My husband goes to work at 7 in the morning and comes home at 5 or 6 at night, after grading papers and working on his lesson plans for the next day. Even though he holds a teaching credential, he is required by his district to spend time taking classes after school one day a week (for which he is not paid), and to spend his off hours researching and writing papers for those courses. He spends most of his (unpaid) summer "vacation" in the classroom, planning for the next year, or taking other courses to make him a more effective teacher. By most any measure, he's a good teacher - his students love him, parents are already jockeying to get their kids in his class next year, the school administrators and his colleagues respect him, and his students' test scores are going up. But his salary for ten months of work-even with his masters degree, his multi-subject credential, and his additional postgraduate work - is approximately what he would have made in his previous career working for three weeks directing a single episode of a mindless television series.

It seems to me that by educating the next generation of our country's workers, of its leaders, my husband and teachers in general are more actively engaged in creating value in this country than employees in any other industry you could name. After all, someone taught Bill Gates algebra; someone sat at a desk long after her students had gone home grading Stephen King's essays; and someone debated current affairs in class with Ted Koppel. If teachers received residuals for reuse of their work like directors do, they'd all be wealthy! But instead teachers' salaries are closer to those of babysitters than those of other highly-trained professionals with postgraduate degrees. In part, this is because teaching at the elementary and secondary level is still viewed as "women's work", and therefore undervalued: in part, it's because we as a society lack the foresight to see that teaching Billy algebra today might lead to the next Microsoft tomorrow, so it's a pretty important job, maybe even more important than directing "Dancing With The Stars".

I told you not to get me started...