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On Teacher's Day, and how education is driven by the market
By Wan Lixin |
September 9, 2009, Wednesday
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TEACHER'S Day, which falls tomorrow, is creating a headache for some parents.
They don't know how to adequately express their appreciation for the teachers of their children.
Giving cash-stuffed envelopes is one way, but that calls for delicacy.
As one of my colleagues remarked recently, powerful high-level teachers in a highly sought-after key middle school have already outgrown their appetite for cash.
So to get your children enrolled in that school, you have to impress them with some guanxi (connections).
That reminds me of some officials whose decisions often involve some trade-offs, though they are above taking cash.
It is great to possess cash, but greater to have power over those who have cash.
Therefore, in teaching some teachers are practicing an empowering, lucrative profession, quite a departure from the traditional stereotype of teachers.
This process is accompanied by a steady decay in the moral tone of the profession.
For example, some of the more recently exposed academic plagiarists have included Zhou Zude, president of Wuhan University of Technology; Li Lianda, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Lu Jierong, vice president of Liaoning University.
These cases are likely indicative of a paradigm shift, not in reference to the ranks of the miscreants, but in view of the fact that these wrongdoings are likely to be tolerated.
It would probably be unfair to insist on a separate code of ethics for academics.
The magic of the market is its capacity to justify any and everything in monetary terms, and nothing else.
If anyone owns a villa and a BMW, we know he has made it, and our esteem for him grows. We do not usually ask whether he owes his pile to thefts, frauds, bribes, speculation, or blackmail.
Why should a professor be singled out for an inquisition?
Some still prattle on about teachers plying a noble trade without considering the fact that education as it is practiced today is no different from any other profit-driven trade.
And the degradation of teaching into a trade started at least one century ago.
In 1912, Cai Yuanpei, the education minister of the Republic of China, asked scholar Ma Yifu to serve as secretary general at the ministry.
Ma resigned only three weeks later, as he was opposed to Cai's decision to stop compulsory reading of Confucian classics.
In Ma's vision, a student should first learn how to conduct himself, for only then can he know how to conduct business.
He shared Mencius' belief that human beings are innately endowed with some goodness, as manifest in a sense of pity, modesty, shame, and righteousness.
Most have come to dispense with that goodness as a result of custom and habit.
And the mission of education is to restore that goodness.
Ma pointed out that modern Western-style education had degenerated into a market for the trade of knowledge.
There the teachers charge by the hour, while the students scatter the moment the class is dismissed. There is no uplifting influence from teachers on the students' personality through constant interactions.
Instead of schools helping to reform the ways and manners of the nation, the schools now pride themselves on their responsiveness to market requirements.
This system is fit to market narrow specialists, but never true masters, Ma said.
"While the so-called specialists today gain knowledge in a discipline, they lack a comprehensive understanding. The aim of learning should be to grasp fundamental principles without being distracted by the all and sundry protean phenomena," said Ma.
Our education today has been corrupted by what Ma had foreseen and tried to prevent.
A diploma becomes the sole aim of schooling, for it can determine future pay level.
But teachers' role in determining future salary has been undervalued.
Thus the market is forcing some corrections.
They don't know how to adequately express their appreciation for the teachers of their children.
Giving cash-stuffed envelopes is one way, but that calls for delicacy.
As one of my colleagues remarked recently, powerful high-level teachers in a highly sought-after key middle school have already outgrown their appetite for cash.
So to get your children enrolled in that school, you have to impress them with some guanxi (connections).
That reminds me of some officials whose decisions often involve some trade-offs, though they are above taking cash.
It is great to possess cash, but greater to have power over those who have cash.
Therefore, in teaching some teachers are practicing an empowering, lucrative profession, quite a departure from the traditional stereotype of teachers.
This process is accompanied by a steady decay in the moral tone of the profession.
For example, some of the more recently exposed academic plagiarists have included Zhou Zude, president of Wuhan University of Technology; Li Lianda, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Lu Jierong, vice president of Liaoning University.
These cases are likely indicative of a paradigm shift, not in reference to the ranks of the miscreants, but in view of the fact that these wrongdoings are likely to be tolerated.
It would probably be unfair to insist on a separate code of ethics for academics.
The magic of the market is its capacity to justify any and everything in monetary terms, and nothing else.
If anyone owns a villa and a BMW, we know he has made it, and our esteem for him grows. We do not usually ask whether he owes his pile to thefts, frauds, bribes, speculation, or blackmail.
Why should a professor be singled out for an inquisition?
Some still prattle on about teachers plying a noble trade without considering the fact that education as it is practiced today is no different from any other profit-driven trade.
And the degradation of teaching into a trade started at least one century ago.
In 1912, Cai Yuanpei, the education minister of the Republic of China, asked scholar Ma Yifu to serve as secretary general at the ministry.
Ma resigned only three weeks later, as he was opposed to Cai's decision to stop compulsory reading of Confucian classics.
In Ma's vision, a student should first learn how to conduct himself, for only then can he know how to conduct business.
He shared Mencius' belief that human beings are innately endowed with some goodness, as manifest in a sense of pity, modesty, shame, and righteousness.
Most have come to dispense with that goodness as a result of custom and habit.
And the mission of education is to restore that goodness.
Ma pointed out that modern Western-style education had degenerated into a market for the trade of knowledge.
There the teachers charge by the hour, while the students scatter the moment the class is dismissed. There is no uplifting influence from teachers on the students' personality through constant interactions.
Instead of schools helping to reform the ways and manners of the nation, the schools now pride themselves on their responsiveness to market requirements.
This system is fit to market narrow specialists, but never true masters, Ma said.
"While the so-called specialists today gain knowledge in a discipline, they lack a comprehensive understanding. The aim of learning should be to grasp fundamental principles without being distracted by the all and sundry protean phenomena," said Ma.
Our education today has been corrupted by what Ma had foreseen and tried to prevent.
A diploma becomes the sole aim of schooling, for it can determine future pay level.
But teachers' role in determining future salary has been undervalued.
Thus the market is forcing some corrections.
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