Thoughts on homeschooling?

[Whateverist]

I mostly agree but there are some of us who actually prefer the teaching gig to industry, some so much so that they actually leave better paying jobs in industry to do work with so much tangible social relevance. I admit that that is part of the reward I work for, I just don't accept that it should substitute for dollars.

I don't mean to shaft teachers. I was a bit too fast with my paint brush -- I was attempting to illustrate that the Wall Street bankers, hot shot software developers, etc whom A Theist would be familiar with are usually skimmed from the best.

Most teachers for California come from state colleges, not our excellent universities.

That's not to say that teachers are failures, but only that the majority comes from the middle to lower end of the spectrum.

Then again, a lot of shit washes into industry too.

I still think the life of a teacher is a pretty shitty one. One with many, many restrictions, little recourse to dealing with abusive students, double-standards enforced by busybodies who really should be shot on sight, etc,.

Case in point that comes to mind -- My argument with Kyuuketsuki on AtheistHeaven about a woman who once upon a time did prostitution then cleaned up and became a teacher. He was adamant that "as a parent" that he had the right to insist she lose her job.

Yes, lose her job over a part of her past that she left behind. Nothing says atheists have to believe in good ol' redemption and changing your ways, no more than Christians actually believe in such.

Bleh.

I try to dissuade my friends of teaching, only because I don't want them to be broken down with a job that never ends but with a constant stream of parents, moral crusaders and shitty, ill disciplined child-monsters you'd wish to end.

I hear what you're saying and have heard enough horror stories to know teaching can be pretty bad some places. There are a few aspects of work in at my school and in my district in northern California which could be better but really I have it pretty good. For one thing, the vast majority of parents are enormously supportive, appreciative and realistic. Being in a college town they are also mostly educated themselves. In twenty plus years I can count on one hand the number of unpleasant parent encounters I've had.

I went into teaching in my mid thirties. I had been to Cal for my undergraduate degree but went to the nearest state college for my teaching credential. I found I was rusty when working with calculus students during my student teaching gig at the high school level so I audited a calculus course to brush up. That course had lots of planning-to-be math teachers in it and I was appalled by what I saw.