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I think you need both the carrot and the stick. The problem with low pay is, if you get out the stick, you're only left with people with nothing left to lose.
by hnick 6y ago
I think you need both the carrot and the stick.
The problem with low pay is, if you get out the stick, you're only left with people with nothing left to lose. The bottom of the barrel.
With higher pay, people have something to lose. But unless you have policies and incentives to make them fear that loss, they'll still just coast along and assume they deserve the money just for showing up. Some are, of course, intrinsically motivated to do a good job but that motivation can dry up seeing how coworkers act daily.
When I say fear, I don't mean the kind that makes you dread coming to work. Just the usual fear of failure that makes you want to do something well to avoid the downside. How to set that up? I'm not a teacher, but I bet teachers out there know who the bad ones are so there's probably a way to do it. The same for other jobs.
- salawat 6y agoIf you're not already getting that on a regular basis as a teacher (the type of fear you're talking about), then I have a great fear for the direction our civilization is going. Seeing as today's students are tomorrow's inheritors, and need to at least have good enough foundations to maintain and opeerate what we're getting put in place today. My concern though is teachers are so distracted making fiscal ends meet that they can't bring their all to the classroom...
- hnick 6y agoI've seen numerous teachers on Reddit talking about the staff they work with and how hard it is to get rid of some, the usual teacher union protection complaints, and students complaining about bad teachers (what else is new though). I'm sure it does vary a lot around the world though and I can say I have no real complaints about my public school education here in Australia. Maybe I was lucky. Maybe things are very different now. > My concern though is teachers are so distracted making fiscal ends meet that they can't bring their all to the classroom... Yes that's another part I didn't mention, and a living wage will address that. But you also have cases where they spend their own money on classroom supplies due to poor funding so you'd want to address that too. Once everyone is comfortable though, you need to make sure it doesn't turn into indolence which is what I was getting at.