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Entity wonders if we give enough teachers respect in America.

“Teachers have the most important job on the planet, but they’re underpaid … [and] often get blamed; they work on a system without many options or rights,” says Prince Ea in his viral video “I Just Sued the School System.”

“Teachers are some of the most disrespected and underrating beings on this planet and they do not make enough money to put up with sh*t that they put up with!” viral Youtuber Kingsley humorously exclaimed in his video “If I Were a Teacher.

This sentiment is shared among many educators in the United States. Educator William E. White tells the Huffington Post, “We treat education like a commodity bought and sold on the future’s market, a manufactured product.” He explains that Americans have an unhealthy attitude toward educators, despite their responsibilities as teachers of younger generations. How are children expected to embrace learning when they are taught to dislike and disrespect the men and women who spend their lives helping kids succeed?

The environment has become so hostile that seasoned teachers are forced to advise newly trained educators how to prepare for the tumultuous conditions in schools. One book, “Real Talk for Real Teachers” by Rafe Esquith, tells future teachers, “You will meet kids who are so incorrigible you will completely lose your cool. You might be in an unfortunate situation and feel absolutely no support from your administration or the parents. And you will pick up the newspaper and get no love from society either.”

Teachers certainly don’t get financial love, either. According PayScale, high school teachers make a median salary of $47,368. With experience and years in the field, of course, comes with a bump in salary … but teachers are often unable to put up with the lack of recognition and lack of pay long enough to receive a raise. Valerie Strauss (via The Washington Post) explains that it is pretty much “a given that between 40-50 percent of public and private school teachers leave by the end of the fifth year of starting their career.”

Many American teachers feel that they fail to gain respect from their students, administration and community. Noah Berlatsky for The Atlantic says that the root of these negative attitudes toward teachers in the U.S. may be product of a dissatisfaction with the education system in general.

In “The Teacher Wars,” Dana Goldstein explains that current predicament of the American education system has its roots in history. McCarthy supporters attacked left-wing teachers for fear that they were spreading communism among their students. In the racially tense 1950s, the Education Department “systematically fired” black teachers because communities didn’t want them teaching their white children.

The divisive trend between students and teachers, Goldstein explains, has been “less about aiding students and more about targeting teachers.” The author points to a cultural habit in this country in which Americans “repeatedly [frame] things in terms of moral panics.” This occurs when society focuses on a single class of people, rather than a “complex social problem.”

Teachers are harshly critiqued and are often seen as the source of the problem that needs to be controlled and “constantly evaluated” with mandated standardized tests. Yes, there are bad teachers just like there are bad accountants, but as Berlatsky says, we don’t “define accountant as an identity to be policed in order to solve our nation’s economic woes.” We don’t deal with malpractice lawsuits by replacing all our doctors.

In 2013, the teaching profession was the most respected out of every other country in the world, with the profession ranked as highly as that of doctors. One professor tells the BBC that “teachers are revered in China.” The Guardian says, “In European countries, between 10 and 25% of people tended to think that pupils respected teachers – compared to 75% in China.”

On the other hand, the teaching profession in U.S. trails far behind in second to last place, where educators are often counted in the same category as librarians. With teachers receiving so little support from parents, students and the government, it’s no surprise that American children “lag behind” so many other countries in terms of science, math and reading scores.

As The Washington Post says, “A world without teachers is one without a future.” So what can Americans do to eliminate the gap between educators in the U.S. and other parts of the world?

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