I’m tired of hearing people say that they think teachers should be ‘treated like doctors’. Teachers deserve more prestige and respect, but the sheer size of the teaching profession, the strange blend of white-collar credentials with blue-collar contracts, the fact that teachers are paid with tax dollars, and the unique motivations of teachers, all work together to describe a profession that needs to be defined on its own terms. Instead of saying that teachers should be ‘treated like doctors’, we should describe the proper way for teachers to be treatedas teachers.If we’re serious about changing the ways that teachers are valued by society then we need to recognize the ways that teaching is fundamentally different than any other profession.
1) Teaching is the Largest Profession (by a lot)
There are approximately 3.8 million teachers in the United States. This is more than double the number of engineers (1.6 million) and more than the number of doctors, lawyers, and accountants, combined (.9, 1.1, and 1.3 million respectively).
The size of the profession indicates that we can’t take for granted a perpetual supply of teachers and also emphasizes that it will be extraordinarily difficult to pay teachers what they actually deserve. It also suggests that we need to be more proactive in the way we talk about teaching as a potential career.
Part of respecting teachers as a society is just encouraging young people to consider teaching as a worthwhile career. I’m reminded of a conversation I once had with a state teacher of the year, Kimberly Eckert. who pointed out to me that, “We will invite the military to set up recruitment tables in our cafeteria, but we will never once encourage our students to try and become teachers.”
2) White-Collar Credentials & Blue-Collar Contracts
All teachers have a Bachelor’s degree and over half of teachers have a Master’s degree. Approximately 70% of teachers are members of unions and salaries for public school teachers are set according to government pay scales. Teachers are expected to operate as the leaders of their classrooms and be highly knowledgeable in terms of both their content and pedagogy, but they are also expected toexist as front-line bureaucratsin a multi-layered, rule bound, state bureaucracy. Teachers are educated as professionals but treated and paid as laborers. This blend of dynamics between professional qualifications and blue-collar systems is distinct from any other occupation and the tension between these dynamics creates a kind of double-consciousness among teachers.
Teachers feel solidarity with the working class while also yearning to have more opportunities for professional collegiality and expression. Teachers’ pride in their knowledge and qualifications deflates when they must take to the picket line to demand more pay.
3) Paid with Tax Dollars
Teachers are paid with tax dollars. There is no other profession that is so completely dependent on public financing. Unlike doctors, lawyers, engineers, and accountants, the question of how much society ‘values’ teachers is a purely political question. While school districts have some discretion over teacher pay, the amount of money available is determined by taxes, and a society’s tolerance for taxes is ultimately determined by politicians and the voters who elect them.
At a structural level, this dynamic effectively places a price ceiling on the labor market for teachers. The supply of teachers is falling, the demand for teachers is increasing, and compensation is frozen at artificially low levels for political reasons. Draw a supply and demand graph and you’ll see that, under these conditions, there will be a shortage. No other profession is so dependent on the public will to adapt to these kinds of changing circ*mstances.
4) False Familiarity
Most Americans engage directly with teachers about 7 hours a day, 180 days a year, for 13 years. Even though people are children and teenagers during this time, the impressions made over these hours tend to stick around deep into adulthood. Everyone thinks they understand what a teacher does in a way that’s not true for any other profession. If someone had great teachers growing up, they probably feel that the system has been working just fine. If someone had awful teachers growing up, they probably don’t think teachers deserve much more than they get. People tend to generalize their own experience with school and because it was such an intensive and immersive experience, have difficulty imagining howor why it should change from what they experienced themselves.
5) The Most Rewarding Profession
I have spent over 10 years working with new teachers, many of whom have left other professions to become a teacher, and when I ask them why they wanted to become teachers, they all say some version of the same thing: “I wanted to feel like I was doing something meaningful.” Amidst all of the stresses, challenges, and systemic constraints, teachers are still buoyed by the inherent sense of purpose and meaning they find on a daily basis. The very fact that we have 3.8 million teachers means that there must be something deeply satisfying about the profession. A teacher will see a student for more hours in a week than most doctors will see a patient over the course of a decade. Despite all of the macro level issues that define the teaching profession in limiting and distorted ways, teachers are still unique in their ability to mold lives. Teachers can light a spark of inspiration, witness the joy of discovery, and cultivate a sense of self-confidence that a child will carry with them for the rest of their lives. The great strength of teaching is that it is the most rewarding profession.
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Great teaching is at the heart of quality education and quality education is the lifeblood of a prosperous society. If we are to thrive as a nation we will need to figure out how to treat teachers the way that teachers deserve to be treated. To do this effectively we must be honest about the ways that teaching is unlike any other profession.
