Editorial: We need to excite our young minds

One of the memorable moments of the Knowledge Wave Conference was a tribute paid to a schoolteacher. A speaker, Jilly Evans, a director of pharmacology for Merck Research Laboratories of the United States, recalled two teachers who had excited her interest in the sciences, and introduced one of them, Neil Akehurst, now head of social studies at Rangitoto College.

It was an important moment in an event that was otherwise concentrating on highly developed knowledge and technology, a reminder that the most important educational investment is in the young. Many people who find themselves in successful, rewarding careers can probably nominate a schoolteacher or two who did for them what Mr Akehurst and, later, a correspondence teacher, Jean Struthers, did for Jilly Evans.

Teachers, as the Governor of the Reserve Bank observed at the same conference, are undervalued in this country. Their pay is abysmal when compared with that of occupations requiring comparable qualifications and the holidays hardly compensate for the long hours that conscientious teachers put in. Worse, the profession is not held in the public esteem it deserves. That is unfortunate not only for teachers but for the country and its economy, which depend on the quality of compulsory education.

The country needs to attract and keep teachers who have the ability to excite young minds, particularly in subjects such as the sciences and mathematics, when there are likely to be more lucrative alternatives. To resist the lure of alternatives, teaching needs the ability to pay a premium for those it particularly needs to attract and to keep.

Unfortunately, the profession resists the idea. Education is imbued with egalitarian values that do the profession and the country untold harm when they are taken too far. Any industry needs to be able to offer selective rewards for exceptional performance and sometimes those rewards must operate outside conventional career steps. There is no point in rewarding exceptionally good teachers by promoting them to positions in which they will do less teaching.

Teachers still negotiate pay and conditions through collective agreements. They are probably the most solidly unionised occupation left in modern economies. They are right now concluding another round of agreements with a Government sympathetic to their collective outlook. There seems not much prospect that teaching will undergo the kind of enhancement the economy needs of it.

The public esteem of teachers, and the rewards they could expect, would be greatly enhanced if they operated as other professions do, along the lines of private enterprise. Health professionals, who are no less socially dedicated, sell their services to the state as businesslike organisations for the most part. Education was heading in that direction, too, under the prescription of Tomorrow's Schools.

Schools, like primary health centres, ought to be run by professionals who succeed on their ability to attract and keep pupils bearing public subsidies. Schools of that sort would pay good teachers what they deserve and provide conditions more pleasant for pupils and staff, more stimulating, more conducive to learning. In little things such as personal dress, the profession would earn greater respect from pupils and the public.

Schools of that sort would cost the country much more, but they would be well worth it. With schools like that, every teacher would have the capacity to excite and inspire.

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