One of the political parties within my country recently came with this “brilliant” idea to get up the wages of teachers throughout the country. It has been a topic of concern within the parliament for many years already since teachers strike regularly on being so-called underpaid for what they’re doing, personally after having heard [...]
One of the political parties within my country recently came with this “brilliant” idea to get up the wages of teachers throughout the country. It has been a topic of concern within the parliament for many years already since teachers strike regularly on being so-called underpaid for what they’re doing, personally after having heard on what they actually make I’d say they have nothing to complain but the government didn’t agree with me on that one.
So now how do you get the money available for teachers to be paid with without taking it from another government section? Of course you’ll have to cut somewhere within your own area, so everything related to education could fall possible victim here.
The brilliant idea they eventually came with was to scrap the student finances, the lousy 75 euro’s we get a month if we live at home with our parents or 285 euro’s for if we live on ourselves in order to make sure we students stay alive when we don’t work along. For many students this is their only income since studying on itself can already be hard enough, working along with it can just be too much to handle.
As you might expect this didn’t go unnoticed with other students either and the news about this quickly spread, online polls on student sites quickly were raised and well over 90% of the visitors stated to be against this decision. High school forums also didn’t go unaffected with various people stating concern about their future education this way, they most likely just wouldn’t be able to afford it anymore so would have to let it go to waste and get a job directly.
Is this really what our country should be looking for? Should the future generations be given up like this in order to add more to the wages of the teachers which already are quite well over the minimum wage?
Whether this decision will be put through I have my doubts, the opposition will just be too great. The political party which came up with this though did have quite a high vote from students during the previous election, but I suppose they did a good job on getting rid of their student votes this way for the next.
Oct 23 at 4:12 pm
Comment: #1
Slevi, you are a little off here I think (me being a USA teacher and all!) It is a common misconception that teachers are overpaid when teaching requires at least half as much (that’s being generous) schooling as being a doctor.
I have a 2, 4, 6 and then another 2 year degree to do what I do, teach 9 year olds. AND, I didn’t get paid a “lousy” anything to be a student. The way you do it here in is that you work and get loans to get through college (unless mom and dad can pay for it).
Now I have a great career I love, but I make less than 50K a year after 9 years of doing it. I can’t even qualify for a home loan in my area AND I pay a hefty loan payment back every month for the teaching degrees that I earned.
Your post just set me off a bit because if doctors in your country make anything near what they make here, then it is the teachers who should be paid to to go to school and then compensated higher . . . not the docs. There may or may not be somewhat of a language barrier here and I am a bit sarcastic (which you may have gathered reading my blog) so iI apologize if any of this sounds offensive. I will always defend teachers and their right to better pay whether it’s in Europe, or a Zimbabwe hut. What we do is arguably just as crucial to a society as medicine! Okay, done now
Oct 23 at 5:08 pm
Comment: #2
Doctors in the US are paid a looooot more than those are paid here :P, a GP for example which most of the people studying medicine will become makes about 6k a month without the taxes going off, after tax reduction you can pretty much stay you remain with 4k a month ending up with 48k a year.
A high school teacher ends up with about 2~3k a month after tax reductions, depending on the level they educate in and of course how much they work.
I’d say neither of them is a bad salary, doctors are already actually having to give in a lot here, compared to 10 years ago the salary has been reduced by 20~50% depending on the specialism. We don’t really have the wages of good surgeons making 65.000 dollars a month as to be found in New York in example :P.
Not to mention the degree for becoming a teacher here for most teachers takes just 3 years, of which half of it actually involves paid internships. A study in medicine has the first 6 years completely unpaid, even the internships don’t bring up a dime in this country.
And working on the side without a degree as a student? Should be happy if you manage to make 4~5k a year, most don’t come above 2~3k because their hourly wage is pretty much the bare minimum.
If anything would have to complain in this country, it’s electricians, plumbers, road workers, those people which pick up the garbage, etcetera. The entire education, health care and political sections have squat to complain about. They’re already making as good as twice the minimum wage, and if you’re only objective in life would have been to become rich…. you shouldn’t have become a teacher, doctor or politician in this country :P.
Oct 28 at 6:29 pm
Comment: #3
I remember when you got the equivalent of 500 euros without any pressure in Holland (yeah, I’m Dutch). In twenty years time it went from the absolute freedom to study anything you wanted for as long as you wanted to a situation where you get hardly enough to pay for your books and are facing a huge debt if you miss one term.
The reason that the Dutch are (were) a highly educated people is (was) because education is (was) cheap. The idea was that anybody should be able to study. Slowly it’s digressing to the US model where only the rich or exceptionally bright, or exceptionally athletic, can move on to higher education. For a country which relies on highly educated people to maintain its market position that’s a bloody shame.
Ps: Slevi, you’re Dutch??? Kudos to your English teacher in that case!
Oct 30 at 2:08 pm
Comment: #4
I’m Dutch yeah, but I spent 2 years on an international school in the Middle East where I learned most of my English :).
And it’s definitely true as to what you’re saying, it can already be seen now that many people which are capable of studying when it comes to intelligence simply can’t study because they can’t afford it. If you’re parents don’t pay along for your studies there’s no way you can manage to successfully complete the first year preventing to be kicked out along with working the sufficient amount of hours to cough up the monthly costs.
This is also from what I know a difference with the US model, since I know quite a couple of US students over the net and the pressure of having to pass the first year successfully within 1 or 2 years or risking to be expelled isn’t there.
Asides from that they also get study grants on various bases to cover the costs, whilst here the only grant one can hope on is from the government. Outside of that there’s as good as nothing from which you could possibly get the financial resources required except your parents.