From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Tue Oct 10 2006 - 14:46:17 EDT
Jerry, I was interested in this trend since I did a Master's in Education once, spending some time on labour market issues and the reproduction of the labour force, quantitatively considered. I had this ideal of being a teacher at that time, but I've stayed a learner mostly. The first thing to realise I guess is that if the total amount of teachers available is stagnating or dropping absolutely, the amount of the drop must be seen in the context of rising population growth. With rising population growth and a relatively young demographic structure in the third world, you need more and more teachers. So even a small absolute drop in the total amount of teachers available is actually quite significant, if compared to the growing school-age cohort in the population. But in even many "greying" OECD countries, the supply of teachers is stagnating to the point of shortages. I think this has partly to do with the growing stress levels involved in teaching (among other things, more and more, you can get physically attacked in the classroom), and partly with relative pay scales. In Holland, with a competitive market for qualified staff, we had a teacher shortage some years back, but it was largely overcome through additional investments and recruitment drives. But in many poorer countries this is probably not possible. The schools, for better or worse, express the ideals a society has for its future. If there is a shortage of teachers, this does not say much for the society's ideals about itself. In general, of course, the average educational level of the world working class is rising in aggregate, but there is certainly a world stratification of educational levels. You can see this e.g. if you read the UNESCO report to which I referred. There is also a considerable "brain drain" to the wealthy countries. Seeing the value of education and investing in it, is also strongly associated with the formation of an educated "new middle class", which is concerned with the improvement of society. Many development theorists these days pin their hopes on this class, as an emancipatory force. For economists, of course, this class is also the conduit for capital accumulation and a "property-owning democracy". In this regard, I also chance on this interesting clip: "There was a fascinating report recently from the [British] Office for National Statistics on the subject of class. (Oh, stop it. The Office for National Statistics may not sound like a crucible of racy narrative, but it's precisely because the report came from that sober counting-house that its findings are so striking.) On studying the Government's Labour Force Survey of the working lives of 72,000 people, the statisticians came to the intriguing conclusion that the working population of this country is more middle-class than not. One third of people of working age apparently fall into one of two "middle-class" categories, for which the ONS devised the clunking monikers of "lower" or "higher managerial or professional". Non middle-class workers, classified as "routine", "semi-routine", "intermediate" (a rather glam category including airline cabin crew, firemen and photographers), "lower-supervisory" and the Poujadist rump of the self-employed, a wayward band of shopkeepers, hairdressers and fishermen, altogether made up only 31.4 per cent of the working-age population (the rest, since you ask, are not working for various reasons). Which looks like belated vindication of Tony Blair's claim, before the 1997 election, that "we are all middle-class now" and a refutation of Jules Renard's epigram that "les bourgeois, ce sont les autres". http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,21130-2390228,00.html The idea is that workingclass jobs are "routine", and middleclass jobs aren't. But in reality many people with tertiary qualifications are nevertheless doing "routine" jobs, and many workingclass jobs are not routine. The Time Higher Education Supplement has just released world data on the apex of the system, i.e. the universities: http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings/ Little do we realise that some of our friends are at the very summit of the WORLD education system!!! Jurriaan
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