Why were baby boomers willing to teach math and science but younger college graduates are not?

Because you learn math and science by creating video games, not playing them.

Hmmm. I had imagined that the shortage of people to teach math and science related more to the trend in public education to require students to take a greater number of math and science classes, and that it was less related to a dwindling number of qualified job applicants.

I had been thinking in terms of the KCS grad requirement of one year of general arithmetic (!) in my era, versus the current requirement of four years of math, to include at least Algebra I, effective for this year's freshmen. It's a trend mirrored nationally, of course.

Similarly, the KCS grad requirement for one year of general science (not necessarily a lab science) has been replaced by this more specific requirement for one year of biology. Ditto as to national trend.

I suppose we have two forces impacting this shortage, then: That fewer math and science teachers are emerging from our colleges, and that this is happening even as the grad requirements of K-12 public education are requiring more teachers to deliver the greater number of math and science courses required for students' graduation.

(My thoughts are with this new generation of math students, destined to struggle through convoluted lectures in statistics--or "sadistics," as we called the class in my era--under an Indian adjunct prof with a very thick accent. Been there, done that...)

The parents of the baby boomers who _________ to pay ___________ taxes thereby _________ down teachers' ___________, because they are no longer ____________ in educating kids and ____________ little about the long term after they ____________ from great _____________ jobs.

True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler

Why is it so many people in this country are complaining good jobs can't be found and there is an apparent demand for teachers with a starting salary of $36,144?

Are you being sarcastic?

It depends on where you live. My partner lives in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, makes slightly under $36K, and qualifies for subsidized housing (though to be fair, he is right under the eligibility line. And he's actually no longer in subsidized housing.)

I believe that's more than a first year law enforcement officer makes around here.

"teachers with a starting salary of $36,144? Isn't that a pretty darn good starting salary?"

No.

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson

Why is it so many people in this country are complaining good jobs can't be found and there is an apparent demand for teachers with a starting salary of $36,144? Isn't that a pretty darn good starting salary?

If you are able to obtain a bachelor's or post bachelor's degree in Math or Science (and weren't tempted away towards engineering), you're going to have loads of opportunities in private sector R&D, pharmaceuticals, statistical process control, or any number of other fields that go begging and start out with higher salaries - oh, and they're raises and career paths promise far, far better long term financial gain as well. When the public sector is competing with the private sector for the same talent pool, the public sector loses.

For what it's worth, a recently graduated registered nurse (arguably an academically less demanding degree) would laugh at at a starting salary of $36K by a hospital, and they're in even shorter supply than teachers.

There are lots of good paying jobs that go begging in this country. Unfortunately, those jobs do require an education/skill set that aren't to be found in our pool of long term unemployed.

in the "Mallard Filmore" comic strip on the editorial page of the KNS why would anyone want to be a teacher? Unappreciated, underpaid, and now the target of right-wing rhetoric that is the same kind of invective that inspired a mentally ill man to shoot up a church? Hell no...teaching is an unattractive career path for people that invest the time and money in studying the sciences and math. They'll make more money and have better benefits working in the high tech industries and in research & development.

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"You can't fix stupid..." ~ Ron White"
"I never said I wasn't a brat..." ~ Talidapali