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Education Reform: Second opinion
By Lykke E. Andersen*,
La Paz, 14 August 2006.
Last week’s post on the
Principles of Education Reform
caused quite some discussion among the readers, and there is
indeed much more to be said on this important topic.
Having benefited enormously from 20 years of excellent, free
public education in Denmark, I wouldn’t dismiss the idea of
public education as completely hopeless and in violation of
basic economic principles.
Well, to be honest, Denmark is not benefiting much from the
investment as I left the country right after finishing my
education, and, again to be honest, my own kids are in one of
the most expensive private schools in Bolivia (fortunately
heavily subsidized by the French government).
Actually, I don’t think I know anybody in Bolivia who sends
their kids to public school if they have a choice. The most
vocal defenders of free public education that I know all send
their own offspring to expensive private schools and even my
favorite shoe shine boy uses his income to go to private school
in the evening.
That does suggest that all is not well with the current public
education system in Bolivia.
One of the most important arguments in favor of a free, public
education system is that it levels the playing field between
rich and poor kids, thus creating equal opportunities and
facilitating social mobility. However, in order to fulfill that
function, public schools have to be of at least the same quality
as private schools, because otherwise the poor children will end
up wasting their time on an inferior education that can’t
compete in the labor market with the private education of richer
children.
Standardized tests of 4th grade children across Latin
America show that not only are public schools in Bolivia among
the worst on the continent (in terms of student performance),
but they are also farther behind the competing private schools
than in any other country (see Figure 1).
(1).
If the public education system is really as bad as the test
scores indicate, hundreds of thousand of poor kids may be
wasting many years of their life on something that does
practically nothing to improve their future income earning
capacity.
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Figure 1: Average score on 4th grade language tests
in several Latin American countries, 1997
Source:
CEPAL (2002).
An empirical study by Andersen & Muriel (2002) indicates that
almost all of the earnings differential between indigenous and
non-indigenous workers in Bolivia can be explained by
differences in school quality (after controlling for quantity).
That is, there really isn’t any ethnic discrimination in the job
market, but the indigenous people are being punished because
their schools typically were pretty bad
(2).
I have to agree with Antonio Saravia, author of
last week’s Development Newsletter, that education should
not be compulsory, especially not if the education is so lousy
that it is pretty much a waste of time. However, I also believe
that knowledge is a public good, and that the education of one
person may benefit society at large. This means that it would be
sub-optimal to rely on private education investment only.
Actually, I think a society should invest as much as possible in
its younger generation, especially a developing country whose
future depends completely on the actions and attitudes of its
young population.
However, I don’t think conventional education, where everybody
has to learn the same thing, in the same way, at the same time,
and at the same speed, is the best or only way to go. Children
are very different, have different learning styles, and
different talents, and that diversity should be exploited rather
than repressed. Nobody explains this better than George H.
Reavis in the short story “The
Animal School”. (It is less than one page long and explains
what is wrong with virtually every public as well as many
private education systems in the World. Here is a link to a
Spanish version: “La
Escuela de los Animales” if somebody should prefer that).
It seems like such a waste to try to get every child to learn a
standard curriculum, rather than trying actively to bring out
the best in each child and encouraging excellence and genius
wherever it is present. Such stimulation, guidance and mentoring
can be done in many other, and probably many better, ways than
the traditional class-room. Learning by doing may work a whole
lot better than learning from copying a professor’s scribbles
from the black board and then trying to memorize them until the
exam is over.
Kids should learn how to learn, and then keep learning by
themselves for the rest of their life. The statistical artifact
“years of education” makes little sense in a rapidly changing
world, where educational capital quickly becomes obsolete if it
is not constantly replenished. Those who keep learning new
things every day have a tremendous advantage over those who
stopped studying the day they got their degree certificate.
In conclusion, I think we need a whole much more than
privatization and market mechanisms in order to improve the
education system. We need an education revolution.
(*) Director, Institute for Advanced
Development Studies, La Paz, Bolivia. The author happily
receives comments at the following e-mail:
landersen@inesad.edu.bo.
(1) It is worth pointing out that the
students in Cuba (all from public schools), did substantially
better than those depicted in the figure. Indeed they scored an
average of 380 out of 400 possible, whereas the best average
score for private schools was 314 (Argentina).
(2) Andersen, Lykke E. & Beatriz Muriel (2002) “Cantidad versus
Calidad en Educación: Implicaciones para Pobreza” Revista de
Estudios Económicos y Sociales, No. 1, pp. 11 - 41.
Ó
Institute for Advanced Development Studies 2006.
The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the
author and do not necessarily coincide with those of the Institute.
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