Overpaid Athletes, Underpaid EducatorsA professional athlete being overpaid is something that has always bothered me. It sounds a little bit strange, but it is true. It is very irritating that someone who does not try hard to educate themselves gets rewarded with a gift of dribbling a basketball and gets paid millions. On the other hand, a teacher who put it all on the table, their love, passion, motivation, skill, leadership, and the ability to educate, are left with a simple paycheck that for some may not be enough to raise a family. This is completely unfair and wrong. This is the reason why I chose this topic. I have written about this topic before and will keep writing about it until I get my point through. Professional athletes do not deserve what they get paid. Sure, athletes have a given talent that many cannot match, but what do pro athletes do that shape our lives the way teacher do? Well, they entertain us right? Is there anything else? I can’t think of any other reasons. If you look at the teacher’s side, can anyone tell me why they don’t deserve millions of dollars? Nobody can say teachers don’t deserve all the money in the world because what they do for this universe is unsurpassed. Teachers are the educators of the children of the future. Teachers are the ones who will encourage children to do something with their lives that will benefit all those around them. Who do you think taught your pediatrician, the doctor who takes care of your kids, how to read and write? Who is the one who taught the construction workers how to add and multiply their numbers? The answer is teachers! Without them, the world will fall and be corrupted. Every one of our children will be stupid and will not know what to do with their lives. A teacher’s figure is one, if not, the most important figure in a person’s life. For my project, I decided to sort out this issue with a PowerPoint presentation. The PowerPoint itself was eight slides but two slides were the title page and the works cited, so it was a six slide PowerPoint. Anyways, in the first slide I introduced the average salary of a teacher, which was $39,000, which is unbelievably low for a person who does so much. I also put a graph that I had found that shows the average salary for a teacher in each state during the years 2003-2004. The next slide was to show a pro athlete’s salary. The average salary for a professional basketball player is a whopping $2.2 million! The graph to go along with that statistic shows player’s annual salary vs. their point production to their respected team. If you look at that graph, you can notice that barely anyone is under the one million dollar mark. In the third and fourth slides, I give you the benefits of each subject in the topic. I tell you what good they do, and what will happen if they did not exist. In my fifth slide, I compared a highly recognized NBA player, Kobe Bryant, with one of my high school teachers, Mr. Harrison. I listed what each has done in their careers and what their annual salaries are. As you will see, Kobe wins $19,490,625 to $40,000. Look at that difference. Finally, in my last slide, I stated the main point of my project. I have been saying it throughout this whole paper. Teacher should be the ones getting paid millions for all they do, not the gifted professional athletes.
