If You Want Teachers to Be Paid Then Make Me President

Matt Yglesias on how we like to give teachers appreciation weeks instead of paying them well:

Lawyers are really appreciated. They don't have a special week, but they get a lot of money. The message to college students is pretty clear — society wants you to get a JD not an M. Ed. and to go become a lawyer not a teacher.

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you call this bullshit 8 years ago?" 

Sigh. Yes I did, faithful reader. Yes I did. 

4) I WILL ACTUALLY MAKE EDUCATION A PRIORITY. During an episode of "The West Wing" a character says

"Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense."

I’m not so pie-eyed that I can let myself dream that all that is possible, I would settle for paying teachers more than what they make now. But oh, EVERY election we gotta sit through some numbnuts bemoaning what "heroes" teachers are - they can barely keep from full-body heaving, on the floor wailing while pleading with us to treasure these amazing angels sent from heaven, etc etc etc. Of course as soon as the election is over the teachers are back to picking lunchroom "chili" out of their hair while dreaming about saving up to get their VCR fixed. But oh, we tell ourselves, teaching is a higher calling, teachers do it cause they love it! They’d do it for free; they’re thrilled to be getting anything!!! Meanwhile we pay janitors at these schools twice as much – I guess we think of janitors as being an ambitious, money-hungry conniving bunch, so it’s okay to pay them. We applaud Wall Street hotshots who sit at a big desk moving money around on the internet and own three Porsches, but get bent out of shape whenever the people that stay with our children all day, teach them how to read and write, try to teach them right and wrong, protect them and drive them to away games get uppity and demand a real salary. We expect them to do all the above for almost nothing cause that’s the way it always has been (ie has historically been a woman’s job), and then we wonder why we’re getting dumber and dumber every year. It’s not that Johnny can’t read - it’s that instead of becoming teachers, the people who COULD teach Johnny to read took the job of placing those cakes in the urinals since it pays more and you get pissed on less. So instead of turning on some crocodile tears and inventing an aunt who "dedicated her life to teaching", I will bust my hump to make being a teacher a desirable career for the first time since "Wild Things."

Bolds by me as connecting to the original article. You're welcome, Earth.