teachers vs. soldiers

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why is it that Americans seem bent on worshiping or veterans and active-duty personnel but no one ever thanks a teacher.

Soldiers kill and destroy in the name of ideology.

Teachers teach and enlighten.

I would point out that teachers don't risk their lives, but lately...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! !

oh man that was funny. I mean the idea that teachers are there because they want to teach their students and not because they are megalomaniacal sadists... that's good stuff.

Ok, ok, to be fair not all of my teachers where monsters, I had some truly great ones who actually deserved the title of "teacher.

so in all seriousness, I assume this is about "who is paid more". well it's harder to get somebody to agree to be a soldier than a teacher. and a solider risks much more. Thus soldiers are paid more because if they weren't, nobody would be one. It would be nice if we didn't need soldiers but that is sadly not the case.

That said, REAL teachers deserve more money than they get, and at least in the U.S. education is drastically underfunded. I would be all for cutting military spending for more education. After all, bombs do more for the war effort than soldiers, and you need smart people to make bombs.

Enlighten how? Sure if the teachers work as you claim then they deserve more, otherwise no let them us their heads and switch to a more suitable career/environment.

Most Americans put little value on the teaching profession, or learning in general; which is reflected by the disparity between the uninformed views of most of it's modern population and America's enlightened past.

But we do love violent movies.

I think it is cultural. I think that respect for veterans and active-duty personnel is important also. However we ought to respect our teachers more than we do. I personally think it began when teachers stopped presenting themselves as authority figures and instead choose to appear as peers.

As a person who wears both of these hats (though my teaching is restricted to university and students there seem to give more respect and I have never been on active deployment) I can say that respect for the uniform is not universal. Certain people cannot tell the difference policy makers and the digs. I think personally that the sheer amount of respect for soldiers, at least at present, stems from a desire to compensate for the treatment society dealt out to its Vietnam and Korea Veterans; the former being spat on and the latter forgotten.

Last edited by 91 on 01 Mar 2011, 1:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

Sometimes soldiers fight and die to defend their people.

Teachers and Soldiers are not in the same line of business so how can they be compared.

ruveyn

I'm not trying to devalue the contributions of soldiers, as I greatly respect them. But on US and Canadian TV I have never, ever seen any 'patriotic commercials' inspiring people to become educators. On the other hand I see Canadian Forces advertisements fairly regularly, and when I watch US TV I see they are not shy either.
So I think it partially comes down to over glorification. The US has been involved in 'endless war' for a long time.
Teachers just aren't viewed as making any sacrifices despite this generally being the case

Teachers get the proper amount of respect considering the quality of the job they do and who's interests they truly have in mind.

Teachers often end up working for government funded illiteracy mills. Not very inspiring.

ruveyn

Whatever my views on the state of American education,, which have been amply exposed, I have had some extremely good teachers. REAL teachers doing REAL education. Thank you, Miss Nesmith, almost the only good thing in Austin.

Of course, some of them have been and likely are pretty bad.

There are not so hot military too.

Well, instead of investing into so heavily RFC technology (RFC means 'really f*king cool', which is what my friends in the Canadian Reserve describe any military hardware as) perhaps they should invest more into the illiteracy mills and abandon NCLB
The US will probably be one of the first countries to pass a lot of it's military work off to remote-operated machines anyways. One day soldiers might have about as much glory as those South Koreans who beat me at Starcraft last night (I'm just not Asian enough to compete, anymore...)

At the elementary level government funded schools have a virtual or near monopoly. There is little or no incentive for them to do well.

The only possible competition are so called charter schools and the teacher's union goes b*llsh*t whenever there is move to replace regular public schools (standard issue illiteracy mills) with charter or test schools.

ruveyn

We all have first hand expierence of teachers being less than perfect and as were generally teenagers or young adults we tend or despise or ignore them. With obvious exceptions.

With the military, few people get to know them really well and we can blame "killing for an idealogy" on politicians. Besides it's more dramatic for a member of the armed forces to lose their life than a teacher to teach for how many years.

Honestly i believe their both heroes who deserve our upmost respect. 144th Hooah!!

In my experience those who flaunted their authority where always the worst teachers. That's not to say the good teachers never used authority. My third grade teacher threatened to bump a kid who was bullying me back to second grade on the first day of class and Coach Krause let everyone know that he would not tolerate any misbehavior in his class. but my 3rd/4th grade teacher (Mrs. Bice at the time, she has since remarried and I can't remember her new last name) rarely had to use her authority (I had her for two years and only remember her coming down on someone two or three times) and coach Krause NEVER did. That is because they behaved in such a respectable manner, and treated us with dignity, that none of us ever wanted to misbehave. The authority nuts however often spent the entire class period yelling at someone and accomplished nothing.