Not Child's Play: The Education System
Isocrates, born in 436 BC, was a well known orator and championed rhetoric in Athens. He was essentially a teacher, quite a critical one at that. But it wasn't his students that he criticised, or perhaps he did, but it's his criticism of teaching that is particularly intriguing. He wrote, among others, a collection of essay titles 'discourse against the sophists'. At present times a 'sophist is someone who uses clever, but false, arguments to convince people (politicians then?). However, in ancient Greece they were a group of teachers that taught philosophy and rhetoric, the poet Homer and great philosophers such as Plato belonged to this class.
In his essays Isocrates argued, or rather accused, the Sophists of great hypocrisy. "They make the most magnificent promises to their scholars," he had written of the Sophists, "and undertake to teach them to be wise, to be happy, and to be just, and in return for so important a service they stipulate the paltry reward of four or five minae." This according to him was vastly insufficient, he himself demanded ten minae per lecture. He isn't the only one to question whether the total sum granted to educators is enough.
Certainly those that are capable, or are given the task of, passing on wisdom should be wise themselves. So how would a wise man chose to pursue a course in which the reward isn't quite high? Wouldn't that in itself speak bounds about the wiseness of said man?
Some may argue that the the task of a teacher is noble in itself, and thus pursued by many as a valid career. However, whilst we can rely on a few noble souls to well, be noble. Others may not see the countless years taken to acquiring vast knowledge worth the effort for a paltry reward. As Adam Smith put it, we cannot rely on the benevolence of others to run an economy. Similarly, education shouldn't, theoretically, be reliant on the goodwill of teachers. And education is highly important. "In France, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, 60% or more of growth in gross domestic product (GDP) is generated by those who have attained a tertiary education," as quoted from a study done by the OECD.
If teachers were paid a larger sum, however, we play the risk that many of those not fortunate to be wealthy wouldn't be able to afford education. Thus the economic benefits of an educated society wouldn't be fully realised, so poverty and joblessness would prevail. The problem thus arises that society, an efficient one at least, demands supreme educators however, is unable to sufficiently reward them. So, in this scenario, perhaps, a system subsidised or controlled by the government would be beneficial to the whole. A middle man- the government- which is able to supply the teachers with handsome wages and at the same time provide the education to the public for free or at a sum that is affordable to the general public.
This isn't a wild idea, in fact a good majority of economies have a public education system in place. However, the fault that we keep seeing in these systems is that Governments haven't been giving sufficient resources to their public education system. Whether the majority of their money is spent in other public services or their defence budget, it's clear that there isn't enough dough in the system. This is prevalent across the board in most countries, rich or poor. Buildings that adamantly require repair, insufficient textbooks and equipment along with non-existent extra curricular activities to further stimulate the learning of pupils.
The teachers, while at most times work their hardest with the resources they have, can at times slack off due to a system that might prioritize their job tenure over their performance. There have been many cases of teachers falsifying grades to please superiors and gain increments. If not outright criminality, teachers assured of the support of a union find no reason to work on student's performance and treat the job as a simple 8 to 3. As can be easily deduced, this isn't the right mindset to building a labour population that could survive, and thrive, in the up and coming translations when we see machines taking over the mindless tasks that would otherwise occupy the uneducated.
Try however, it is impossible to avoid the perspective of the pandemic that looms ominously over us all. Not only can we expect a shrunken economy, and thus job market, for the following years, but Covid-19 has also sped up the move towards automation. Machines, after all, can't fall prey to a virus.