Don’t get me wrong by the title of this entry. I’m essentially a professional student and I love the feeling of the last few days of summer just as much as the first few days of school. I know that’s a rarity, but there are some folks out there that love the whole idea of learning and increasing one’s knowledge, etc. Needless to say, this is a fun time of the year in my book.
However, there is one thing that I absolutely hate about this time of the year and you can find it on Facebook. That’s right, an anti-Facebook message on JerseySmarts.com!
What I hate is when all of these teachers and education industry people get on their Facebook accounts and complain that they have to go back to school. WHAT?! You’re complaining that you’re dreading going back to school!?! First of all, what balls to say that in New Jersey where there are thousands of laid off workers who only wish they were going back to school!
Second, it’s your JOB! Sure, I bitch about my commute quite often and yes, I might get annoyed at one of my managers from time to time, but you’ll NEVER catch me (or anyone with any common sense) complaining that they have a job to go to tomorrow. That’s utterly ridiculous!
And, without fail, the same bevy of complaints come in from teachers and education industry people that are in near-comatose states of mind because they’ve spent the last three to four months sitting around doing as close to nothing as possible. Get real, people! The entire world is out there working everyday of the summer and teachers have the gall to complain that their three to four month vacation is coming to an end? Shut up!
Complain about your commute, complain about your bratty little kids that you teach, complain about the extremely overpaid administrators in your districts…but don’t complain that you have a job to go to and don’t complain that you actually have to work for a living. Good grief! And people wonder where this entitlement mindset comes from with some of these teachers?! Then again, it was no surprise to anyone with a year-round job (i.e. 90%+ of the entire workforce) that teachers complained about having to pay into their healthcare system. I wonder if the teachers heard that collective laugh when they started complaining about the 1.5% or 2% (I don’t remember what it was) that they had to start contributing.
A final thought – I’m a guy for education reform at all levels. For example, teachers should absolutely pay more into their retirement system, but they should also receive an increase in pay (not necessarily on par with the money that they’re paying into the system, but some small increase to bring them closer to a living wage). That said, teachers are government employees – plain and simple. When the government has no money, then teachers should not get raises. It’s part of having a government job.
However, one of my favorite education reform ideas is increasing the school year. Think about it – we prepare our students for the real world by telling them, “You’re on vacation from the end of June through the beginning of September – go have fun!” Completely ridiculous. What does that prepare them to be in life? Well, I guess you could argue that it prepares them to be teachers, but we have enough of those already! I bring this up because imagine the complaints coming from the teachers and education industry if summer vacation was reduced from two and a half months to two or three weeks!? Ha!
