+2 votes
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in Education ✍ by

"Teacher pay is so low in some US school districts that they're recruiting overseas."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/us/arizona-teachers-philippines.html

2 Answers

+2 votes
by

I'm kind of 50/50 on this subject mainly because what some(not all) U.S. teachers teach and do not teach their students. Some of these kids really aren't getting taught much at all and a lot are being politically indoctrinated instead of being taught basic history.

A kid at a store the other day that was at a stand for donations for Veteran Care asked me if I was a Vet? I toldher that I was a Vietnam Vet and she asked me what that was. I've heard other kids saying the same kinds of things. Just exactly what are they teaching them?

Maybe some of these new teachers will actually teach. You can only hope.

by

I know, Rooster, it's pathetic.  A couple of years ago I was wearing a VFW poppy for Memorial Day.  A kid working in a fast food place asked what it was. (at least he had that much curiosity)

I explained, and recited "Flanders Fields" for him.

+2 votes
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Tink, my computer cannot open NYT but I do have something to add to Rooster's comment...because I was involved in the school system's problems when my godchild and her siblings were there in the 2000's. At that time Nickleby (= NCLB = No Child Left Behind) was in force, and teachers were forced to teach to the test; and so history was dropped.

I did my best, both to encourage their teachers and to fill in the gaps like history. But idk...I recall my own public education as VERY poor, and that was the 1950's. Although we DID learn history...anyway, if I were raising a child now I would homeschool.

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Here is the opening of the article, Virginia:

"GLENDALE, Ariz. — The latest wave of foreign workers sweeping into American jobs brought Donato Soberano from the Philippines to Arizona two years ago. He had to pay thousands of dollars to a job broker and lived for a time in an apartment with five other Filipino workers. The lure is the pay — 10 times more than what he made doing the same work back home.

But Mr. Soberano is not a hospitality worker or a home health aide. He is in another line of work that increasingly pays too little to attract enough Americans: Mr. Soberano is a public school teacher.

As walkouts by teachers protesting low pay and education funding shortfalls spread across the country, the small but growing movement to recruit teachers from overseas is another sign of the difficulty some districts are having providing the basics to public school students.

Among the latest states hit by the protests is Arizona, where teacher pay is more than $10,000 below the national average of $59,000 per year. The Pendergast Elementary School District, where Mr. Soberano works, has recruited more than 50 teachers from the Philippines since 2015. They hold J-1 visas, which allow them to work temporarily in the United States, like au pairs or camp counselors, but offer no path to citizenship. More than 2,800 foreign teachers arrived on American soil last year through the J-1, according to the State Department, up from about 1,200 in 2010."

I can't really complain about my public schooling, only one or two bad teachers the whole time, in NY and Maryland schools.

NCLB didn't require history?!??  Then it surely left a lot of kids behind.  :ermm:

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Thanks Tink, as you already know our children's education would be a topic in which I am interested!

NCLB was imo a disaster...an example of trying to "fix" something broken, top-down but without the wisdom. I was there first-hand in this calamity, which is to me strong example as to why we cannot must not make them rapid, top-down changes to economic/political systems. 

We need to somehow have heart-felt dialogue w/o get-rich agendas, and allow the best in us to unfold. And so I am ever more amazed at the US Founding Fathers.

* * *

Again, your observations about all the failed revolutions, "vomiting-up" the bizarre dictator types, were a very meaningful piece in my own personal understanding of how change can happen wholesome!

I don't know what to say about the NYT article...discouraging.

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