What's Wrong With This Picture?

As a coach, I've had the privelege over the past years of working closely with young people across the economic spectrum, and have become hugely impressed by their decency, intelligence, and potential. I've also come to understand deeply that I have a responsibility to instill in them something that goes far beyond teaching the skills of a sport, and in so doing I've become increasingly mindful and in awe of the role of educators in our society. Participating in a sport is valuable, of course, but not central to the lives of most young people, and I accept that what I do as a sideline is non-essential in the much larger scheme of things. Teachers, on the other hand, bear a burden in building and maintaining a healthy society that's impossible to put a price tag on. So why are teachers so underpaid? I'm not talking about coaches. There are football coaches at the big universities that take home seven figure salaries, and that's just sick. Just as bad are corporate honchos, and let's not even mention sport and entertainment celebrities. But it doesn't stop there. Until teachers are recognized for what they contribute and are paid accordingly, this society will continue its inexorable slide into dysfunction. Our respect for teachers is repaid in lip-service only, unlike with doctors and lawyers and the network executives who inundate with us American Idol and Do You Think You're Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. Let's face it, we've got it all ass backward.