I was talking to a friend back in the states yesterday who has family in Spain and she reminded me of a conversation we had with her relatives about the security in teaching jobs here. Her cousin lives in Miami but has passed the exam to be a teacher in Spain, an exam that grants you a civil servant position, AKA one that will employ you for life. She can return to Spain at any time and have a job, even if she hasn't been teaching in the past decade or more.
I had a similar discussion with one of my teachers last week as she drove me to the bus stop at the end of the day. If teachers pass the exam, they can have a job and all the teachers teaching at public schools in this civil servant work are paid the same, no matter their age or experience. She then told me that there is a list from which teachers who have not passed the exam yet are chosen and given positions that are vacated during the year (maternity leave, retirement, etc), but the selection process has nothing to do with how well they actually did on the exam and does not take into account how many times they have taken (and therefore failed) the test. There could be a 50 year old teacher that has taken the exam 25 times and she will get the job over a 23 year old who has taken it once and could be a better teacher.
Bottom line: The US education system is struggling, but so is the rest of the world. We all have a lot to work on and a lot to improve.
No comments:
Post a Comment