I Should Teach in Finland or Singapore
February 17, 2008 by Kate Olson
TIME Magazine — U.S. Edition via kwout
I sat down with my newest issue of TIME magazine (U.S. Edition) this afternoon with great anticipation - the cover reads “How to Make Better Teachers” - of COURSE I needed to read this! The cover article is interesting and focuses on how to attract and keep good teachers, and brings up some intriguing theories on incentive-based pay. Remember, I’m coming from the business world and I still have some hold-over beliefs that don’t always fit with the typical teacher stance, which in my geographical area is currently “incentive pay is evil”. I think the article describes some interesting ways of structuring incentives to make them truly effective. I’ll let you read the article for yourself to see the newer incentive models being developed. Just a note based on the TIME article ”A Voter’s Guide to Education” - Barack Obama is the candidate that most closely matches my feelings about merit pay - he “supports merit pay for individual teachers - but not if it’s based solely on test scores, and only if teachers support it.”
What next grabbed my attention was the article titled “How They Do It Abroad” by Linda Darling Hammond which described teacher training in several different countries, including Finland and Singapore. I almost fell off my chair reading how teachers are trained and paid in these countries!
Consider the following, described by Darling-Hammond:
In Singapore - “To get the best teachers, the institute recruits students from the top third of each graduating high school class into a fully paid four-year teacher-education program (or, if they enter later, a one-to-two-year graduate program) and puts them on the government payroll. When they enter the profession, teachers’ salaries are higher than those of beginning doctors.”
In Finland, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, all teacher candidates “receive two to three years of graduate-level preparation for teaching, at government expense, plus a living stipend.”
Now, if you’re not familiar with the U.S. method of teacher recruitment, training, and professional development, the TIME article gives a bit of background, but I’ll just say that it’s woefully lacking compared to the models described by Darling-Hammond. It’s not my intention to complain about my pay or position - I feel I am very lucky to have gotten the job I have as I teach in a very competitive market and chose teaching after working in another field. I do, however, think the U.S. has a LOT to learn from other countries about respecting, funding, and nurturing teaching careers. During my short time in the teaching profession so far and based on this article, I have to say that Finland and Singapore are looking like better places to be a teacher today.
Here are some additional TIME articles on education that do a great job of illustrating the issues the U.S. is having:
“Looking Abroad for a Few Good Teachers”
“And Now, a Teacher Shortage”
“A Voter’s Guide to Education“
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Fantastic point of view! This is the vector I think the national and local teachers unions and groups should take in approaching the topic of pay.
I think that these same organizations should look at why education in those countries is working better than here in the US as well… I doubt it is all about the money.
The US has to get out of its 1880 - 1910 way of teaching school and paying for teachers.
Hi Kate
I once taught part time at Singapore’s National Institute of Education after work at Nanyang Technological University. I also had the good fortune to consult on a number of IT projects with the Singapore Ministry of Education.
Singaporean teachers are easily among the hardest working teachers in the world. The pressure upon Singaporean teachers for their students to succeed is enormous. The pressure comes from the parents and the system. The teachers work incredibly hard, even conducting additional classes during the school holidays.
Singapore is a city-state. It does not possess natural resources and land like countries such as the USA and Australia. Singapore’s resource is its children. The pressure placed upon students is significant as well.
Cheers, John
indigo196 - thanks for agreeing with me, always nice to have that
John -
Thank you so much for offering a different perspective on the teaching situation in Singapore. The article covered it in a very utopic view and I appreciate the information you provided. With the benefits come much more pressure, which must be considered. Many teachers in the US might not appreciate this……….
Hi Kate,
Thank you for the reply. Singaporean teachers do work very hard. The trainees deserve the income and the teachers deserve their pay.
I conducted workshops in neighbourhood schools and the most influential schools. Teachers at both ends of the spectrum worked just as hard as the other.
I also had the good chance to meet teachers from across Asia while I was in Singapore. If you ever have the chance to work in an International School in a city such as Seoul, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or elsewhere then take the opportunity. While you are there make an effort to get to know the local teachers.
My wife and I buried ourselves in the Singaporean culture while we were there. I became involved with local environmentalists, bike-riders and teachers. I also conducted free IT workshops for parents and children on weekends from time to time with other Singaporean friends. That enriched the entire experience. Our photographs can be found here:
http://www.larkin.net.au/040_gallery.html
Working with Singaporean teachers was a real eye opener. Class sizes are much larger than here in Australia and students sit for a significant series of exams from the very earliest years through to matriculation year.
Interestingly enough Singaporean students picked up blogging much more quicker than their counterparts in other parts of the world. Singaporeans are tech savvy. Three of my favourite blogs are by Singaporeans:
Siva ~ lecturer, environmentalist, blogging for many, many years
http://staff.science.nus.edu.sg/%7Esivasothi/blog/index.php
Kevin ~ social networking researcher and lifestreamer
http://theory.isthereason.com/
Marcus ~ biologist and nature photographer par excellence
http://budak.blogs.com/the_annotated_budak/
Cheers,
John
PS. I am off to Singapore to work with Singaporean teachers next week! ^_^