Bill Massey: Teachers, soldiers must be paid better

How many of us want to be sequestered in a room for eight hours a day, with 30 to 35 of other people’s kids, then undertake after-work training or attend after-hours work-related functions, then go home and spend two more hours doing paperwork or planning the next day, only to have many of those responsibilities rollover into five or more hours of our weekends – all for a salary that averages out to be $14.29 per hour, or, $0.71 an hour less than many of us want to pay unskilled workers in fast food restaurants?

How many of us want to undergo extensive work-related training so strenuous we literally collapse from physical exhaustion, exhaustion so severe it has been known to kill our colleagues, then be on duty-call 24/365, being ferreted off to some unknown, ungodly, remote corner of this Earth on an assignment so secretive we can’t even tell our families where we are or when we’ll be back, or if we’ll be back, and so hazardous it requires us to kill people to prevent them from killing us, only to finally, maybe, return home missing an arm, or a leg, or both, or be psychologically scarred – all for a salary so woefully meager we qualify for food stamps.

Teaching and military service are not careers – they are callings. And if we don’t have those callings, we had better start treating, and paying, those that do a lot better then we are.

This story was originally published January 31, 2017 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Bill Massey: Teachers, soldiers must be paid better."