Qustion for conservatives: Would you consider teaching to be a high skilled profession?
Well the high skilled part really depends on what they are teaching. My mother is a teacher. As was her mother. They mostly taught gradeschool and junior high. High skilled.. probably not. Respect the profession, yes I do. Education is all about the teacher. A good teacher makes all the difference. And I have great respect for that. Now back to the high skilled or not. surely there is a difference in skill of a basic gradeschool teacher vs a calculus teacher. surely a difference in how high skill you consider a phys ed teacher vs astronomy teacher. I think we should demand more knowledge and skill from teachers and pay them more.
As a retired further education teacher I met many teachers (UK) who were Conservative. They had joined the profession after a spell in commerce or industry and had escaped the strong left wing bias of teacher training courses. The best teacher in my last establishment had no training at all, he was accepted without this because he had an engineering degree and came to teach maths. I found that my conservative colleagues worked harder, whinged less, and took less activity in revolting against authority. They knew how lucky they were to get 13 weeks holiday a year and even with all the extra work that they put in during their own time that they were working less hours than the work they did before they started teaching. Also for the first time in their lives they were getting paid for overtime teaching hours.
