Becoming a third world nation

Wall Street Journal’s Ian Vasquez writes an excellent article about Peru and their failing infrastructure today. I couldn’t help but draw comparisons while I was reading it to our own system and it’s failures;

The water monopoly — which loses some 40% of its water through leaky pipes or in ways otherwise unaccounted for — is only one of Peru’s monuments to government incompetence. Peruvians were reminded of another last month when the communist-led teacher’s union went on strike, paralyzing schools and triggering violence across the country. The union was protesting a law requiring that teachers be tested and held accountable for competency. An evaluation earlier this year found that one-third of teachers are deficient in reading comprehension and that nearly half cannot do basic math.

Yeah, who needs competent teachers? It’s similar to schools here in the US – teachers’ unions rail against competency tests as an insult, but what’s insulting to the rest of the country is that they think they’re above proving that they can understand what they teach. Nearly every job I’ve ever had required that demonstrate that I maintain a level of proficiency in that job – why do teachers think they are above investment advisors, doctors, lawyers, and so on?

Peruvians have discovered the same solution that Americans discovered;

By chance, during my visits I learned that the rejection of state services has extended to education as well. One day, a woman in Villa El Salvador confirmed to me that the large building in the distance was a public school, and volunteered that she did not send her son there. Instead, he goes to a private school that charges a fee. “It hurts, but it’s well worth it,” she explained.

Somewhat surprised, I then asked if many other parents there send their children to private schools. She estimated that at least half do so. Standing on the dusty hillside overlooking the town, with the putrid smell of human waste wafting through the air, the mother pointed to building after building where private, informal-sector schools educate the poor.

As it turns out, Peru’s shanty towns are full of such private, for-profit schools. Yet to my knowledge, the phenomenon has not been carefully studied. The anecdotal evidence is, however, consistent with the pathbreaking work of University of Newcastle Professor James Tooley, who documented how private schools in the African and Indian slums he studied have arisen to educate the majority of the children there. Mr. Tooley found that students in private schools performed notably better than those in public schools, and private schools rated better on most indicators, including teacher attendance.

A majority of teachers have shown more interest in the betterment of their own condition at the expense of children’s futures and parents have taken the matter into their own hands. In Peru, as well as the US, homeschooled students perform better than public-educated students because homeschooling cuts out all of the “innovative” BS. Innovation in education used to be about teaching methods and student understanding – now it’s about teachers not teaching. When I was in school, innovation meant television – the teachers turned on Public Television and left the room while we watched the tube. Now it’s computers.

In the 90s, teachers unions convinced an easily persuaded Bill Clinton that they needed computers to keep children competitive with the rest of the world – nevermind that children were falling behind the world in reading, writing, science and math – they needed to learn how to play games on massively expensive computers. Innovation has come to mean a way to keep kids occupied, and a way to make teachers highly-paid playground monitors.

Today an innovation would be to turn out literate students. Even Peru’s poor have figured out that their only hope for a decent future is an educated child – when are Americans going to figure it out? 

Category: Politics, Society