Mark, it's obvious we're coming at this from vastly different points of view. You choose to see the negative in the teaching profession, and no matter how much is presented to you to nullify your arguments, you just don't get it. I won't begin to speculate why you feel the way you do - that's your busniss, but I do take exception to your statements.

Its so big of you to back off from you statement that all teachers use manuals to just "most of them". How many teachers do you know personally? I know several, and to a person they hate the manuals they are TOLD to teach from. Most only use them as a resource at best.

Here's the deal. Everybody chooses their profession. You chose to be an Information Systems Engineer - certainly a job that is needed in today's computer age. You knew the hours, you knew the pay, you knew what would be expected of you when you got into it. Somehow, I don't think you were shocked to learn you don't get summers off.

In just the same way, teachers choose their profession, knowing what is expected from them. They know they will get summers off, that is true. However, they also know there is a double standard about pay. They know that society thinks they should do it "for the children" and put their own economic stability aside "for the sake of the children" (and the taxpayer - right?). Yet, they also know that society expects them to solve all the children's problems, be everything to every student, and handle everything perfectly. Essentially, you want cheap perfection.

Here's a clue - it doesn't exist.

What stats would you use to fire a teacher? It's been thrown around for years, and there is no solid, repeatable method to score how good a teacher is. Can't we use test scores? What if the teacher has kids that are low achieving? Do the teachers who have gifted students get big bonuses then? How do you keep a teacher from just teaching the test to keep scores up? How about evaluations by their superiors? Will every principal score the same way? What do they score? Hey - I'm against tenure too. I don't get it where I work, so why should anybody else? My point is that there is no good way to score a teacher.

If you look closly, most teacher strikes occur because the teachers want to be paid as much as their peers in other districts. You would want a raise too if you knew that one of your coworkers was making a lot more than you. That's why in every other profession, pay is kept secret. Not so for teachers...

As many times as I read your last two paragraphs, I can't for the life of me understand what you're getting at. Not to be too critical, but the messed up puncuation and typos make it very difficult to understand.

Also - I'd like to know what I've "fabricated" in my posts.