Why Are Our Most Important Teachers Paid the Least?

02/01/2018

Why Are Our Most Important Teachers Paid the Least?

When most novice (and not-so-novice) instructors start to plan a course, they focus with varying degrees of excitement and anxiety on the subject matter. But in doing so, they are leapfrogging two crucial questions: "Why do you want to teach?" and "What kind of teacher do you want to be?"
Peter Filene - The Joy of Teaching, p.7

A recent article in the New York Times discusses research findings that show the crucial importance of early childhood educators. The article also has this to say about the low wages many early childhood teachers are offered: "According to a recent briefing from the Economic Policy Institute, a majority of preschool teachers are low-income women of color with no more than a high-school diploma. Only 15 percent of them receive employer-sponsored health insurance, and depending on which state they are in, nearly half belong to families that rely on public assistance. 'Teaching preschoolers is every bit as complicated and important as teaching any of the K-12 grades, if not more so,' says Marcy Whitebook, a director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. She summarizes the impact of low wages on early educators like this: "We want them to ameliorate poverty even as they live in it themselves."

Source: “Why Are Our Most Important Teachers Paid the Least?” by Jeneen Interlandi, The New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2018

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