Not to undermine the job teachers do, let us face the cold hard truth. A teacher’s job does not require much risk, no need to invent anything, no need to design a new concept, no chance of getting sued due to product failure, no need to learn new theoretical stuff, and not much risk of a layoff.
All of above risks are ever present in the life of a person working for a profit making outfit. And to top it off, most people are lucky to get 2 weeks paid vacation. Not 3 months paid time off in summer.
Based on all that, teachers in high-school and below do not deserve any more than the average salary of a factory worker.
They want to be known as (Professionals) Professional what, they have a meaningless degree, too much money for 9 month’s work. What else could they want. Time for a Mass Fire and Mass Hire.
“Based on all that, teachers in high-school and below do not deserve any more than the average salary of a factory worker.”
You see that here in NJ; while the public school cartel makes boatloads of money, teachers in private schools are paid about half as much (the going rate in the private sector).
Almost all of the others could be found working a variety of jobs. Some would help out on a relative's farm, one worked in the hardware store. A few helped set up for and even manned booths in the county fair. One of them even performed in rodeos around the region. Another, a great music teacher, learned how to do a better job repairing musical instruments than what the school district was paying shipping them out to a big city and ended up setting up a very successful business in his basement doing just that.
We had some great teachers with a wide variety of real life experiences to add to their classroom teaching. For a podunk town in a backwater region of the United States, we produced a lot of great students who went on to productive and successful careers.
But much less so since the teacher's union came in. In my era, high school teachers (mostly) went into the profession because they actually enjoyed teaching but wanted the summers off to pursue other interests. Now, they mostly go into it for the money and stability, neither of which has much to do with how well they produce.