September 22, 2020
Education opens doors. In high school, I had my sights set on going to a great university, which I took for granted would lead to a lucrative job. However, a couple years into college, my values no longer were in line with my initial career goals. I thought about dropping out. However, I didn’t quit; I worked to finish faster.
In the United States, where the bachelor’s degree is a four-year program, I finished in three and a half years. Part of the problem I had encountered with my major in economics was that the real world applications of economic theory in federal banks, for instance, deviate largely from what is taught. The second issue was the work schedule to which employees in big financial firms were subjected. My classmates who got jobs in finance ended up working sixty- to eighty-hour weeks.
If that wasn’t the door that opened to me, where did I go? I left the country and went off on an adventure teaching and traveling.
After my last essay on civic engagement, a colleague in Vietnam reminded me of the issue of “brain drain”—when students leave their home country for work or study, and never return. I wondered to myself I fit this description as I had lived and worked abroad for eight of the past ten years.
There are several big differences between me going to another country and someone moving to the United States. Primarily, the push factor: it was cheaper for me to move overseas than to afford to relocate to a major city within the United States. For me, living abroad was largely an economic decision that depended on a favorable balance between cost of living, standard of living and income. Secondarily, labor market pull factors: my U.S. passport opened the door to most of the opportunities for me, a native English-speaking teacher from an “inner circle” country.
Within the United States hiring is slower, and now in the pandemic, even more competitive. Demand is greater for teachers of younger students than for teachers of older students, and higher in sciences than in humanities. In addition, candidates are not selected on merit alone, which is good as meritocracy reinforces the status-quo. To that point, applications include voluntary demographic surveys on race, gender, disability and veteran status. These surveys do not affect the application. In fact, human resources personnel are prohibited from asking about these details and others, like age or religion. Nevertheless, many of these and other qualities of a candidate are inevitably conveyed in face-to-face interviews. And, there is positive discrimination in hiring in order to foster diversity in the workplace.
Sadly, the hiring of teachers outside the United States involves evaluation of these characteristics. Besides my passport and university diploma, employers overseas were interested in age and skin color. Often the look of the teaching staff at schools in Asia is part of their marketing. The doors were open to me. I am white/Latino, and I was young.
Back in the United States, employers have their own application portals that may or may not allow submission of resumes. This precludes putting a portrait on the document, which I found out in Asia was very common among European applicants. I was even told by a British academic manager and interviewer in Vietnam that I should have put married and father on my resume because that, more than my master’s degree, put me ahead of other candidates for the position.
Returning home to the U.S. after five years abroad, I have been surprised by questions from employers in the United States about why I had the desire to work as a teacher in a program that serves a specific segment of the population, or conversely an intentionally diverse body of students. Lofty, vague answers end these interviews. Moving past lip-service, only high-impact, real-world, results-driven aims to lift up under-represented demographics strike a chord with schools in urban centers.
But, is it working? Why hasn’t targeting social inequality made the United States a just society? Would targeting economic inequality better unite the population? How can this be achieved in a country that has been shuttering industry for 20 years, where there is high access to advanced education but low access to quality education1, and where the world’s most expensive health care does not deliver high-quality health care2? How can society be made more equal when the real economy is shrinking?
We need to see the world as it is. The unresolved problems of past generations with regards to social inequality are resurfacing viciously. The environmental problems arising from global warming are foreboding. What leadership do we provide our children? Race and environment are not political issues; however, equality, equal access to health care and education, and the environment are issues which governments have the power and responsibility to protect.
1Social Progress Index: USA Scorecard. Retrieved September 21, 2020 from https://www.socialprogress.org/?tab=2
2“How does the U.S. Healthcare system compare to other countries” Retrieved September 21, 2020 from https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2020/07/how-does-the-us-healthcare-system-compare-to-other-countries
Hi Sebastian,
I feel angry abit now because I did write some for your ideas. However, while I was looking up online dictionary to know meanings of some new words and understand fully what you want to communicate to us, my text has gone suddenly and I could not get it back unfortunately but I will try to remember it and restart my personal correspondence. In my opinion, I am happy to hear that you kept moving on with your career goal after all, which inspires me a lot. Pull and push are forces accompanying together though they are not the same and are opposite sometimes. Actually, you were brave enough to decide to go to another country to challenge yourself with something new but different from your cultures so as to find a chance to practice and bring your passion back. I think it has been successful, for you could critically find out differences and similarities from various environments, which helps you have deeper analysis from several variances. Besides, there are many existing issues which are undestandable and explanable but unresolved and no one or no governments cares about them enough to handle them to get the best for their own citizens or for peoples living and sharing the Earth together. Everything happens for a reason and these people may be scared of doing that, for it might not give them benefits. Everyone is mostly self-ish and that is why we all have -self for all the pronouns. I do think I may share some same ideas with you, which sometimes get stuck in my mind, for I do not know why people do it or just react that way and why they should treat other people like that. For example, to the aspect of equality, western countries like the powerful America are considerred open-minded and fair play between males and females and China has been famous for enormous descrimination between men and women but there used to be a female king ruled the whole country whose name was Vo Tac Thien but America has not had a female president yet, which leaves me a big question why it is happening. It is hard to understand it right? Yes, it is for me but I may not go to a conclusion for contriversial issues because I occasionally do not recognise or comprehend myself properly and it is life, so we may take it the best and live to the fullest we can due to the fact that it is not easy to know if something is right or wrong. There are just goods and not goods. If we look at a problem with our personal perspective, it might be true but if you take a look at the other sides, it may be much different. For instance, when you have a look at the front or top or side elevations on 3D shapes, they will be very different about the kinds of shape, length of each side or the size of vertices, which leads us come to misundestanding if we do not take time to observe it carefully with our heart or knowledge or experience we have had. Thus, I do hope that you may carry on and stay with your dreams with people you love and it may include me though we are not on the same page (not same country).
Pham Thi Duy Yen
Genie/Woodstock
Gender equality is not actually that old in the U.S. You’re right that there should be more visible female leadership. The same is true for LGBT rights and leadership.
As for reasons to pursue higher education, people learn a lot about themselves and the world they live in. Even when higher-ed does not facilitate a clear career path, it is worthwhile. You’ve also got a lot out of your studies! It’s terrific that reflective practices are an integral part of teacher training worldwide.