I’m much more familiar with how teaching as a profession works in the United States than in Canada, but I was once surprised to learn that here in the good old USA, private school teachers are almost never as well compensated or well treated as public school teachers. Not even when they work for elite prep schools with famous names.

I know this wasn’t the main point of your story but, wow, what a powerful illustration of the importance of labor unions. And a sad commentary on the 1%.

When a friend of mine told me the pittance he received for teaching at a famous prep school in Manhattan, I was blown away. He was teaching the children of the rich and famous at an institution that practically guarantees to get kids into Ivy League universities. And the parents of those kids were paying him poverty wages then expecting him to do tons of extracurricular work with little to no extra compensation.

His reward? They were charming to him and treated him as a social equal.

Seriously, that’s it, and they thought that was a pretty good deal.

He didn’t, so he ended up teaching in the South Bronx at a public school. I guess that was pretty good for the kids in the South Bronx, and the rich kids? Well, the famous school just hired a recent college graduate and didn’t pay them much either.

The rich get richer and …