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>teaching is quite a prestigious and reasonably well paid occupation I'd put money on this being at least an order of magnitude more important than all the oth
by endtime 16y ago
>teaching is quite a prestigious and reasonably well paid occupation
I'd put money on this being at least an order of magnitude more important than all the other factors put together.
- chc 16y agoIf I recall correctly, that doesn't hold up within the US. Dollars spent on education don't correlate all that closely with regional performance IIRC.
- cromulent 16y agoYes, I think that there are significant cultural and economic differences and it is quite complex, and of course dollars spent on eduction doesn't equal dollars spent on teachers. A hypothesis: In a social democracy like Finland, you will probably join the large middle class. So when you choose your desired vocation before university you may be more likely to apply your excellent skillset to teaching rather than something else, as that's what you want to do and are suited for, and you'll probably earn close to everyone else anyway. In some other countries, you may try to get in to law/medicine/business first, and use teaching as a fallback as it is much lower paid. The net result is that teaching can be seen as a second choice profession and not valued as highly socially. Saying "I'm a teacher" at the barbeque sends a signal that you maybe didn't do so well at school as you wanted, and got your second choice at uni. I know of a couple of data points where this is true in Aus (and also where it is not), but I don't know if it is really widespread. Just a thought.
- endtime 16y agoI don't think dollars spent correlates with the prestige of teaching - perhaps not even with compensation, given the bureaucracy inherent in the system, though that's pure speculation.