I suggest kfssbjj look up the definition of guest. With taxes I pay in the country I live and work, I am most certainly not a guest, and feel entirely comfortable with my, hopefully, objective criticism.

Sorry, but my reality of people in the M.E (or more accurately, those with money in the cities) is negative, not because of News reports, but from having lived there for some years.
They are NOT nice people in general, but spoilt, intolerant and dishonest; and we would be doing....... no, I won't complete that sentence.

Well said - a pile of BS; I'll never work at an MYP school.

lifeisnotsobad,

It's a little hard to present an argument in a paragraph or two. While I agree with the principle of holistic education, after all, the boundaries are arbitrary and artificial, my point is that those people who "create" and "think outside the box" have firm foundations on established reductionist content, techniques and skills; something which is lacking in many students (and teachers for that matter).
Re grade inflation: my evidence comes from teaching in nine high schools in 6 countries over 25 years, including American, British, Australian and host country curricula and many discussions with my peers.

Both are educationally unsound: Investigation, inquiry etc just for the sake of it, without a firm, rigorous foundation just leads nowhere. Same comment re holistic education - almost all our Western, technological advances have come through a specialised, reductionist approach; why should then an educational system go in the reverse direction? Oh, I know why; to appease the humanists that have taken the system so that "dummies" via grade inflation can pass and get into tertiary institutions that down grade legitimate degrees.

Well, I'll stir the pot more: Unless you agree a Harvard lecturer should be paid the same as a kindergarten teacher, it seems that high school teachers, especially those responsible for external examinations, should be paid more than Elementary teachers.
More directly to this thread: Of course Science/Mathematics teachers should be paid more. They are needed to maintain the functioning of our technological society and hopefully find solutions to our global problems. These are the teachers most likley to instill logical and rigorous - skills, and yes, creativity and an appreciation for beauty.