I keep hearing people complaining that teachers only work nine months out of the year. It is true that the average school year is 180 days. 180 school days. Remember weekends? In actuality the average school year begins in late August and ends in mid-late June. That's closer to ten months. So teachers have two months off, not three.
In every country in Europe workers get at least 20 paid vacation days. In France and Finland, they get 30. In most of these countries it is required by law that workers are granted this vacation. In other words, Americans are suckers, and those American suckers are just jealous that teachers get the time off they would all get if they just had the balls to stand up for themselves and not be duped and taken advantage of.
A ten month work year is simply the nature of the teaching job, and if we want to attract quality people to the job we have to accept the reality of the job. We all hear about how CEOs have to be paid tens of millions of dollars per year because that's the only way to attract quality people to the job (granted, it's hard to find a person devoid of conscience and empathy, willing to give non-stop rimjobs to Wall Street). No one seems concerned that we attract quality people to the teaching profession. At this point anyone who pursues teaching is making a conscious sacrifice. These are people who have rejected other professions in favor of a job that is less rewarding financially and in terms of respect given, but more rewarding in terms of conscience and self-respect. Teachers become teachers because they want a job that means something and is a positive force in the world. Many jobs are just the opposite, and many Americans who pursue those jobs are complicit in evil and should be ashamed of themselves. It pains me that they are not.
The Daily Show recently pitted Fox News shitmouths against themselves and exposed them as the corporate shill Wall Street rimjobbers they actually are. "One point of comparison was the matter of salaries. As Jon Stewart showed via clips from Fox, when a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for those making $250,000 and more was proposed, the Fox pundits asserted that people who make $250,000 a year are not rich. They even made the odd claim that if a family in that income bracket had four kids in college, then they would be close to poverty." They were also defending the scandalous bonuses that the banks and Wall Street were handing out to the scum that just crashed the economy, bonuses funded with money taken from the American suckers, the taxpayers, in the bullshit bailout. What happened to the FREE MARKET? Bank of America and Citibank should no longer exist. They crashed and burned and the taxpayers built them a time machine.
In contrast, "when the same pundits considered the average salary of $51,000 for Wisconsin teachers, they regarded it as a rather excessive amount of pay. This seems rather an odd claim from the same folks who claimed that $250,000 could be regarded as being close to poverty. It seems to be a matter of basic math: $250,000 per year (plus) falls into the “not rich” and “close to poverty” zone, then $51,000 per year should certainly not be rich and should probably be in the poverty zone. After all, $51,000 is a lot less than $250,000."
Americans don't seem to respect teachers or the profession, but of course what they are most concerned about is that money coming out of their paycheck. After all they need that money to buy their children video games and DVDs so the little bastards will leave them alone. Then they send those kids to school but who gives a shit if they learn anything.
FYI: the stuff in quotes was purloined from The Philosopher's Blog...http://aphilosopher.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/fox-news-war-on-teachers/
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