Last week I wrote about the emotional burden teachers shoulder and the stress they’re asked to accept in the course of their profession. One aspect I didn’t emphasize enough, and probably should’ve, was the aspect of pay — hence why this week’s title is so similar to last week’s.

The same documentary I mentioned last week, among other issues, expounded at length about the history of teaching as a profession — from the history of teachers’ unions to present working conditions and pay scales.

“Only a Teacher” repeatedly emphasized the fact that teachers, despite being expected to have academic preparation comparable to only a few other fields and being asked to shoulder a high-pressure, high-stress job with little rest for several months out of year, are paid much less than other professionals ranked with them in job difficulty and training needs. On top of that, they usually shoulder the blame when the federal education system begins to show problems. In fact, part of the reason women were encouraged to become teachers is because they could be paid even less than men.

In other words, teachers have always been paid way too little for the services they render.

This is the center of the debate over tenure versus merit pay: those who support tenure believe that it ensures that the truly passionate stay in the profession by raising their salary and benefits; those who support merit pay believe that good service should be rewarded with commensurate compensation.

While I don’t agree with the current tenure system — expect that to be a regular topic once I have more information on it — I agree more with that side. In what little “teaching” work I’ve done, I’ve already figured out how much stress teachers have to undergo, and let me tell you, if I didn’t want to do it in my heart of hearts, you’d have to pay me a lot.