IPPN

Published: 09 April 2009

[source: Irish Times]

by AIDAN GAUGHRAN

Tuesday April 7th 2009

TEACHING MATTERS : In terms of tackling the economic crisis, most attention so far has been focused on the banking, the housing sector and the public finances.

Based on the Government's track record, there are real fears that today's Budget will see vital social spending on areas such as education sacrificed to rescue these sectors. This is despite a fairly widespread consensus that education will be one of the key drivers of recovery.

It is easy to see through some of the calls to ring fence educational spending which have come from big business. Even the casual observer can see these calls are motivated by the desire for the education system to deliver the next generation of skilled labour for big business.

But protecting education from the scalpel could, in fact, lead to far more than profits for the self-serving, semi-detached financial elite. Maintaining investment in education could actually ensure that the next generation realises that people are more important than profit and so avoid a possible re-run of the current economic disaster.

In terms of today's Budget announcements, the first step will be to protect investment in education. But to achieve real, long-term returns from education will take more than protecting the investment alone.

In order to ensure widespread societal benefit from education the system will have to be liberated from the ideology of the marketplace that has slowly but surely subverted its true purposes. Education is not a process through which to implement Darwinian theories. Selection of the fittest and rejection of the rest, predetermining the life chances of individuals from childhood has no place in world of education.

Education is about maximising the potential of all, not just the privileged few.

Education in its real sense is about human development and the fulfilment of human potential. Just as education is not a marketplace, neither is it a commodity to be bought by those with means. It is a human right, the birthright of every child and young person in a civilised society.

A major contributor to the economic collapse that we have witnessed is down to a lack of accountability and the absence of effective regulation in the world of finance. For the last two decades, existing effective regulation was deliberately and purposefully swept aside by free market capitalists. Perversely, during that same period the world of education has witnessed an increase in regulation, red tape, bureaucracy and accountability that has reached epidemic proportions. Billion-dollar deals could be transacted without a shred of accountability but a teacher was unable to teach a reading lesson to eight-year-olds without a tsunami of bureaucracy and red tape.

It is time to reverse the roles. Financiers must be subjected to real and robust regulation. Teachers who day in day out perform a valuable public service must have some of the regulatory burden removed from their shoulders.

Positioning schools to play a part in re-creating a better, fairer society will not be an easy task. It will not be completed in the short term. Given the day that is in it, there is an understandable fear that teachers and parents will be back in the trenches battling for scarce resources, perhaps for many years to come.

Brian Lenihan would do the State some service today if he were to avoid that scenario, ring fence education funding and not distract teachers from creating a better future for all Irish citizens.

Aidan Gaughran teaches on Clonmel, Co Tipperary and is a member of the education committeee of the INTO