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Originally Posted by moonrambler  The thing is, teaching someone to read is a relatively low-skilled job in our society. Highly valuable, but low skill. Somebody's mom can teach her kids. Probably somebody's older sister or brother can. Volunteers at the Literacy Council can. Anybody who can read well has a pretty good chance at being able to teach a kid to read, and most people in our society can read reasonably well. This means the pay level is going to be relatively low. |
Becoming a primary school teacher is not a low-skill job. In the UK it requires completion of a two year training course, usually along-side, or after a degree.
I used reading as an example. Primary School teachers also teach music, a foreign language (French in my school), art, maths, spelling, writing, carpentry, basic mechanics, basic science.... the list goes on.
In addition, school teachers work extremely long hours - starting at 8.30am, and usually marking papers long into the night. Many take on second jobs during the school holidays as they can't afford not to.
Not that long ago, the labour of a slave was valued by society as being worth nothing. Was that 'okay'? Was that something they 'just had to deal with'?
Equally, not that long ago, women were paid less than men for the same job. Society valued them less than men, and therefore paid them less.
Just because society places a certain value on something, doesn't make it something we have to agree with. We CAN change society, since we are all individuals making a contribution to it. But we can only change society if we consciously question and criticize its values and norms.
Certain jobs in this society are significantly undervalued. Other jobs are stupidly over-valued. As an example, they did a social experiment where they removed CEO's from the running of their businesses. Despite their huge bonus and self-perceived 'worth', the business ran just fine with any random person in their position.Look at someone like the President of Northern Rock - he presided over one of the worst financial debacles in recent history, lost many people's life savings, ran his bank into bankruptcy, was then bailed out by the government and still got paid an astronomical salary and bonus. Was he 'worth' that? No. Does a teacher produce more value to society than him? Absolutely.
So the system is flawed, and the amount of money you earn is not representative of how much social value you produce.