Do people dislike the teaching profession because they think it's virtue signalling?

volchitsa

Smee_Again wrote: »

Bad how? For their education or general well being?

Both. They lose out in education, sometimes forgetting almost everything they've learned over the school year, but these days they also lose out in fitness, since they tend to be glued to their phones rather than outside as we used to be.

https://www.ecnmy.org/engage/kids-lose-long-summer-holidays-new-research-shows/

https://www.economist.com/international/2018/08/09/long-summer-holidays-are-bad-for-children-especially-the-poor

https://www.expresspharmacy.co.uk/blog/posts/are-the-summer-holidays-bad-for-your-children-s-health

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4684542/How-summer-holidays-bad-child-s-health.html

And those are mostly UK studies, based on 6 week holidays, rather than the much longer Irish ones.

If you're not a teacher, it's fair enough that you wouldn't know this, but teachers do, or should. It's their job, after all. That you haven't even heard about it shows how little interest there is in children's well-being in the Irish edcational system. That's a massive indictment of teachers.

Triangle

Triangle wrote: »

Some teachers don't deserve the title.

We were told by my eldest 3rd year science teacher in the third term P/T meeting that he hadn't one experiment written up and this was a good % of his exam result. This was the first we or him had heard about it!! She hadn't checked once over the three years she was his 'teacher'.

He also had an English teacher who not only brought his grades up, but also helped mature him for the three years he had him. One of the best influences in his life.

So when people talk about teacher bashing, I don't get it. It's the lazy, self entitled ones that people usually have issues with. The gems in the system have huge respect from the people that interact with them.

Then there's the unions........ Don't think I need to say why people have no time for them.

There are lazy self entitled people in every profession. It's human nature.

suicide_circus

Teachers complain a lot

volchitsa

volchitsa wrote: »

Both. They lose out in education, sometimes forgetting almost everything they've learned over the school year, but these days they also lose out in fitness, since they tend to be glued to their phones rather than outside as we used to be.

https://www.ecnmy.org/engage/kids-lose-long-summer-holidays-new-research-shows/

https://www.economist.com/international/2018/08/09/long-summer-holidays-are-bad-for-children-especially-the-poor

https://www.expresspharmacy.co.uk/blog/posts/are-the-summer-holidays-bad-for-your-children-s-health

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4684542/How-summer-holidays-bad-child-s-health.html

And those are mostly UK studies, based on 6 week holidays, rather than the much longer Irish ones.

If you're not a teacher, it's fair enough that you wouldn't know this, but teachers do, or should. It's their job, after all. That you haven't even heard about it shows how little interest there is in children's well-being in the Irish edcational system. That's a massive indictment of teachers.

Show me a study where they have drastically reduced holidays and it has had a beneficial impact on their health and education and then you have a great point.

The reality is that you can't just keep pushing kids without breaks. It doesn't work. Kids pick up after a break very quickly.

suicide_circus

suicide_circus wrote: »

Teachers complain a lot

Unions do. What the unions say rarely reflects the opinions of teachers.

MrBumBum

MrBumBum wrote: »

I'd say most people dislike teachers because they don't know how good they have it.
Work short hours for only half the year, no manual labour, inside in the winter, well paid.
But yet they are constantly looking for reasons to threaten strike action.
Voted a decade ago for new entrants to come in on a lower salary, then when they have nothing else to moan about for a while they decide they will strike because new entrants are on a lower salary.
Their behaviour during the last year has been disgraceful, whingeing at every turn when it was obvious for children's wellbeing that they needed to be in school.
Whingeing about not being high enough up the vaccine list.
Whingeing when they weren't prioritised when the vacci e rollout was amended.
Whinge whinge whinge

You should be a teacher then. You'd get to sit on your backside for half the year whinging all you like.

jester77

Half my family are teachers and I have a lot of respect for what they do. And they are poorly paid when I compare their salary to other professions given their importance to the future of our children. What gets people going is the constant moaning and complaining. You introduce a small change and they threaten to strike. In other industries change is constant and you get on with it without moaning.

volchitsa

Deleted User wrote: »

Teachers don't get paid for summer holidays. They get paid for 9-10 months over a 12-month period.

I can't comment on secondary, but primary school children get eight weeks here for the summer and are totally done by the end of June and need the break.

Trust me, if you work as teacher you would know this. It just gets to a time when they are done. All the breaks are set up for them.

People (and kids) get used to whatever the situation is, and find change difficult. English kids manage to go on until past mid July. When I was a kid (in Northern Ireland), the secondary schools used to have school on Saturday mornings. Nobody thought anything of it.

Deleted User wrote: »

People try to dress it up like the school year and holidays are designed for teachers when that's simply not true.

No, I explained who they were designed for - to make education obligatory, it had to made possible for poorer families who would otherwise taken their children for the summer and harvest months, to help on the farm. It wasn't done for children or teachers, it was purely economic.

Why it still continues is a different question.

Deleted User wrote: »

Making it out likes it's unfair doesn't seem realistic when everyone has the opportunity to be a teacher. It's just the way it is, and people may be fed up with their own situations but it's hardly teachers' faults.

That's such a poor excuse for not changing something that's known to increase inequality in education and harm the more deprived children. If someone is a teacher and insists that schools can't possibly make a change that is in the children's interests, but is in their own interests, it's fair enough to wonder about their commitment to children's well being.

Children used to get hit, that's just the way it was. female teachers used to have to leave work when they married, that's just the way it was. FFS

iffandonlyif

Like the Guards, there are conspicuously many mediocre teachers.

Smee_Again

volchitsa wrote: »

Both. They lose out in education, sometimes forgetting almost everything they've learned over the school year, but these days they also lose out in fitness, since they tend to be glued to their phones rather than outside as we used to be.

https://www.ecnmy.org/engage/kids-lose-long-summer-holidays-new-research-shows/

https://www.economist.com/international/2018/08/09/long-summer-holidays-are-bad-for-children-especially-the-poor

https://www.expresspharmacy.co.uk/blog/posts/are-the-summer-holidays-bad-for-your-children-s-health

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4684542/How-summer-holidays-bad-child-s-health.html

And those are mostly UK studies, based on 6 week holidays, rather than the much longer Irish ones.

If you're not a teacher, it's fair enough that you wouldn't know this, but teachers do, or should. It's their job, after all. That you haven't even heard about it shows how little interest there is in children's well-being in the Irish edcational system. That's a massive indictment of teachers.

TBH reading those I don't blame teachers for not wanting to shorten their holidays, it seems most of the issues are economical rather than educational but it's easier to pin the blame on teachers instead of the state.

volchitsa

Deleted User wrote: »

Show me a study where they have drastically reduced holidays and it has had a beneficial impact on their health and education and then you have a great point.

The reality is that you can't just keep pushing kids without breaks. It doesn't work. Kids pick up after a break very quickly.

LOL I'm not to go around the internet searching for figures for you. I've shown you studies that show that even at 6 weeks, harm is done to the poorer children especially.

Horse, water, drink. If you don't like the evidence, that's ok by me.

But that's the sort of attitude that gets teachers a bad reputation - you're not interested in the study and how to improve outcomes for kids, you just want to find a way to dismiss its findings because they don't suit you.

shtpEdthePlum

MrBumBum wrote: »

I'd say most people dislike teachers because they don't know how good they have it.
Work short hours for only half the year, no manual labour, inside in the winter, well paid.
But yet they are constantly looking for reasons to threaten strike action.
Voted a decade ago for new entrants to come in on a lower salary, then when they have nothing else to moan about for a while they decide they will strike because new entrants are on a lower salary.
Their behaviour during the last year has been disgraceful, whingeing at every turn when it was obvious for children's wellbeing that they needed to be in school.

Having been a teacher, I left during the pandemic to switch to a 9 to 6 job with 30 days AL.

I can safely say that my workload, work life balance and mental health has markedly improved.

Don't laud it till you've tried it. Teaching is nightmarishly hard and takes a massive toll, holidays notwithstanding.

And the pay is shyte for the first decade!

volchitsa

Smee_Again wrote: »

TBH reading those I don't blame teachers for not wanting to shorten their holidays, it seems most of the issues are economical rather than educational but it's easier to pin the blame on teachers instead of the state.

That's 6 weeks, not 3 months.

If Irish teachers cared about children's well being, they'd be looking to see how to mitigate the loss of educational levels that are seen after 8 weeks in primary and 12 weeks in secondary. No wonder kids are exhausted when they have to catch up on all the lost time at the start of every school year.

Thelonious Monk

Imagine the responsibility and stress of dealing with children's educations every day? Your usual moaning idiots give out about teachers, who just want everyone else to be as miserable as they are.

volchitsa

volchitsa wrote: »

People (and kids) get used to whatever the situation is, and find change difficult. English kids manage to go on until past mid July. When I was a kid (in Northern Ireland), the secondary schools used to have school on Saturday mornings. Nobody thought anything of it.


No, I explained who they were designed for - to make education obligatory, it had to made possible for poorer families who would otherwise taken their children for the summer and harvest months, to help on the farm. It wasn't done for children or teachers, it was purely economic.

Why it still continues is a different question.



That's such a poor excuse for not changing something that's known to increase inequality in education and harm the more deprived children. If someone is a teacher and insists that schools can't possibly make a change that is in the children's interests, but is in their own interests, it's fair enough to wonder about their commitment to children's well being.

Children used to get hit, that's just the way it was. female teachers used to have to leave work when they married, that's just the way it was. FFS

Sounds like you know best. You've quoted one study, a blog and a Daily Mail article.

Primary kids have two extra weeks' holidays here compared to the UK. If there was a sufficient body of evidence to prove the point you are making, I'd happily cut the holidays. And I'd get paid more too which would be great!!!

In DEIS schools there are loads of programmes for disadvantaged kids in the summer - July provision and a programme for the last two weeks of August for kids in danger of falling behind. There are loads of supports in place.

blanch152

Deleted User wrote: »

Teachers don't get paid for summer holidays. They get paid for 9-10 months over a 12-month period.

I can't comment on secondary, but primary school children get eight weeks here for the summer and are totally done by the end of June and need the break. Trust me, if you work as teacher you would know this. It just gets to a time when they are done. All the breaks are set up for them.

People try to dress it up like the school year and holidays are designed for teachers when that's simply not true.

Making it out likes it's unfair doesn't seem realistic when everyone has the opportunity to be a teacher. It's just the way it is, and people may be fed up with their own situations but it's hardly teachers' faults.

Teachers get paid a 12-month salary, nonsense to suggest they don't get paid for the summer.

If the school year was designed for children, it would be a four day week for a longer period of the year.

volchitsa

blanch152 wrote: »

Teachers get paid a 12-month salary, nonsense to suggest they don't get paid for the summer.

If the school year was designed for children, it would be a four day week for a longer period of the year.

Good points. I agree completely about the 4 day week.

There's a simple way to ascertain whether they are really paid a 9 month salary spread over 12 months: if so, then those on short term contracts aren't eligible for unemployment benefit until the beginning of the following school year. I don't know if that's the case or not, but maybe a teacher here could tell us.

volchitsa

volchitsa wrote: »

LOL I'm not to go around the internet searching for figures for you. I've shown you studies that show that even at 6 weeks, harm is done to the poorer children especially.

Horse, water, drink. If you don't like the evidence, that's ok by me.

But that's the sort of attitude that gets teachers a bad reputation - you're not interested in the study and how to improve outcomes for kids, you just want to find a way to dismiss its findings because they don't suit you.

I'll bow out here. Thanks for engaging.

Smee_Again

volchitsa wrote: »

That's 6 weeks, not 3 months.

If Irish teachers cared about children's well being, they'd be looking to see how to mitigate the loss of educational levels that are seen after 8 weeks in primary and 12 weeks in secondary. No wonder kids are exhausted when they have to catch up on all the lost time at the start of every school year.

Nah, you can't make that claim because its too much of a leap. It's not a binary situation where only teachers who favour shortening the holidays care about the welfare of their students.

Teachers are employed to do a job and for the most part do that job very well. This argument of if they cared for students' well being they'd do XYZ is a load of nonsense. You highlighted that students lose physical fitness over the summer break, but there's nothing stopping parents taking the kids for a walk/run etc.

After all, if they cared about their children's welbeing...

I guess the point I'm making is that these issues aren't of the teachers making so why should they be the ones to shoulder the burden of fixing them.

And, yeah, if they cared about the children's welbeing...

Sleepy

Sleepy wrote: »

It's two-fold I reckon - jealousy over the amount of annual leave and perceived short working week combined with a fairly natural response to the ****e spouted by the professions union reps.

It's practically a monthly event to have the reps on the radio waves whining about "poor pay", falsely equivalating teachers to Software Engineers (while on paper they may have similar levels of education, anyone who thinks a B.A. or B.Comm is genuinely equivalent to a B.Eng is delusional imho and the difference in working hours/days would be enormous), denying that they themselves are a large part of the reason for the disparity in pay within the profession, etc. They've given the entire profession the reputation of being whingers.

Is teaching a stressful job? I'm sure it is. Is it well paid? For the hours worked and family-friendly nature of the schedule it's pretty much unbeatable. As much as they like to complain you could probably cut teachers salaries by 20% without losing too many of them to alternate careers and the difficulty young teachers face in securing permanent positions is a pretty good indicator of this: supply is higher than demand at the current level of remuneration.

I'm not teacher bashing at all here, I have many friends and family in the profession (including two that left careers that paid twice as much as they're now on for improvements to their work-life balance). I'd support an argument for an equivalent of the UK's "London bonus" for teachers working in urban schools and could certainly see the argument for some differentiation on teachers salaries based on the subjects they teach (i.e. for the payscales to recognise the higher competition in the labour market for those qualified to teach STEM subjects) but in general, I think a lot of the teacher bashing we do get is a product of their own making.

Pretty much this.

The moaning is pretty much incessant. Not just from reps but teachers I know moan about superintending exams or correcting. Having chosen to done it. When I hear the moaning I realise "Oh yeah, primary school is the last time you had less than 3 months summer holidays". They don't seem to understand (or at least concede) how amazing it is to always have a week off coming up soon. Let alone planning your ~15 days of holidays you have left after using up some to have proper time off over Christmas.

There's a glut of teachers. A majority of people I knew as a kid who had teachers for parents went into teaching. Even a few who had a choice of "better" career options. There's probably a reason for that.

MrBumBum

[Deleted User] wrote: »

You should be a teacher then. You'd get to sit on your backside for half the year whinging all you like.

I don't like whingeing. I'd rather get on with doing the job I'm paid to do.

Sleepy

fvp4 wrote: »

Comp Sci can be a BA, or BS. Rarely a B Eng.

It can. And although the title of "engineer" isn't protected, it was specifically why I referenced a Software Engineer rather than a developer.

I've a B.Comm myself so this isn't me looking down on other's educational achievements. It's a recognition of the simple fact that while on paper all honours degrees are an NFQ Level 8, the level of knowledge acquired in their attainment is far from equal.

For my B.Comm I don't think I ever had more than 17 or 18 hours of lectures and tutorials etc. My friends doing engineering were putting in 50 hours of lectures, tutorials, labs etc. Some of my friends doing Arts had years where they had as little as 8 attendance hours a week.

It's an argument that irritates the hell out of me when union leaders try to argue that their members all having degrees means they should be paid the same as other professions with the "same level" of educational attainment. In the real world they're not equivalents: A medical degree is worth more than a BA in Sociology & Politics and Irish. A B. Eng is worth more than a B.Comm. A BA in Maths and Economics is worth more than one in Art History. (Worth being measured in salaries obtainable for graduates of those degrees rather than some philosophical argument about the value of knowledge).

yaknowski

I'd much rather (for secondary anyway) that teachers of say business, I.T had real external career experience instead of going straight in from college. I believe these type of teachers would have a lot more to offer their students.
In this case, I would support teachers being paid more for relevant external experience.

I know a secondary school teacher, 1 of her subjects is history. She has no interest in history, but had to take it along with the main subject which she loves, so this is doing those children in her history class a major disservice.

volchitsa

volchitsa wrote: »

Now it's just a complication for parents and an unfair advantage for teachers compared to the rest of the working population.

So, good old fashioned begrudgery, then? Why is it unfair if someone has more holidays than you?

"I don't get paid the same as Michael O'Leary, he has an unfair advantage over me, I demand that this situation be rectified."

volchitsa

Deleted User wrote: »

So, good old fashioned begrudgery, then? Why is it unfair if someone has more holidays than you?

"I don't get paid the same as Michael O'Leary, he has an unfair advantage over me, I demand that this situation be rectified."

Yeah you're missing my point. The way the holidays are organised is not in children's best interests, it's in the teachers' interests (and yes I know children wouldn't agree, but then many of them would be happy not to have to go to school regularly at all, so that's not very relevant).

MrBumBum

MrBumBum wrote: »

I don't like whingeing. I'd rather get on with doing the job I'm paid to do.

Yet you're on here whingeing about teachers.

Sounds like you're happy in your own profession. I don't understand why you even care about teachers.

MrBumBum

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Yet you're on here whingeing about teachers.

Sounds like you're happy in your own profession. I don't understand why you even care about teachers.

Nowhere in my posts did I whinge, I pointed out that teachers are whingers... I'm surprised that needs to be explained to you.
Yes I am perfectly happy in my own profession thanks.
I wouldn't have thought that being happy in your job excludes you from being allowed to have an opinion on another profession, or excludes you from answering a thread on a forum that asked the question "why people don't like teachers".
I don't recall the OP stating that only people unhappy in their own jobs need reply.

Valhallapt

yaknowski wrote: »

I'd much rather (for secondary anyway) that teachers of say business, I.T had real external career experience instead of going straight in from college. I believe these type of teachers would have a lot more to offer their students.
In this case, I would support teachers being paid more for relevant external experience.

I know a secondary school teacher, 1 of her subjects is history. She has no interest in history, but had to take it along with the main subject which she loves, so this is doing those children in her history class a major disservice.

Yes you can really tell which teachers had a job previously, big step up in professionalism and quality of content delivered in the classroom.

JPA

It's not virtue signalling if you actually go out and do it.

MrBumBum

MrBumBum wrote: »

Nowhere in my posts did I whinge, I pointed out that teachers are whingers... I'm surprised that needs to be explained to you.
Yes I am perfectly happy in my own profession thanks.
I wouldn't have thought that being happy in your job excludes you from being allowed to have an opinion on another profession, or excludes you from answering a thread on a forum that asked the question "why people don't like teachers".
I don't recall the OP stating that only people unhappy in their own jobs need reply.

The post I replied to was a disrespectful rant. An opinion is fine, but being disrespectful and obtuse is another thing.

I am a teacher and am very happy in my job. I know how lucky I am to do what I love and never, ever complain about my job.

Yet, I have to listen to misinformed tripe all the time.