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Merit Pay, A Perennial Panacea
North Miami Beach, Florida 2-9-2000 Aaron H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then. Opinions pro or con are welcome. For other essays see the archives
in: http://homepages.iaanfoseek.com/~thinkingallowed
MERIT PAY, A PERENNIAL PANACEA
About Merit Pay, a perennial panacea mentioned matter-of-factly in
connection with other denigrations of the teaching profession, I
automatically bristle and must add my commentary.
At the same time when teachers are examined and found unworthy, THE
solution to school's problems, "Merit Pay", is advanced. If teachers can't
teach, how can merit pay help? For the past 50 or so years the education
profession has suffered from attacks like these.
When you throw in "Vouchers", which no one fully understands, the recipe
for better schools is reduced to slogans. "Merit Pay and Vouchers will save
the schools and children will go to college and our world will be saved."
This last is another part of the problem of trying to better a bad situation
instead of inspecting all the thorns and underbrush which prevent us from
seeing the good solid trees of excellent education being practiced.
Not every child will benefit from a college education. College was never
intended for the common folk. Well, the "JUNIOR" College two-year
institution was and is intended for the ordinary student who could not
survive a four-year collegiate experience. Our country's leaders, as in the
vision of Thomas Jefferson, must go to college and we should pay the price
of selecting them from the "rubbish" (as he termed the rest of us). Like
other equations there is no proof that a college education will make a
better person. We believe but cannot prove that merit pay and vouchers will
work.
Merit Pay will cause anger in schools because of the age-old practice of
friends choosing friends to be awarded. We have no say over the old-boy
network spreading wealth around the corporate boardrooms because they are
private places. The public schools are public and everyone has a say.
But, none of this, as my editor will attest to, will get me anywhere
because no one understands or cares.
Carol says "You Betcha !": 9 out of 10.
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