One of the common things that people say when I first meet them, and we start discussing our respective jobs and I tell them I'm a teacher is "I could never do that. I don't know how you do it!" Of course, they are intending to respect my profession and its challenges, which, since the pandemic started, have intensified. I regularly hear my colleagues say they are near the end of their ropes, and I feel like that myself almost once a week. Nonetheless, this intended kindness irks me, not for the intent, but for the structural violence it obfuscates.
Of late, in the grist mill of my mind, I have found a response, that old saw: "Put your money where your mouth is!" Why would an intended kindness irk me so? Well, everyone in Canada assumes it's a well-paying job because they look up the average or median salary, and that number is quite substantial. In Ontario, the average teacher salary is $75, 000/yr. This datum is misleading though, because there are several different systems of education existing simultaneously. The most obvious division is public schools vs. private schools, but there are Catholic school boards as well, despite how this obviously contradicts Canada's Charter of rights and freedoms by favouring one religion over others. I have been working in private schools for five years. I have made over $30, 000/yr only once. This wouldn't be so bad if I were living somewhere in the same realm as affordable. To add insult to injury, I am held to the same standards as public school teachers by the ministry of education, who seem to delight in creating requirements that create an abundance of extra work, public school teachers who make almost twice the amount I do.
Before Rob Ford was elected premier of Ontario, there was a bill on the table in Ontario's Legislative Assembly that ensured equal pay for equal work. The framing of this bill in public discourse was as a feminist measure to ensure that women earned as much as their male counterparts. However, I would have benefitted from it as much as any woman. But, as often happens in the country when something good is about to happen, Ford got elected and nixed the bill. Your words of kindness mean very little when I'm forced by my meager salary to buy food not on the basis of choice or desire, but by whatever products are on sale.
It's getting harder and harder for me to justify living in a place where I have financially struggled my entire adult life doing a job I feel is more of a calling (the knowledge of which everyone exploits to their own benefit). A place where it is considered a breach of etiquette to discuss your salary openly. A place where etiquette gets uncritically elevated to the status of morals. A place where the etiquette permits the elevation of greed to an admirable virtue and allows people to act on it with impunity. I wonder how many of those that dole out this "kindness" voted for Ford. Therefore, the next time you go to tell a teacher "Such a noble profession! I don't know how you do it! I could never!" without supporting equal pay for equal work through your votes, consider biting your tongue. Words are cheap. Speak with your votes and your wallets.
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