The article emphasizes that having a strong education has less to do with funding and more to do the with the "culture" of education. Countries with a strong education system offer teachers a higher status in society and have a culture that is very supportive of learning.This is evident in the highly ranked Asian countries, where education is highly valued and parents have grand expectations. The article says that while Finland and South Korea differ greatly in methods of teaching and learning, they hold the top spots because of a shared social belief in the importance of education and its "underlying moral purpose."
"Throwing money at education by itself rarely produces results, and individual changes to education systems, however sensible, rarely do much on their own. Education requires long-term, coherent and focussed system-wide attention to achieve improvement."
"Good teachers are essential to high-quality education. Finding and retaining them is not necessarily a question of high pay. Instead, teachers need to be treated as the valuable professionals they are, not as technicians in a huge, educational machine"
Do you think we should focus more on having a "culture" that supports education rather than funding in America?
Guess the group that wanted to cut funding in education had the right of it. And yes a culture needs to be developed to ensure that there is complete change in the education system.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the statement that the amount of funding has little to do with the outcome. When people value education or anything else like the environment or whatever, they have the incentive to make each unit of resource that they have count towards that goal and the methods to achieve that will be discovered in the process. I am one to believe that people's attitudes and collaboration are key to achieving a grand objective, not a technical system.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the hardest things in the States is that our education system has had an impossible time trying to get new, highly qualified college graduates to be a part of the education system and become teachers. There are those standing jokes about those who can't, teach. When that sentiment is what pervades throughout the job market, why would people want to take a up a profession that is not as respected or well paid as other comparable careers? It makes me really sad.
ReplyDeleteThis sentiment is also a chronic problem in Thailand. Basically all the university students who can't compete with their peers in medicine, engineering and the likes end up with an education degree to leverage their failure and these people become the educators of the future generations. It is a really tragic cultural norm. People need to value the craft in order to do something progressive about its role in society.
ReplyDeleteI think you all hit the nail on the head. Education is totally undervalued as a career, both in cultural and financial terms. But I don't think that this gets at the whole picture. There was a recent article in the Atlantic that talks about math and education culture in the US: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/
ReplyDeletePart of the reason we get beat on education standards is not just how we value it culturally, but how it plays out in the classroom (I'm not good at X, I can only do Y).
All that said, I don't think we spend enough on education in the US (25% of 2012 Fed. Budget went to defense, 3% to education).