The Value of an Education

I’m following a dialogue between two friends about education in the United States.  Both believe that the current system can improve but think that to do so we should go in different directions.

My college roommate, Chad, a product of public education, calls for as little government regulation as possible and proposes a free market of education, wherein a school functions like a corporation.  It can hire and fire as it pleases and offer salaries that it sees fit.  However it measures the “bottom line” determines the salary scale.  Ryan, a roommate after college and product of private education, thinks that education needs governmental oversight.  He is mainly suspicious of applying the free-market “solution” to any problem.

Although I’ve been a teacher for some time, I feel uninformed when it comes to policy regarding education.  The thing is, I kind of started this conversation, which was primarily about teacher pay.  Personally, at times I feel underpaid for the amount of work and time that I put into my job, and other times I feel undeserving of what I receive.

Thinking further, I know that there are occupations whose worth (and the effectiveness of those who perform them) cannot be measured in terms of dollars.  There’s no profit margin or even real (economics term) losses.  Education in a single life is cumulative, but only the individual can fairly, if accurately, do the math and only able to do so in the end.  To whom should the dollars go when measured against one’s knowledge gained through education and wisdom gained through experience and inspiration?  Who the hell can determine that?

Growing up in American schools, I always heard that the good teachers do it not for the money but as a passion, or in response to a calling, to put it in religious terms.  The absence of personal gains, or even the potential of getting them, is what makes them good.  I believed that saying then and saw it in my own teachers who inspired me as a student.

Now, I wonder if the philosophy has guided the practice, or if the opposite is true.  Do those who go into teaching do so because they see little value in monetary gains and are pursuing a loftier satisfaction?  Or, is it the absence of those gains what led to the proverb about good teachers?  The capable teacher who measures his effectiveness by how much he makes would be too frustrated, and thus he repeats to himself the adage until it becomes truth.

I suppose it’s a mixture of the two for most people who teach.  It is for me.  I do know that, like a parent would, I hope that my students will someday make more than I do as a result of attending my classes.  I doubt that I will ever be able to determine that with any objectivity.

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