Educational Speaking

I had stumbled upon a video that showed the Americans problems in managing their education system. The real main problem was from 2 aspect, one is the public school administrators and another major one is THE TEACHERS UNION. They are the main reasons that is prohibiting the changes in their systems.

The administrators being bureaucrats they resist change and blaming having lack of money as the main reason the Americans children are not preforming well in schools. Then the video showed how a public school had manage to gain an extra funding from the government up to billions of dollar to improve the condition of the school. Sadly, after building an Olympics size swimming pool, hi-tech gym and an indoor miniature stadium, the school's performance drops even worse.

The program then showed a private school that had less money, no gym and swimming pools are have kid that had achieve better result that the heavily funded public school. So, it proves that money doesn't solve the problem. The success of the private school is the sincerity of the principles and the teacher in better educating the children. Having more money clearly doesn't solve the problem of under achieving students.

Then there are the teachers union. One association that I will forbid my wife (yes, she is a teacher) to join up. They are the main culprit of the problem. Why, because they had numbers in their sides! They even manage to mind bogglingly, create an almost impossible system to fire incompetent teachers. Believe me it is really complicated that in a year out of 80,000 teachers working in America only 2 had been fired. Not because they are small numbers of incompetent teachers but because of the complexity of the firing process. And it will took years to do it. That's the power being in numbers.

When they were covering the topic on teachers union that I saw the same phenomenon happeing in Malaysia. MTUC having the numbers try as they might to stop from the PTDs in penetrating the education service. PTDs aren't really taking over as educators but doing the administration job for them. So, they can concentrate more in educating and let the us (yes, I'm one of the PTDs) do the administrating. Thank god that not all teachers object to the government decision to let the PTDs positioned in the State Education Department. Most of them, realised that PTDs are no treat to them.

I was hoping that the Malaysian teachers continue their excellent service to Malaysia futures, instead of concentrating in holding post as administrators. if that were their goals, when I guest they are in the wrong service.