Although I understand the outrage over people who aren't "really" teachers being paid more than a beginning teacher, I also think we need to put things into perspective. First of all, two articles in two different editions of the same newspaper seemed to have some trouble with the facts. How do we know how many other details were inaccurate? Second, there IS a shortage of English teachers. I haven't heard any realistic suggestions on how to bring more English teachers into the system. Those good teachers who left teaching didn't do so because they wanted a NIS 9000 salary -- assuming this is the gross salary, it's not that much more than a lot of teachers already make and it's certainly not enough to lure someone away from teaching. I'm also having some trouble with some of the arguments presented on the list: I take pride in my knowledge > and skills and it took me a long time to develop and accumulate them > through > hard work and experience. Exactly -- through hard work and experience. The only way to get experience is to teach. I've learned much more from teaching than I learned from studying. So if the bulk of our knowledge comes from actually teaching, what difference does it make how long the training course is? > How can it be possible to "train" someone who > never thought of going into teaching in the first place, to suddenly become > a teacher in six months. Will they learn all about second language > acquisition, applied linguistics, methodology, not to mention the > psychology > of the adolescent, the philosophy of education etc etc.in this short time? My BA is not in education. I got an MA in TESOL from Columbia University Teachers College in one year (including the summer). Although I did study second language acquisition, methodology and some applied linguistics, I never took a single course in the psychology of the adolescent or the philosophy of education. I wasn't required to take courses in class management or literature, either. I WAS required to take a bunch of courses that didn't help me much as a teacher. I'm willing to bet that all I needed to know I could have learned in six months of intensive study. In fact, when you take semester breaks into consideration, my "one year" really wasn't much more than six months and I managed to get a master's degree in that time. How can we comment on the course of study when we haven't seen the curriculum? > > > If you did your four years at Oranim or Gordon or any other college aren't > you good enough? Maybe (and maybe not), but if there were enough people like this, then there wouldn't be a shortage of English teachers. Again, I understand why people are upset that these new teachers will be paid more than new teachers who are graduates of education colleges. However, I also understand the money incentive. The government is trying to solve two problems at once -- increase the number of English teachers and decrease the number of unemployed people. If they don't offer a high enough salary, these unemployed people, who are used to earning a whole lot more than NIS 9000 a month, will prefer to continue receiving unemployment benefits. The entire education system is in a sorry state in this country -- it's not just English teachers who are underpaid, overworked and unappreciated. English teachers leave the system more than others perhaps because their English skills make it easier for them to find jobs in the private sector. Education is obviously not the highest priority of our government and the chances of any significant increase in our salaries or improvement in our working conditions any time in the near future are slim. I'm not outraged over the fact that these former high-tech people will receive higher salaries than other new teachers -- it's the fact that our salaries are so low to begin with that's outrageous. Bari ----------------------------------------------- ** Etni homepage - http://www.etni.org or - http://www.etni.org.il ** ** for help - ask@xxxxxxxx ** ** to post to this list - etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** -----------------------------------------------