What would I do ?
What Would I Do? Fixing Education Starts With Paying Teachers Properly
A teacher in my chair was doing dentist-appointment math on a twelve-year career. If I were put in charge of education, the first thing I would do is simple. I would pay teachers properly.
A teacher was in the chair last week, marking papers on her phone between sections because that’s apparently what evenings look like now. She mentioned, almost in passing, that she’s been teaching for twelve years and still calculates whether she can afford the dentist before booking an appointment.
“Twelve years,” I said. “And you’re doing maths about a dentist appointment.”
“Welcome to teaching,” she said, not looking up from the screen.
“If I were in charge of education,” I said, “I know exactly where I’d start.”
She looked up. “Go on. Surprise me.”
[Switches to serious face.] If I were put in charge of education, the first thing I would do is simple. I would pay teachers properly.
My mission would be to make teaching one of the most respected and sought-after professions in society. I would want the brightest, most ambitious young people to dream of becoming teachers, not only lawyers, doctors, or investment bankers. Strange, isn’t it, that we trust teachers to shape every future profession, yet often pay them as if their work were an afterthought.
44 countries where teacher pay sits below the average graduate salary (UNESCO)
5 yrs of rigorous training proposed, in exchange for a genuinely stable career
#1 factor most consistently linked to student outcomes: teacher quality and wellbeing
2,400+ years since Ancient Greece treated teaching as one of the highest callings
What Teaching Once Was
I would want to restore teaching to what it once was. In Ancient Greece, education was seen as one of the highest callings — a noble pursuit tied to the formation of character, wisdom, and citizenship. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that.
A profession once tied to wisdom and citizenship, not an afterthought in a budget line. Photo: Unsplash
Make It Difficult to Enter
I would work hard to rebrand the profession, and I would also make it difficult to enter. Becoming a teacher should require rigorous training, perhaps five years of serious preparation. But in return, I would guarantee something rare in modern life: a stable, respected career that people would want to stay in for decades, perhaps for life.
According to data tracked by UNESCO, dozens of countries pay teachers below the average graduate salary in their own economies — a structural signal, repeated in every recruitment cycle, that the profession is not where ambition is supposed to go. The Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Status Index has spent years measuring exactly this gap between how much societies say they value teachers and how they actually treat them — and the gap, in most countries surveyed, is not small.
“Strange, isn’t it, that we trust teachers to shape every future profession, yet often pay them as if their work were an afterthought.” — The sentence that made the teacher in the chair finally put her phone down.
It Starts With the Humanity of the Teacher
I would invest heavily in teacher wellbeing. Better salaries, continuous training, personal development, free gym access, free therapy — whatever helps them maintain strong mental and emotional health. Because the research is clear. The more you invest in teachers, the better children perform, not only academically but as human beings. They develop sharper critical thinking, stronger empathy, and a genuine love of learning.
It starts with the humanity of the teacher.
Research from the Learning Policy Institute consistently finds that teacher attrition — the steady loss of experienced teachers to burnout and better-paying work — costs school systems far more than the raises that would have prevented it, once you account for recruitment, training, and the lost continuity of an experienced teacher walking out the door. The expensive choice and the cheap-looking choice are, infuriatingly, often the same decision pointed in opposite directions.
Truth Over Convenience
Of course, I would also overhaul the curriculum. Every textbook and teaching material would be reviewed and grounded in truth, evidence, and science, not shaped by political convenience, government agendas, or the old habit of teaching whatever helps those in power sleep better at night.
Facts should be accurate. Data should be current. Knowledge should serve understanding, not indoctrination.
I would also push for more systems-based learning — teaching students how things connect rather than forcing them to memorise isolated facts for exams they will forget by summer.
Different talents, equally legitimate — neither one a detour from the “real” subject. Photo: Unsplash
Redesign Assessment
And yes, I would completely redesign assessment.
Our current model treats students like factory products moving down the same conveyor belt at the same speed, then acts surprised when many feel broken. Education should not be one size fits all. Students should move forward according to their strengths, talents, and aptitude in the areas where they excel.
Some shine in mathematics. Some in language. Some in design, music, engineering, or human relations. A good education system recognises this instead of punishing difference.
Photo: Unsplash
But Before All of That
Teachers first. Because if you want better students, you start by valuing the people standing at the front of the classroom. Every curriculum reform, every assessment redesign, every push toward systems-based learning depends entirely on having teachers with the time, training, and stability to deliver it well. Pay and respect are not a reward for the rest of the plan working. They are the precondition for it.
Back to the Chair
The teacher left with a fresh cut and, she said, “something to think about that isn’t a lesson plan, for once.” I told her I wasn’t in charge of education, and likely never would be, so none of this was about to become policy on her behalf.
“Doesn’t mean you’re wrong, though,” she said, on her way out.
I touched a related thread in our piece on why school often feels like a drive-thru — the standardised menu, the factory-model assessment, the conveyor belt nobody asked to be placed on. That piece was about the system children are served. This one is about the person serving it, and the fact that we built an entire structure assuming her humanity was optional overhead rather than the actual mechanism by which any of the rest of it works.
If you want better students, you start by valuing the people standing at the front of the classroom.
Everything else is just curriculum.
The Salon California Journal is a space for ideas, culture, and conversation from my chair in Brasschaat, Belgium. I write about beauty, technology, society, and the intersections between them.
