Are teachers exploited?

[quirk]

I have a question. Are teachers and others who work in publically funded schools (janitors, secretaries)exploited as their labour is producing no surplus value for some capitalist or other?

[apathy maybe]

An interesting question. I would say that they are obviously workers, they do work and are paid for it. (No they aren't petit-bourgeois, to you people who might suggest it.) I think teachers are an example of a group that don't actually fall into a social group so easily. They might be middle-class, they might be professionals (sort of like doctors), but they don't get paid enough.

While they don't produce physical objects, neither do truckers or shop assistants. What teachers do produce is "educated" children, churning them out for the labour market.


The question is, do they earn enough for the amount of work they do? I would say no. They often work upto 8 hours a day, weekends and nights (which they don't get paid for), their job is stressful.

[Fawkes]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31, 2007 08:24 am
I have a question. Are teachers and others who work in publically funded schools (janitors, secretaries)exploited as their labour is producing no surplus value for some capitalist or other?
Yes they are because they are helping in educating the next generation of workers. While they don't need to be geniuses, all workers need to have some level of intelligence to be able to do their job efficiently. They have the same relationship to production that nurses and doctors do. They help keep the workers able to do their jobs, but do not really go any further than that. While they may not be producing actual products to be sold, they help "produce" the workers needed by the bourgeois to work for them. So, teachers do produce surplus value through the "production" of workers for the bourgeois to exploit.

[Jazzratt]

I agree with apathy maybe. I would add that as well as the 8 hour day teaching consumes a lot of a person's free time, especially in the current education system which is obsessed with grading and testing pupils - which is both harmful to the student's learning and a lot of work for teachers.

[Sonnie]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 31, 2007 01:34 pm
An interesting question. I would say that they are obviously workers, they do work and are paid for it. (No they aren't petit-bourgeois, to you people who might suggest it.) I think teachers are an example of a group that don't actually fall into a social group so easily. They might be middle-class, they might be professionals (sort of like doctors), but they don't get paid enough.

While they don't produce physical objects, neither do truckers or shop assistants. What teachers do produce is "educated" children, churning them out for the labour market.


The question is, do they earn enough for the amount of work they do? I would say no. They often work upto 8 hours a day, weekends and nights (which they don't get paid for), their job is stressful.
My teachers often work more than eight hours. They get there at seven thirty, and leave around five. They get home, grade our shit, and come back to school the next day to do it again.
They also have little freedom in what they teach, they have to stick to the standards and not speak about contraversial topics.
My art teacher is probably about sixty. She had a really horrible tooth infection and couldn't afford to pay for the surgery. Still, when kids couldn't pay their $30 lab fees (as my school has mostly low-income families), she had to cover the cost.
I would say they are exploited, by the government. Maybe not in the typical way, but the government does not pay them nearly enough for their labor, because if they did, they would have less money to fund other things, like war.

[Enragé]

ofcourse they are.
They are pushed around by various governments, get blamed for the "youth of today", get budget cut after budget cut, and each new minister of education needs to come up with something new which has already been done before and failed miserably.
and when they get home after their arguably shorter work-days or have their arguably longer holiday, they're far from done working. A teacher's work never, ever stops.

and they are producing surplus value indirectly, they're producing good little worker bees.

[Janus]

Janitors are workers and are definitely exploited by their employers. Teachers are as well though certainly to a lesser extent especially when you consider their salaries relative to administrators.

[Question everything]

Of course they are exploited, they don't go on strikes 'cause their bored. But if you're school has Rent-a-cops (security, comissioners etc. I just call'em rent-a-cops) they are assholes, they maybe exploited but they are worse than cops. But the funny thing is they can't do shit :lol:.

[Lenin II]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31, 2007 01:24 pm
I have a question. Are teachers and others who work in publically funded schools (janitors, secretaries)exploited as their labour is producing no surplus value for some capitalist or other?
Teachers earn more per hour than architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, statisticians, biological and life scientists, registered nurses, university-level foreign-language teachers, and editors and reporters.

I don't think the problem is so much our teacher's pay as it is our education system and biased curriculum as a whole. Government-provided schooling was certainly a good idea in itself, the only problem is the mindset of the people and the "behave-and-memorize-information-like-a-zombie-or-be-paddled" attitude of most teachers and principles. They have unintentionally become propogandists for the capitalist machine.

[Question everything]

My mom was a teacher once (at a preschool hence not a "propogandist") the pay wasn't great and alot of stuff goes directly out of their saleries, probably more than any other job, they have to pay for materials that they use, and numerous other things, so even if they are payed more on paper, they don't exactly have an overflowing wallet...

[Grava]

When it comes to teacher salary, It depends on A; How long they have been teaching and B; What their degree is. different counties have different pay of course.

Here are two teacher salaries.
Manatee County (got to go down to page 74 if it doesn't pop up there.)
http://www.manatee.k12.fl.us/sites/hr/Cont...act_020507a.pdf (http://www.manatee.k12.fl.us/sites/hr/Contracts/Ratified_tchr_contract_020507a.pdf)

Pinellas County
http://www.pinellas.k12.fl.us/hr/compensat...pManual/PG1.pdf (http://www.pinellas.k12.fl.us/hr/compensation/CompManual/PG1.pdf)

[Lenin II]

Originally posted by Question [email protected] 03, 2007 10:16 pm
My mom was a teacher once (at a preschool hence not a "propogandist") the pay wasn't great and alot of stuff goes directly out of their saleries, probably more than any other job, they have to pay for materials that they use, and numerous other things, so even if they are payed more on paper, they don't exactly have an overflowing wallet...
No offense, comrade. It was a blanket statement, but i was merely making a point that many of their minds are exploited by the system, and the education system is often itself subjugated by the intentions of the government.