(Editor's Note: The following Letter to the Editor was written in repsonse to a letter entitled: "Teachers: No better than glorified baby sitters" that appeared in The News Review on March 15.)
Mischa Popoff from B.C. (surprises me that no-one in Sask. has an opinion on education so we import them) suggested that "farmers or meat cutters or grocers, are just as important as teachers" and Popoff may even be right.
Let's consider that a farmer (with government subsidies etc... our money) makes more than $10.00 an hour; a meat cutter (who has added training and education... thanks to a teacher) makes more than $10.00 an hour; even a grocer at minimum wage makes around $10.00 an hour. Shouldn't a teacher be paid the same or do most in society feel that a teacher is just a glorified baby sitter? If they are that baby sitter, then we should pay them what they deserve.
OK: let's do that! Consider that an average babysitter (at the low end) makes about $5.00 an hour per child. If a teacher works from 9:00 to 12noon and then 1:00 to 3:30 they put in five hours per day supervising children. That's $5.00/hr x five hrs. = $27.50 a day per child. Now that sounds more deserving than the $74,000.00 Popoff says they make now. BUT, school boards insists that the class average (figuring in large classes with 33+ and smaller ones of 1215) in a school should be 20students per class. That would mean that a teacher should be paid $2,750 per child x 20 children making = $550.00 per day.
OK that sounds more reasonable. The government sets our school year at 197 days where the teacher is responsible for planning, marking, teaching, counselling, etc... The average teacher, if paid a baby sitters wage, should make $550.00x197= $108,350.00 a year.
Whoa, hold on a minute! We are complaining about teachers making too much money (about $74,000.00 you said) when in fact they appear to make less than an average babysitter and that sitter doesn't even have to teach a child anything? Wow, we have a great deal now, forget about the quality of education. If a child learns something, that would be a bonus.
Maybe, we should appreciate how good we have it, thank our teachers, get out of their way and let them teach. After all, babysitters are more expensive.
Randy Schuster, Yorkton, SK.
