Thursday, July 20, 2006

More about Education: To Banish Others or Reform Yourself?

On Thursdays, Moldovan national radio broadcasts live Parliamentary sessions. Today the topic of hot debates was education. More specifically, something should be done regarding an continuously increasing number of private institutions providing educational services of low quality in unacceptable conditions (e.g. overcrowded classrooms, basement location, unsanitary conditions, lack of teaching materials, etc) One proposed way to solve this problem, which materialized in a draft law, is to banish all private educational institutions.

At least for me, this is an unacceptable policy solution. Banishing private service providers is a "traditional" way of removing the symptoms of a problem, rather than the true causes! The reason why we have so many institutions that provide unsatisfactory services is because the government fails to enforce its own laws and regulations. Instead, the government should raise standards, improve its monitoring and enforcement functions, punish its own employees who engage in corrupt practices (like issuing licenses to ineligible or poorly performing institutions), and raise public awareness regarding the quality and importance of education. On the other end, the employers will make their own decision regarding the preferred schooling of their workforce. The ultimate consequence of such actions is that poorly performing providers of educational services will vanish in a democratic, market-driven way. The government will have done its job, and the market, too.

Probably I'm not the only one who thinks that this is a much more challenging solution to the problem, since it involves various individual interests. Once the issue has been raised, here is an opportunity for the Moldovan government to implement a truly democratic, Western-type reform. However, all it takes is that ever-missing political will.

Comments:

Anonymous , July 20, 2006  

One old and wise man told to me: "The difference between communist and American ways of fighting against the enemies is simple. Communists try to wipe out all of its enemies, Americans just ignore them."
I guess we can apply this rule in this specific situation. As in old times, the Communist party of Moldova tries to wipe out everybody who is inconvenient for them.
“There is no new thing under the sun!” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Peter Myers , July 22, 2006  

Lucia-
Great site; I'll link to it on my site later this week. One of the educational "reforms" going on in Moldova right now is requiring all students to complete 12th grade before they attend university. On the surface, this seems good, except that very few villages have lyceums ready to teach 12th grade; the majority stop at 11th. Because of new requirements, students finishing 9th grade will soon have no local option for further education. They will need to travel to another village or town every day in order to attend a lyceum. The quality of education will be higher for those willing to pay for transit every day, but many students and their parents will blanch at the cost and will instead stop their education after 9th grade. This "reform" will probably do more harm than good. Why doesn't Moldova help greate more capable schools inside villages rather than tell students that they must pay high transportation costs if they want to be educated past the age of 15.

Lucia , July 22, 2006  

Thank you, Mihai and Peter for your comments. What puzzles me the most is that while education is a national priority in this country, educational policies are taken so lightly and some are just paradoxical. I just wish the policy-makers started taking education - the best-proven way towards national and individual well-being and prosperity.