Lincolnite

I’m running on fumes here, so I’m sure I’m not fully grasping things.  But ...

I don’t think expecting higher salaries necessarily wills the public to pay them to public school teachers.  I’ve been trying to will my wife’s teaching salary to be higher for years and it doesn’t seem to work in spite of my higher expectations.

That said, my in-laws who farm and ranch in the Sandhills think we’re living pretty high on the hog the way it is.  It’s all a matter of perspective.

I’m running on fumes, too, so you’re probably grasping things just as well as I am. I guess what I am trying to say is that often one’s sense of self value plays an important role in the value others place on you. Not only is your self assessment related to others’ assessments of your value, but it also strongly relates to how much (or how little) you are willing to work for.

Consider this hypothetical: say I build websites. In fact, I build incredible websites. But, not one to be motivated by profit, I only charge $20/hour for my services. Besides, $20/hour affords me the style of living I prefer. I quickly realize that I’m getting very little business, and the business I do get consists mainly of small projects for companies who obviously don’t have a clue what the web is about. Where are the huge contracts? The sweet gigs I dream of? Why don’t big, important companies see how much bang for the buck they get from me?

The answer lies in how I have valued myself. By pricing myself at $20/hour, I have inadvertantly labeled myself as “cheap”, and therefore “low quality”. High school students charge $20/hour for website design services; professionals do not. If I want to be perceived as being valuable, I need to sell myself that way.

Granted, this analogy is far from perfect, but if you look around you’ll see examples like this all over the place. Website designers are tremendously over-valued, but they get away with it because they have convinced the world that they are worth it. Teachers, on the other hand, have done a very poor job of convincing Americans that they are worth more money. I’m not saying that they do or do not deserve a raise, merely that, generally speaking, they aren’t making a good case for themselves.

Oops, I should mention that my website hypothetical is not original. I based it off an excellent article I read a while back, but I couldn’t find the original article. If anybody knows the article (it dealt with software pricing rather than website design) please provide a link.

Excellent example.  I know exactly what you mean by that and I’m going to use to try to convince someone that they are under-valuing themselves.

Thanks!

Aha, I found the article: Camels and Rubber Duckies by Joel Spolsky.

As a public school teacher, I’ve heard it all regarding this subject.  I find any comparisons that compare commercial enterprise to public education completely fallacious, because they are fundamentally different things. 

I work for the public as a whole, based on the ideal that a free public education is a linchpin of democracy; I do not work for a private interest that can afford to pay me what I deserve. 

When teachers say, “I didn’t go into this for the money,” the cliche is based on the preminse that there are no easy answers to these questions.  Until someone finds a fair, equitable way to compensate teachers for the insanely diverse things we do for society (without making taxes completely ridiculous), I will continue to “undervalue” the work I do.

“premise” that is… good thing I’m not payed based on spelling…