Strong education key to nation's prosperity
Monday, February 18, 2008
IN HIS recent book The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Board, calls for the introduction of wage differentials in education. His proposal that teachers should be paid more will be welcomed by everyone in the profession. The suggestion that they should be made accountable may prove less popular.
Schools have salary scales that do not differentiate between subjects, so it is no surprise that they find it difficult to recruit and retain good mathematicians. The teaching of mathematics, he says, is sometimes left to those who cannot gain entry to the more lucrative professions.
I have to say I haven't found this to be the case in the schools where I've worked. Mathematics teachers are on the whole dedicated professionals who have chosen teaching, not fallen into it by default. They enjoy nothing more than the cut and thrust of the classroom. Bright maths graduates do not enter the profession for the money. They love mathematics, but they also want a human dimension in their working lives and real job satisfaction.
Greenspan makes the usual mistake of moneymen and assumes you can reduce everything to the bottom line.
Schools are not like companies. You cannot quantify precisely what teachers do and reward them accordingly. To what extent is coaching the First Fifteen equivalent to preparing students for Cambridge entrance? Should the teacher who takes the bottom set in French get more than the one who runs exams? Let's not go there. Differentials would only create unmanageable tensions.
But Greenspan is right about the teaching profession generally. He contrasts the appalling standards in secondary schools in the United States with those in its world class universities. The Ivy Leagues pay enough to attract academics of the very highest calibre and the teaching of undergraduates is correspondingly excellent. By contrast, standards achieved by high school students fall well below international averages.
Large numbers of US high school graduates are rejected by businesses for "modestly skilled" jobs, because they cannot write coherent English or add up a column of figures. Singaporeans and Swedes achieve much higher standards in Maths and Science at this level. There is no doubt that this has much to do with the quality of their teachers and the salaries they are paid. If the US government poured money into education in the same way it does into roads and infrastructure, there wouldn't be a problem. Teaching would be a high status profession and highly qualified, motivated graduates would choose it over engineering, finance and medicine.
With higher salaries and competitive entry to the teaching profession, would come real accountability. No one wants a fixation on exam results, which are in any case a poor measure of the value added by schools, but there would be no need to tolerate poor performance. Bad teachers could be replaced. Greenspan quotes a report on schooling in Los Angeles that concludes that "if the school system screened out the least qualified quarter of teachers, student test scores would be raised by as much as 14 per centile points by graduation".
Without a real market in teachers there is no competition for jobs and standards in schools fall, just as they do in the commercial world when there is protectionism. If you know you have a job for life and there is no chance of being thrown out, you don't have to try too hard. Teachers' salaries need to be competitive with those offered by other recruiters if schools are to attract the brightest and best graduates, but more importantly, there must be accountability.
Greenspan argues that the US economy can grow only if it has an ample supply of skilled workers. Schools must provide them. If American workers are less skilled and more expensive than workers in the developing world, capital will go elsewhere. Education is the key to the success of an economy. Take countries like Singapore with few natural resources, but a well educated, highly mobile and extremely competitive work force. In America, Greenspan says, "We have created a privileged, native-born elite of skilled workers whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals".
Greenspan may not quite argue that market forces should govern everything, but he certainly upholds the principle put forward by Adam Smith in the 18th century in his seminal book The Wealth of Nations: "The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance... capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity." I don't think I have ever read a more strongly worded or convincing defence of the advantages of free market capitalism. The Age of Turbulence argues persuasively that high standards in education remain the key to national prosperity.
The writer is the principal of Jerudong International School.
The Brunei Times
Schools have salary scales that do not differentiate between subjects, so it is no surprise that they find it difficult to recruit and retain good mathematicians. The teaching of mathematics, he says, is sometimes left to those who cannot gain entry to the more lucrative professions.
I have to say I haven't found this to be the case in the schools where I've worked. Mathematics teachers are on the whole dedicated professionals who have chosen teaching, not fallen into it by default. They enjoy nothing more than the cut and thrust of the classroom. Bright maths graduates do not enter the profession for the money. They love mathematics, but they also want a human dimension in their working lives and real job satisfaction.
Greenspan makes the usual mistake of moneymen and assumes you can reduce everything to the bottom line.
Schools are not like companies. You cannot quantify precisely what teachers do and reward them accordingly. To what extent is coaching the First Fifteen equivalent to preparing students for Cambridge entrance? Should the teacher who takes the bottom set in French get more than the one who runs exams? Let's not go there. Differentials would only create unmanageable tensions.
But Greenspan is right about the teaching profession generally. He contrasts the appalling standards in secondary schools in the United States with those in its world class universities. The Ivy Leagues pay enough to attract academics of the very highest calibre and the teaching of undergraduates is correspondingly excellent. By contrast, standards achieved by high school students fall well below international averages.
Large numbers of US high school graduates are rejected by businesses for "modestly skilled" jobs, because they cannot write coherent English or add up a column of figures. Singaporeans and Swedes achieve much higher standards in Maths and Science at this level. There is no doubt that this has much to do with the quality of their teachers and the salaries they are paid. If the US government poured money into education in the same way it does into roads and infrastructure, there wouldn't be a problem. Teaching would be a high status profession and highly qualified, motivated graduates would choose it over engineering, finance and medicine.
With higher salaries and competitive entry to the teaching profession, would come real accountability. No one wants a fixation on exam results, which are in any case a poor measure of the value added by schools, but there would be no need to tolerate poor performance. Bad teachers could be replaced. Greenspan quotes a report on schooling in Los Angeles that concludes that "if the school system screened out the least qualified quarter of teachers, student test scores would be raised by as much as 14 per centile points by graduation".
Without a real market in teachers there is no competition for jobs and standards in schools fall, just as they do in the commercial world when there is protectionism. If you know you have a job for life and there is no chance of being thrown out, you don't have to try too hard. Teachers' salaries need to be competitive with those offered by other recruiters if schools are to attract the brightest and best graduates, but more importantly, there must be accountability.
Greenspan argues that the US economy can grow only if it has an ample supply of skilled workers. Schools must provide them. If American workers are less skilled and more expensive than workers in the developing world, capital will go elsewhere. Education is the key to the success of an economy. Take countries like Singapore with few natural resources, but a well educated, highly mobile and extremely competitive work force. In America, Greenspan says, "We have created a privileged, native-born elite of skilled workers whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals".
Greenspan may not quite argue that market forces should govern everything, but he certainly upholds the principle put forward by Adam Smith in the 18th century in his seminal book The Wealth of Nations: "The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance... capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity." I don't think I have ever read a more strongly worded or convincing defence of the advantages of free market capitalism. The Age of Turbulence argues persuasively that high standards in education remain the key to national prosperity.
The writer is the principal of Jerudong International School.
The Brunei Times
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