How Do We Solve the Problem of Education

It is the teachers' own union that spreads the belief and fear that teachers are worthless people and if it wasn't for the union, they would be working at minimum wage jobs -- instead of the delusion that they would be stepping into the CEO of some Fortune 500 company -- from their remedial education classes. The world doesn't work that way -- but the greatest error, is their belief that they are getting paid way less than their comparable peers -- who they believe, are the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies.

But even the beginning teachers, already get paid more than the MEDIAN income for all workers. Essentially, they get DOUBLE the median, because the typical starting salary is about $37,000, and then when you add in health and other nonworking compensation (which is the total compensation), they're up to $60,000 -- or double the median, which means they are in the upper 25% -- to begin, with a guarantee of lifetime employment and pension -- unlike most of the people who will have to go through several jobs in their lifetime, and at times, stretches of unemployment.

Generally, greater risk is required to obtain greater returns -- and very few can be guaranteed consistently high returns, except in the Madoff and Ponzi schemes -- of "guaranteed 8% returns." The actual guaranteed rate of return is what the bonds or Treasury notes are paying, which is currently 2-4%, while those who get more, assume the risk of also losing -- and not the assumed guaranteed 8%. And this is the kind of knowledge, and education, sorely needed by the young people, instead of the dysfunctional perceptions of people who think they are the lowest paid people in society -- while actually they are among the most privileged but ungrateful of that fact -- because most of these people have known nothing else but to be students all their lives (told what to think), rather than actually learning on their own -- which is the tradition and skill of all the great teachers, and not just people learning to pretend to be.

Children and students are usually perceptive of this, and give teachers who don't have that confidence and real mastery in their subject matter, a difficult if not hard time -- which is not cured by more teacher training and infinitely more money thrown at poor teachers while the union keeps the competent others out to prop up such high salaries way beyond their real value.

If one watches things like the National Spelling Bees, they are invariably dominated by the homeschooled teachers, who though comprising a tiny fraction of the population, virtually shut out the larger population schooled by the union public school teachers demanding more because their students are getting worse, and frequently hopeless under their tutelage. This should be sufficient evidence that simply throwing more money at "professional" educators, is not the answer, because that gets us the people who are only in it for the money, and not because that is truly what they love to do. That's what a real teacher would do -- even if all the jobs were paid the same, or even not paid -- as the homeschool teachers largely are. these are the people who should be getting paid to take on a few other students -- because they have proved their abilities, rather than creating the catastrophe that is the public school system corrupted by the unions (trade associations), leaving no resources for society to move beyond endless remedial education.

Teachers shouldn't have lifetime sinecures but should be rotated among the population at large for a few years and move on -- and in fact, should only begin teaching, after they have done something else to become real teachers (as well as students), and not just the union/education school certified kind, who know nothing but learning for its own sake -- and not any real world applications. We don't need to learn the medieval/traditional education (curriculum) but the real world one, which all people love to learn rather than are learning because it's always been done that way before -- and forcing them to learn that, which is the "compulsory" education and its well-known failure to create lifetime job security for "professional educators."

We need to move on from that dependence towards the new possibilities of people learning to teach themselves whatever it is they need to know, or want to, and if they need help, asking their fellow student prodigies, what they know and how to learn that -- instead of being taught by the least able adults, because they are in-charge.