this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy
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I love teaching, but the job of being a schoolteacher scares the heck out of me. Trying to earn the respect of 30 kids, while working from some standardized lesson plan, it sounds awful. I wouldnโt last a month.
Plus there's the problem of having to relearn subjects to such a level of mastery that you can teach them effectively. Like 2nd grade math isn't hard at all obviously but it's really hard to synthesize and break down all material in a way that a developing mind can grasp it.
I took classes which would qualify me to be a teacher. The biggest thing that scared me out of it were the unions and the fact they're not even legally questionable sometimes. I didn't want to become that. In the United States, the occupation has so much control that the head of the teachers' union is considered the most dangerous individual in the nation according to a poll/ranking. Not sure if anyone would be willing to accept that as context for my answer though.
Everyone should be in a union. I'm happy to hear teachers are successfully unionised in the US.
If you grew up here you probably wouldn't be saying this. Unions at their conception were supposed to be collectives of people who made sure they weren't mistreated, but today they're groups who use their membership numbers to make sure they get their way as often as possible. You may have heard about police here being notorious for overstepping in certain matters. In cases where this is true, that's with the unfortunate help of the police union, which practices a needlessly strong honor-based system of nepotism. Teachers here are the same way. If anyone in power even remotely brings up any proposed bill that works in favor of teachers, such as one that gives them less required work time or more pay, they will pressure it into materialization, and they will exploit anything and everything for their giant wolf pack, allegorically-speaking. With Lemmy having a strong anti-capitalist sentiment, it strikes me as counterintuitively argumentative that the same demographic would be so supportive of unions.
Giving support to a bill that benefits workers through collective organisation is precisely what unions are for. Why are you against people wanting a better work/life balance? Unionise and you can have one too.
Because that's not what they end up being used for most of the time, people here most often see them be used to impose one's group's interests on others, and these interests often dictate the fate of one's future in the job. The issue is so bad the occupation is stigmatized in less populated areas.