Where Are All the Teachers Going?

CNN has reported an alarming trend: “US teacher prep programs have reported shrinking enrollment numbers over at least the past decade. Experts are sounding the alarm” (February 5, 2022). Many teachers are now retiring, and replacements are in dwindling supply. The reasons for teachers leaving makes for a large list, “from low pay and often little regard from their communities, to growing numbers of school shootings and legislative requirements about what and how to teach.” As educators leave the teaching field, the vacancies they leave behind are going unfilled because fewer and fewer seem interested in taking their place. As one official noted, “I don’t know how bad it’s going to have to get before we realize as a country that if we don’t invest in education ... we will not have anyone in the classrooms to teach our children.”

A 2021 report from the UK reported that one in six new teachers quit after the first year (Forbes, June 17, 2021). Teacher shortages are a problem in Canada as well, where in some provinces, 40 percent of teachers leave in the first five years. In a recent survey of 15,000 teachers, “70 per cent of them reported being ‘very stressed, struggling to cope and increasingly feeling unhappy’” (The Conversation, March 15, 2021). New South Wales, Australia, is also short on teachers, mostly due to low salaries and unsustainable workloads (The Educator Online, October 6, 2021). The trend is similar in many other nations around the globe.

While many are discovering that some of their children’s teachers are doing more indoctrinating than educating, there are still many good teachers out there. They are often underappreciated and taken for granted. Many face challenges from every direction, from disrespect in classrooms to threats on their lives. Some schools in the USA pay a “combat pay” bonus to teachers in dangerous schools. The Bible warned of a time when disrespectful children would become oppressors (Isaiah 3:4; 2 Timothy 3:1–4). However, prophecies also tell of a time after Jesus Christ’s return, when teachers will once again show students the right way to live (Isaiah 30:20–21). At that time, parents will take a much more prominent role in teaching their own children (Deuteronomy 4:9–10; 6:6–7). To learn more about this important topic, read “Misguided Education and the Decline of Western Civilization.”