are teachers overpaid, page-9

Thanks Atomou ... nice to know someone is on my wavelength.

I taught in NSW (after chucking it in for a more lucrative career as a share trader / investor). It galled me that on a teacher's salary with four kids to raise, my wife had to join the workforce just so that we could survive.

While I enjoy what I do now (and the fiscal shortfall has been well and truly made up) I do actually do miss the classroom. However you are dead right about the stultifying obsession of our educational masters with policy and 'political correctness'. I can recall those endless arse-achingly boring executive and staff meetings about 'duty of care'; gender equity; aboriginal perspectives; etc. etc. Policy heaped upon policy ad nauseum became the norm. I would consign most of them to the 'circular file' reasoning that if it was vital it would come back to me in some form or other. Most often it didn't.

I gravitated away from 'trendy' English to the more disciplined subject of HIstory - and in particular Ancient History (there wasn't too much they could change about our classical Graeco-Roman heritage). I got sick of the mantra of "change". Quite often is was simply change for the sake of change ... or somebody being "innovative' to advance one's career. Most of the time they were re-inventing a well worn wheel and passing it off as outstanding innovative best practice.

I still keep abreast of educational developments as it is a vitally important job that needs be properly understood and valued by the wider community.

I have often found that some of the most ardent critics of teachers are those who themselves have had unhappy school experiences. Sadly, more and more seem to fall into this predicament ... so the cycle continues.

And I still maintain that significantly higher pay (and status) needs to be the first line of attack in redressing the problems that abound in the system.

I had one cynic on my staff who used to say: "if you keep doing what you are doing for long enough and pay no heed to the trendy innovative practices, then one day you will be at the cutting edge of best educational practice".