Women’s History Month should have a place for teachers
Teachers deserve more credit in the history and financial books
“You have teachers who give everything for children — sometimes spending more time than parents — but society doesn’t respect or pay teachers what they are worth,” Michelle Santos told the Hechinger Report. Santos is the director of journalism and media arts for the Richard Wright Public Charter School for Journalism and Media Arts in Washington, D.C. Santos began her teaching career in a facility for students found guilty of criminal offenses; in the nearly two decades since, she has been a teacher and administrator in various schools.
“It’s because we’re mostly women,” she explained. “Women’s work in general is undervalued.”
In our capitalist society, people’s worth is viewed as being linked to the salary they bring home. Women are overrepresented in the lowest paying jobs, and women in high-paying professions are paid less than their male counterparts, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Teachers who have gone on strike across the country over the last year and a half have made explicit demands for increased pay and better working conditions; their demands are inextricably linked to women’s frustrations with being undervalued.
Approximately 77 percent of the more than 3,827,000 teachers in public elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. during the 2015-16 school year were women, according the data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics. There’s an even higher concentration of women in the lower grades: 89 percent in primary school, 73 percent in middle school, but 59 percent in high school. Yet an overwhelming majority of women who have made significant contributions won’t make it into the history books used in classes women teach, because teaching is a “pink-collar” profession, meaning it’s comprised mostly of women. The lack of credit shows CONTINUE READING: Women’s History Month should have a place women educators
