Education A to Z: T for Then and Now in Schools

by mommytotwo | More from this Blogger

12 Sep 2006 09:03 AM

I was perusing the Internet for topics that were fun and different for my blog series, Education A to Z that started with the letter T. I found a fun site that compared what teaching was like 35 years ago to what teaching is like now. Enjoy reading this, it was fun for me to write!

35 years ago teachers were dealing with the Vietnam War and the effects it was having on the United States. Currently, teachers are dealing with the war in Iraq and the effects it is having on the country.

35 years ago female teachers were most often unable to wear pants to work. Skirts and dresses were status quo for the majority of school districts when enforcing a dress code for its female teachers. Now, in many schools there is no dress code. Where I taught, we could wear jeans, shorts, flip flops, dresses, whatever we wanted as long as we did our job well and taught our students well, we were able to dress for comfort.

Over 30 years ago, students were allowed to smoke in school. Now, we all know that doesn't happen. Oh how times have changed and people have educated themselves on this topic. Thank goodness!

According to some teachers who were teaching 35 to 40 years ago, pregnant women were not able to teach. I have no idea if this was typical throughout the country, but I found it very interesting. I taught while pregnant and I can't imagine someone telling me that because I was pregnant my teaching ability was no good until I popped out that baby!

There were no special education programs 35 years ago. Now there are, thank goodness, programs for these wonderful students to receive what is hopefully a great education through the public school system.

According to the NEA, some areas of teaching have lost ground. Teachers are working more, on average 50 hours a week, not including non-compensated activities like grading papers at home, recess duties, bus duties, and volunteering to coach programs for free. Teachers on average have 12 hours a week of non-compensated activities, which is up from eight hours thirty-some years ago.

In the 1960's teachers were, on average, given 40 minutes to eat lunch, and now are lucky to get a 30 minute lunch without interruptions. Classrooms today are much more crowded than 35 years ago and teacher pay hasn't increased with inflation. Teachers earn 14 percent less than peers in other similar jobs, averaging about a two percent raise a year, which doesn't keep up with inflation which increased over three percent. This trend is similar to what teachers went through in the 1970's.

One last interesting note, more than half of the teachers teaching now have master's degrees. In the 1970's, only 27 percent of teachers went on to receive a higher degree.

What fun facts to read and write about! Does it make you see teaching or teachers in a different light?

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