It makes me wonder about the Luxembourgian education system and behooves a couple questions;
1. Do they have massive overhead then on "administrators" and "counselors" and "programs" and "assistant coaches" or do they just dedicate the vast majority of the money to (GASP) EDUCATION?
2. Do Luxembourgian children go to school, pay attention and pursue the sciences, or do they wreak havoc, misbehave, complain, and shoot their peers like their American counterparts while pining to go to college for "social work?"
3. If I walked into the average classroom, would their student to teach ratio be higher because (and I'm gambling here) the children ARE better behaved and thus it represents something more of an institution of learning versus a massive baby-sitting operation?
4. Since Luxembourg is a very rich country, they can afford to pay their teachers highly. So if we mimick their economy, teachers here could also get paid $90,000 per year. That would mean the NEA and teachers union would have to support free market, low-tax policies and capitalism that...oops. Never mind.
Is this before or after taxes? Luxembourgers are heavily taxed.
ReplyDeleteYour 4 reasons do seem to be accurate as to why our teachers don't have better salaries.
ReplyDeleteI don't wish to quibble, Cappy, but I will:^)
ReplyDeleteI've been to Luxemburg - really great place; tho small.
People there are Luxembourgers.
why would paying teachers $90K mean they need to support low-tax, free-market policies?
ReplyDeleteMaybe they would understand governments need taxes to pay for public services like the education system - so minimizing them reduces funding available to the government to provide public services?
Western European countries generally have a far higher level of taxation which is why they have a far superior quality of public infrastructure such as hospitals, education and transportation.
Eh, based on my experiences teaching, I'm still going to go the students are better behaved. Hard as I am on teachers and the teacher's union, the majority of the problems I would lay on the parents and poorly brought up/behaved children.
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