Educational excellence

Former US Secretary of Education, William Bennett, said that “one of the unutterable truths of education is that there is absolutely no correlation between funds expended on education and educational excellence.”

From 1960 to 1985, the US national expenditure on education has nearly tripled, yet their SAT scores have gone down over this same time period.

This prompted motivation speaker and author, Zig Ziglar, to say that education is “dependent on motivation and the formation of good work habits,” and not on the price tag of its tuition.

On one hand, I would agree. I have studied in two of the most expensive schools in the country. However, even in these schools, I have had my experience of sub-par teachers. I have had teachers who insult instead of motivate, who put down instead of pushing up. I have had teachers who didn’t know what they were doing.

I remember an electronics test we had in college. We started at around 5 p.m. and the test would go on until you gave up. There was one particular vexing problem that literally had us confused for hours, and then we noticed the teacher grab a piece of paper and started doing some solving himself. After a few minutes, we saw the same puzzled expression on his face that we had, and we knew that he had just made us solve something that he probably couldn’t even solve himself

On the other hand, I do not totally believe that there is no correlation between funds spent on education and educational excellence. 

I am convinced that allocating the biggest budget on teacher’s salaries and teacher training will show a high correlation to educational excellence. Let’s face it. Most teachers today are incompetent.

Dr. Queena Lee, a well-known Mathematics professor and author of Eureka: Thoughts on Math, relates that in late 1990, 220 prospective high school math teachers (BS Education, major in math) and 710 prospective elementary teachers were given a 50-item test. All questions were “straightforward, direct applications of basic or essential concepts given in a DECS  [DepEd] curriculum.”

The results are dismal. Only 5% of the elementary teachers and 20% of the secondary teachers scored above 20 points. 59% of the elementary teachers scored from 1-10 and 55% of the secondary teachers scored from 11-20.

And this survey was taken at a time when teachers were not yet leaving en masse for the USA. I shudder to think of the results if ever this survey were repeated today.

I believe the first order of the day is to make sure that teachers are living exemplary lives — lives that students would want to emulate.

This is where most of the funds in education should go — first, to train (or re-train) teachers to be competent in their field, and second, to train teachers to organize their lives, to take control of their finances, to manage their families, and so on.

A teacher’s effectiveness is determined not only by his mastery of the subject but by all facets of his life. He is not a compartmentalized being living in a vacuum called the classroom. His experiences outside of it will either hinder or enrich his teaching.

I believe this is the basic problem of students today. If I were a student I might think, “Why should I listen to this woman when I see her struggling to make ends meet? Or why should I listen to this man when his marriage is a mess? Is this the best he can do with all the knowledge he has? If so, what good is it then for me to strive to know what he knows? I certainly don’t want to live like that.”

The most effective teachers don’t just spout lessons from their mouths. Their lives are lessons in themselves — precious gems to be studied, examined, and ultimately, to be enjoyed.

One of the reasons I became a teacher was because of one teacher I had when I was in high school. His name is Rene Lizada. He seemed so different from the other teachers because we could see that he actually enjoyed what he was doing. I mean here was a guy with enough talent and intelligence to do literally anything he wanted, and yet he chose to teach. That was when the seed of teaching was planted in my heart, when I first had the desire to be a teacher.

A friend of mine related this story about St. Francis of Assisi.

One day, a commoner asked St. Francis, “Is it really necessary for us Christians to share the gospel all the time?” St. Francis replied, “ Of course, brother. And sometimes, we use words when necessary.” Good teachers teach all the time, and sometimes, they use words when necessary.

ANDY UYBOCO teaches Web Development at the School of Design and Arts, De La Salle-College of St. Benilde, Manila