Why Teachers Are Paid

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In 2016, the average salary for a new college graduate with a bachelors degree was $50,556 a year according to a survey done by National Association of Colleges and Employers. If you remove education majors from the equation, the average jumps up to $52,297 per year. In fact, this same survey found that on average, students who graduate with a bachelor degree in education made just $34,891 as a first-year teachers (Poppick). It is not surprising then that in a country where the cost of college is skyrocketing, less and less college-graduates are becoming teachers. Since teachers are often paid based on the number of years of experience they have, it is imperative to look at average salaries of those with a bachelor degree who have been in …show more content…
What these statistics can not do is explain why teachers are so significantly underpaid. While there are countless arguments for why teachers are paid what they are, four of the main ones are: how schools are funded, the feminization of teaching, and the role of teachers as quasi-professions, and the amount of hours teachers work per …show more content…
97% of preschool and kindergarten, 80% of elementary and middle school, and 60% of high school teachers are female. Teaching was originally a man dominated job, but this changed during the beginning of the 19th century under the leadership of Horace Mann, who was the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education from 1837 to 1848. There were two reasons Mann believed women made superior teachers over men. First, he believed that women were superior to men for teaching the young because of their soft temperament and loving nature. He thought their motherly instincts would make it easier for them to connect with their students. Secondly, and more important for this discussion, female teachers were simply cheaper then male teachers. “Mann noted in the First Annual Report that the average was of female teachers was about one-third that of male teachers. The average cost of a male teacher continued to be between two and one-half and three times that of a female teachers during his tenure” (Tozer and Sense, p.69). Since Mann’s tenure as secretary, teacher has remained a female dominated
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