Teachers and Wages

It’s one tantrum from Mum Nature after another. Water spouts, earthquake, landslide, whopper storm the size of Australia and government being parsimonious with teacher salaries. Not just parsimonious, myopic too. And worse: disrespectful. 

When they say, they can’t afford to pay teachers more they’re either lying or not understanding the word ‘afford’. There’s money to spend on Webb-Ellis trophies, America’s Cups, and trips to Balmoral and Paris. So they can afford to pay teachers more. They should say ‘we choose to not pay teachers more’.

To pay teachers a silly little wage means they will be competing with MacDonalds and The Warehouse for staff. Graduates will say, ‘crikey, is that all they pay teachers? For all the work and creativity and intensity involved in conjuring up lessons, and coaching sports, and teaching manners and personal hygiene, and keeping an eye out for child abuse and flying chairs and knives, and helping put on a school version of Les Misreables and... nah, you’re right, I think I’ll take my degree and energy and enthusiasm and creativity and work for Google, Saatchis, or The International School in Phuket, New York or Paris.’ And so who will work in New Zealand schools for eight dollars an hour? Saints, martyrs and those running away from bratty behaviour in south London schools?

There’s a serious lack of respect for teachers and teaching and schooling. It extends from rural school closures to subtle insults to double standards. Imagine if the behaviour exhibited by our leaders, our Representatives in Parliament, our society’s role models, were repeated by teachers? We have MPs with a history of alcohol abuse, ripping off charities, dishonest expense claims, assault, and stealing someone else’s identity to get a passport in another name. And these are the people who say teachers can’t be paid more? These people make decisions that affect our country?

Comrades, we don’t need strikes, we need creative thinking. We need more time spent on natural disaster preparation: an earthquake drill every morning and a fire drill every afternoon. We should invite local MPs to our schools to give speeches and to take lessons and to watch rehearsals and to feel and understand and believe our value. They don’t know what they don’t know. We have to teach them. Luckily, in the world, teachers have a big reputation for being hard workers and effective teachers. I say ‘luckily’ because if they don’t pay teachers more, school owners in Dubai, Hong Kong, Moscow, Singapore, and Istanbul are very happy to employ New Zealand teachers. Or Rome, Frankfurt, Geneva, Cairo, Casablanca, Alexandria, Baku, Vancouver, Rio De Janeiro, Malta, Tokyo, Beijing...
 
Peter Giddens