes something important or not, what makes something low brow or not?
I think a lot of it's due to the fact that teaching is a typically female profession. Because for most of history women have received little respect for the jobs they do, any profession associated with women by default is not respected. Teaching particularly faces this issue because we work the children and so that line between teaching and babysitting is blurred or simply doesn't exist for most people (unless they are in some way tied to education). Unfortunately, in our culture societal respect for your position pretty much equals the amount you get paid.
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