EDUCATION CRISIS
Teachers Are Saying “No”
The Western World is in an education crisis
Congratulations greedy Western Governments, you finally did it! You destroyed education.
You should be proud of the achievement you’ve fought so long and hard to accomplish. Your strategy of refusing to fund schools, buy books, or pay teachers a livable wage had finally paid off as the younger generation says a hard, “NO” to becoming educators.
The Western Education system is in crisis. Teachers are needed but they aren’t coming.
After a passionate conversation with an Italian student of mine, who happens to be a mother of two young children, about the education crisis in Rome, I sat down to make notes for this article. It had been coming for some time.
In a moment of pure serendipity, Yael Wolfe’s piece on learning from millennials dropped into my Medium Daily Digest the following morning.
In it, she talks about learning from Millennials as they take the world with a strong resonance of “No!”
Yael says:
Then millennials burst onto the scene, entering the workforce with an entitlement I’d never seen before. They came into assistant positions in my school district and make it known to all that they were unhappy with their wages and expected more. They even defined “more” with actual numbers.
This generation refuses to be underpaid and undervalued and couldn’t care less if Gen Xers like me — and there’s definitely no care factor for the Boomers — call them spoilt, privileged, or entitled.
They’re Right!
I have spent the last three years watching and learning from them. I have tried a range of side gigs to get myself out of the quagmire that greedy governments have enjoyed pulling Gen Xers into.
Like it or hate it, the Boomers were able to build wealth in a time where, for the most part, a job provided enough financial resources to buy a home, feed a family, have a car, and save some money for the kids’ college funds, family vacations, and retirement.
Yes, retirement! Remember that pesky thing? The idea that after a lifetime of toil and adding to the economy we get to feel supported in not toiling and adding to the economy?
Millennials have said a hard “no” to that too.
Guess what. Millennials don’t want to teach! Why should they?
In the days where Instagram accounts, YouTube Channels, podcasting, writing, artistic endeavours, and online pursuits can make you coin, why grind away at a job where most of your time is spent fighting cost-cutting administrators and overzealous parents?
The wages are a joke
In an effort to increase the number of teachers needed, the company I teach for has dropped all necessary criteria to teach English effectively.
❌University degree? Gone. (I never really agreed with this one so it doesn’t concern me. I believe that you can teach a language without a university education.)
❌TESOL or TEFL Certification? Gone.
❌Being a native English speaker? Gone.
The last criterion is the one I struggle with the most. There are nuances in any language that are only acquired through engagement with a population that speaks the language as a mother tongue.
Let me be clear here: if you spoke another language at home but lived in an English-speaking world and were educated in English schools, I consider you a native English speaker.
All of my students are expecting to engage with native speakers. They pay a lot of money for their subscriptions and they, too, want a bang for their buck.
But guess what was the one thing that the platform didn’t do to attract new teachers? Raising the hourly rate, of course!
That’s right, I have been earning the same wage for more than four years despite the cost of living rising exponentially everywhere — including student subscriptions. The platform has also figured out other ways to screw us on pay whilst trying to market them as benefits.
God forbid teachers get a decent wage.
We have been conditioned to believe that teachers are not worthy of a livable wage. Why? If you read Katie Jgln’s piece on why women don’t ask for more money — spoiler alert: they actually do — you will come to the conclusion that female-oriented jobs were automatically devalued to keep us uppity females in our rightful places.
[Insert eye roll and patronizing smile at the boys’ club here]
For decades public schools in the United States have been asking for decent funding. Some teachers in low socioeconomic areas have had to buy school supplies with their own pittance of a salary to ensure that kids get what they need to learn — not to thrive mind you, merely to learn!
The GOP is actively trying to kill any free school lunch program for children in need as empty bellies are “obviously” the fault of parents trying to raise their kids, not the fault of greedy politicians lining their pockets and making piss-poor annual budget allocations whilst raising inflation rates.
Of course not!
I’m not even going to mention the ridiculousness of Florida and Texas in their attempts to stamp out all education that doesn’t promote white heteronormativity as the ultimate educational standard. Aryan race theory anyone?
In my recent conversation with the Italian student and mother of two living in Rome, I was shocked to hear that the government won’t pay for school custodians so parents, themselves, have to create rosters and head to the school to clean it.
Additionally, teachers are so scarce that during the first two weeks of school every year, the school day ends earlier whilst the administrators try to scare up a posse of educators to shoulder the load of extra classes.
I also recently learned that teachers in one particular country in the Middle East don’t even come to school if they don’t feel like it. With no substitute teacher system in place, the kids have a free period but that’s a whole separate discussion.
Up here in Ontario, Canada, the rich white privileged Premier (governor) and his awful cabinet would rather snort razor blades and gargle with hot lava than put money into education.
Back to the lack of educators
Millennials SHOULD be demanding what they’re worth and they SHOULD be learning from our mistakes.
The constant rhetoric from Boomers and Gen Xers claiming the “laziness” of the younger generation is ridiculous.
Why in the hell would we want others to go through all the crap we had to face? They’re somehow less than because they don’t want to pay their dues? When did we become so unbelievably selfish that we feel others should suffer to be worthy of survival?
As the Boomers and Gen Xers retire or simply walk away from the dysfunction that has become the norm in ‘First World’ education systems, the Millennials are saying “nope” as governments plead for them to step up and step in.
I, for one, applaud this move. Keep saying no until there is a clear change in our values for educators.
Congratulations greedy Western governments, you screwed the pooch. You should be very proud.
So what does the future look like?
I’m not sure I can conclusively answer this question but I have a theory.
Homeschooling is on the rise everywhere.
With classroom bullying soaring on social media, hate campaigns fuelling dangers to LGBTQ+ kids, the complete dismantling of history aimed at attacking kids of colour, and books becoming the latest weapon of the far right, I wouldn’t want my (imaginary) kids to grow up in that environment.
I see communities and neighbourhoods rallying parents, grandparents, and retired teachers to come together in makeshift classrooms, the kids moving from house to house for different classes.
Joe’s mom has a biology class going in the backyard whilst Sam’s dad is teaching geography using his own travels as a guide. Jen’s mom is teaching mathematics in the front room whilst her grandmother is in another teaching science. Grandad is in the street preparing his old Chevvy to teach driver’s ed.
Communities raising funds or trading skills to pay for the education that their governments refuse to fund. Sad but true.
What are your thoughts on the future of education?
Vanessa Brown is a book author, content creator, teacher, and recovering digital nomad. She has lived in six countries around the globe, five of them with her beloved Jaime, The Well-Travelled Cat.
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