Every teacher wants to get paid more, even though they get paid twice as much as private school teachers yet have little to show for their effort.
How does a teacher get a pay raise?
Go back to school, enroll in more classes, get a master's degree.
If there's time, get that administrative credential, too, and then become a principal, making six figures.
I opted for the Masters Degree in Education, which was just a thorough brainwashing in rearranging prejudices.
I have never felt so assaulted in my life.
Instructors at the graduate level are the truest of "True Believers", like the Followers of Dear Leader in North Korean, blindly committed to the constant growth of the state, believing that the government monopoly of education is a good thing that "should work" if more teachers, dedicated to the thinly-veiled statist agenda infiltrated the schools armed with these "enlightened" ideas.
Some of my colleagues in the class, who espoused a liberal mindset, felt that the assigned reading was too liberal. I was also appalled at the instructor in one class, because of her direct attack on the libertarian views of John Stossel, a journalist whom the instructor wanted to "throttle".
I found many of the views she shared both tiring and unsubstantiated, yet beliefs are not subject to scrutiny, especially for "true believers."
I was also saddened to hear that she felt that she has done more good as an elementary school teacher in Inglewood, CA.
A few weeks before that class ended, the students in her class (all of which were teachers trying to clear their credentials and earn a Master's Degree at the same time) debate the merits and consequences of illegal immigration, and the precarious status of children legally (and illegally) residing in the country.
I found the arguments of most of my peers very personal and emotional, yet not persuasive. Compassion is a necessary component of private life, yet to be shackled by feelings and residual guilt in enforcing state and federal law is a disservice to every American citizen, whether born or naturalized.
One young man presented a very thorough, and personal, case for permitting illegals as children to remain in the country, receive an education, and even become teachers.
I pointed out to him, as I did to the other students with whom I was debating, that this welcome outcome should not enable a policy of skirting the law. What about the legal residents, those naturalized citizens who followed the law to the letter, paid the necessary fees, passed the required exams, and now legally and morally reside in this country?
To say the least, the young man I spoke was affected by my line of reasoning, calm yet kowtowed somewhat. Still, it is unfortunate that a number of teachers, at the behest of liberal instructors, are advised to go with a corrupted instinct of universal fairness, as opposed to a free society that must be legal to remain free, though its political results may not seem just to everyone.
In the midst of our discussion, the instructor interrupted, trying to make the case of the young man I was speaking with. She brought up side issues and non sequitur superficialities, like "our immigration policy" is broken. When I made the point that legal outcomes cannot be fair, since such a concept has no bearing, meaning, or possible appearance in trade and human affairs, she cut me off:
"Why can't it be fair? Why can't life be fair?"
Fairness as a doctrine has as many perverted heads as a divine hydra, any argument based on reason never able to slay the unwieldy beast, yet certain to do much more damage than good.
In the midst of another explanation, she then turned the discussion again, "Isn't he a great debater?" She motioned towards me. That would always be besides the point, and the one that I had been making before had yet to be competently challenged or refuted.
In the last class of the year, I got into a heated argument with the instructor. She tried to stop me from talking, claiming that I had a tendency to shut students down in the classroom. Another student was permitted to interrupt me with snide comments when I shared, but the instructor never rebuked her.
Finally, I got so upset.
She yelled back at me. "I am the instructor in this class. You do not respect me. You do not respect me, not at all."
She was not mistaken. I had no respect for the whole enterprise. These graduate seminars were disseminating information. They were merely rearranging and validating prejudices, tried and true beliefs of the left, none of which can withstand whithering, or even wishywashy, scrutiny.
I had had enough. I left class early that evening, resolving not to attempt two courses at one time per trimester.
Eventually, I did away with completing the Master's Degree altogether.
No matter how anyone may dress up post-graduate learning at the University Level, the ideas that flow from these distant instructors is simply appalling, if not impossible to believe without surrendering a part of one's sanity and sensibility. Instead of circumventing racist notions, coursework in education seeks to solidify such parameters in our evaluation of the needs and capacities of young people.
I am still to this day sickened by the lack of open minded curiosity among a number of these academics. When I proposed to the instructor that she read Friedrich Hayek's work
"The Fatal Conceit", her first question, almost in knee-jerk fashion, "Is the author a white male?" I mean, whatever happened to not judging a book by its cover? Yet it seems among academics that it is not only sensible and reasonable, but even chic and a sign of a culture mind not just to questions titles before reading them, but to take into account an arbitrary relationship between author's genetic constructs and his ideas.
What ever happened to the liberal and open inquiry for which universities used to be held?
On top of that, the instructor always assumed that I was the one who needed to be more open minded, open to different ideas, not as if she or the other stable cadre of teachers had any need to consider different views, especially in light of supporting evidence and historical confirmation.
Yet that would require academics and teachers to give up the comfortable mantra of "This should work; this should work; this should work."
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