:: One People, Many Cultures ::



::Living Together in Respect and Friendship::

The teaching profession has a retention rate of less than 80% (I’ve heard) of new staff. In the next 10 years, half the teachers active today will retire. This is going to be a huge problem.

I’ve worked hard to get to the top in my career, but right now I’m not doing much that an untrained person couldn’t do with a couple of months practice. It’s therefore uncomfortable to talk to my customers who probably don’t earn anywhere near what I do. Sure, I’ll soon be putting all my experience to good use, but I can’t see that I’ll ever have the harder job or one as important to society.

In fact, the person that I’m filling in for now was a teacher, but changed to IT because it’s just too hard to live on a teacher’s salary. This isn’t really an Australian cultural issue, but the fact that it holds all around the world makes it all the more relevant for me.

I hear repeatedly that teachers don’t do what they do because of the money – they do it because of the satisfaction they get from giving the next generation the tools they’ll need to get through life and to improve on the world themselves. But I’ve lived with a wonderful woman who’s dedicating her life to helping the underdeveloped countries of the world feed themselves, and I’ve seen the pain such sacrifice involves. Marie gave more importance to satisfaction in her achievements than in money, but she will always have to be careful with her funds, never able to get home as often as she’d like or to live in nice accomodation because she’s chosen to work for satisfaction rather than money. Just the fact that the rest of the world counts a person’s worth by their salary made her feel undervalued. Teachers must feel the same.

The adage ‘those who can, do; those who can’t, teach’ may be true, but surely we’ve made it that way by undervaluing their work. If I earn more than any of my teachers, it’s not because I’m more intelligent (which might be true on average, but is certainly false in many cases). It’s because my work is valued more and that seems unfair.

If each person gave $100 each month to their teachers, and assuming that there are 20 students to each teacher, teachers could receive $24,000 extra per year. That must increase the feeling of being valued and in turn increase retention rates. Now, obviously students don’t have the money, so it would be more realistic to say that we give it from our salary once we start working and those of us who earn more (and have benefited more from the education) cover for those who earn little. But even at triple rates, I’d have no problem giving up an extra $3,600 each year while I’m earning my current salary if I knew it was going to make sure that my (future) children would have a good education from effective, passionate teachers.

It’s all hypothetical, but having run the idea through, I’d love to see it applied in the real world.

In my new role, I’m supporting an event for Priority Schools of NSW. As far as I can make out, these are schools where the students consistently get poor marks and have literacy / numeracy problems. One of the speakers today put up some interesting census statistics relevant to the kind of students that live in these areas. The first was that 1 in 5 Australians were born overseas and the same seems to be true for students. Another study I heard said that 1st and 2nd generation Australians account for more than half of our residents. That’s a huge number and one I’m quite proud of and excited about.

It does present its own problems. Another statistic said that 21% of Australians speak a language other than English at home. Surprisingly, the language most spoken is Hindi. I only remember 3 Indians in all my years of schooling, but that’s obviously changing as fast here as it is in other developed countries.

Contrasting to that, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders account for only 2-3%, though that number is growing. The first speaker, an Aboriginal man (possibly Phil Glendenning), told us that we were sitting in Gattagal territory and that he’d love to welcome us to his land in his own language, but his people had been forbidden to speak Gattagal 150 years ago. I take that to mean that the dialect has been lost. Sitting in that auditorium (trying to focus on technology), I couldn’t think of anything sadder. I feel ashamed for running off around the world, trying to learn interesting languages like Japanese, Spanish and French, when I can’t even speak a word of the native tongue of my homeland. It’s a lack I’d like to correct now, but I don’t have any contact with these people and it may be that there is nothing left to learn.

Gattagal is certainly used less than Hindi and probably Chinese and Greek. For that, I apologise to my hosts on behalf of all my ancestors. If it’s not too late to rectify the issue, I’m all ears.

I forgot to buy a train ticket this morning. Each week, I buy a ticket that will get me to Waverton, which is the last stop in the zone of my office. It’s now habit to use that ticket and of course it gets me through the gate at Hornsby, but it won’t get me out at the other end. This is the second time I’ve made the mistake and I don’t know if the station staff (or security) will let me get away with it a third time.

It’s the first time I’ve faced this problem in almost ten years. Bhutan doesn’t have trains. In Belgium and France, trains are long distance carriers and any intra-city travel is done on the Subway or buses, which are all one-punch tickets. The one price gets you anywhere you want to go. Japan had a subway, but I usually used the trains and often ended up in the same situation. It’s not a problem there, though. When you get to your destination, you simply put your ticket in the machine inside the gates and it charges you the difference.

I’m not a criminal. I couldn’t even get into the train system if I didn’t have a ticket. It’s about time we had a system that makes things easier rather than leading us into a trap.