The Challenge Still Stands

I couldn't help responding to a recent letter in The Voice [But I Deserve, March 29]. The writer, Ben Davidson, like so many bashers of education and teachers, set out to criticize what he felt were high salaries for teachers. With the reading of his first sarcastic line ("With tearful eye, I read the plight of a teacher who cannot afford to teach because the pay is so low"), I thought: "Here we go again." But as I read on, I found his letter proved more than ever that the teaching profession needs tremendous salary increases, and immediately.

To prove my point, let's use a hypothetical situation and look at the medical profession. People become doctors because they want to help people, just like people who choose teaching. But besides the satisfaction of helping people, doctors also make a tremendous amount of money. What if the starting salary for the doctor's profession was $29,000 in today's society, and it took a doctor twenty years to reach the top salary of $60,000? Over time, bright and talented people would look for other areas in which to earn a living. Why would someone go to college for years and years, amassing huge student loans, to make a fraction of the amount needed to pay this back, much less to live on? Doctors would need to take on part-time jobs just to make ends meet. Gradually, the top colleges would stop offering medical degrees, because students would not look at the profession as lucrative. And what caliber student would come into the profession? Certainly not the brightest and the best! The brightest and the best want to be rewarded for their talent.

So gradually, a doctor shortage emerges, and people realize something needs to be done. So the state announces a plan. First they offer low-interest mortgages to doctors so they will consider moving to large cities. Then they require doctors to undergo a BEST program. Doctors have a mentor and also have to complete a huge portfolio project, while at the same time trying to perform in their professional duties. Then the state offers an alternate route to doctor's licensing, so that interested businessmen can become doctors after completing a rigorous 8-week training session. The only solution not offered is larger salaries. And meanwhile, the pool entering the profession becomes smaller and smaller.

I wonder if Mr. Davidson would want to commit his health to a doctor who graduated at the bottom of the class, or maybe he would like to have surgery performed by a doctor who went through the 8-week alternate route to certification. Taxpayers, town government, and the state have created the above situation with the teaching profession, and then expect A+ performance with students’ test scores. All the while parents of these students abdicate their responsibility to the teachers and the schools. Teaching is incredibly demanding, and unless you have performed in this capacity, you cannot possibly make informed comments or criticism. Rare is the future teacher who wants to live a life of poverty for selfless ideals.

As former students, all have had firsthand knowledge of the education system, so everyone thinks they are experts on good teaching. But that's like thinking that because they know how to eat, they can cook. I have challenged our esteemed critics to teach a week in a public school, and then write their diatribes. So far, no one has taken me up on the offer, because I'm confident most would not last more than a day. By the way, the challenge still stands.

Matthew P. Valenti is President of the Torrington Education Association.