> If education was better funded in order to pay teachers very competitive wages I see it as a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Are teachers paid less because they

> If education was better funded in order to pay teachers very competitive wages I see it as a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Are teachers paid less because they suck, or do they suck because they're not paid well? Putting aside wages, does education really need more funding? What exactly is more expensive about teaching the fundamentals now than 50 years ago? > you'd attract more can-do teachers That would be possible not by merely increasing teacher pay. One of the biggest complaints by most teachers is that they are not allowed to deviate from the state sponsored lesson plan. Why would anyone who is qualified to be teaching children be inspired to be a mouthpiece for the state and nothing more? Teachers shouldn't be getting lesson plans from the state. Their students should either pass the exams or the teachers get fired. Yes, I'm using the word fired here, because I don't believe in teachers being protected from fucking up the minds of children. Maybe teachers who are actually qualified to teach children will find that inspiration in having their prestige be on the line, and the truly evil teachers out there wouldn't last as long if they weren't effective at educating. Who were the best teachers you had? I bet they weren't the ones who just read out of a textbook and did whatever the state guidelines told them to do. Usually the best teachers and professors are so interested in their subject matter that they can effectively convey information and its importance without reading notes verbatim. We need more teachers like that, but when I was growing up there might have been one of those in every 10. Hopefully it's better than that now, but I don't see why it would be. As long as the system itself is rotten, it really doesn't matter what pay teachers. The way the that the education system in America is constructed does not attract virtue. It attracts those who can fit well into bureaucracy and do what they're told in exchange for protection. There are still good teachers within that system, but I need more than one hand to count how many lazy, stupid, and sadistic teachers I've encountered.