Last week the students in the social studies method classes were exposed to a guest speaker "presenting" their civic simulation. Though his model was interesting, had many well thought out aspects and years of hard work invested it was soon obvious that the nonchalent and casual demeanor of the presenter was a carefully scripted sales pitch. This program was available to teachers at an expensive cost for the teacher edition guide book and the student books. Furthermore, there was a fee per class per semester. I believe that a person is entitled to reap the benifits of their hard work but at what cost to the ideological foundations of teaching should they be compensated? I think that we will see more of this lesson for proffit model as teachers are increasingly overworked and salaries are not sufficient to live in many of the urban centres throughout Canada.
Another aspect of education for profit is private schools. I had the opportunity to work for a year at a private ESl kindergarten in Seoul, South Korea. This situation was an interesting clash of "education" and parent satisfaction. Partially due to cultural differences, but mainly caused by the school as a business model, kids' educations were comprimised due to the priority of student retention. It may be possible to obtain a for profit school model that puts forth a quality education. However, once the main motive has shifted from educating a student to the best of their ability towards generating the most amount of profit who gets left behind? At my private ESL kindergarten I continually tried to convince the school to push their finished educated product as the beacon that would guide future parents towards the enrollment table to sign up their children for 2 years. Unfortunately the tactic undertaken to increase enrolment and maintain student retention was parental appeasement.
I have come to terms with the fact that if I am going to teach internationally that I will most likely be working within an education for profit setting again. However, I hope that there is a focus on education as opposed to profits.
What are your opinions on education for profit? Have you had any experiences with this system? Do you plan to seek employment in this system?
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Toban, can you elaborate a bit on the first model that the guest speaker presented? I don't quite understand it. Was the speaker presenting a series of lessons and lesson plans and products that the teacher could purchase to teach lessons? Or was the speaker presenting a model where students did distance style education with students paying per course? Are there any links to the system that your speaker was advocating for?
ReplyDeleteI don't have any experience so far with education for profit systems. For my spring practicum I am going to China and doing a practicum with a for-profit school model. I am interested to see how parent approval and meeting BC education standards are balanced by the administration. There are definitely different pressures in a system where the parents are directly paying for education. I would imagine that this is especially evident in ESL programs where the government is not necessarily setting the curriculum and directing what must be taught. Unfortunately, it seems to me in that system that it is the ideologies and integrity of administrators and teachers to ensure that students are taught well...
Cameron, I can answer your question. The social studies teacher developed a board game-like lesson plan (like Settlers of Catan, if you are familiar with that one), where students would earn money for doing homework, money which they would then use to play the game, trading it and charging people for various things in order to 'feed' their families and start businesses and property. The students would have to study up on the unit topics (such as laws, rights, insurance, investing, and capitalist & socialist systems) to continue with the game. This teacher has now developed an internet application for the game, so now students' 'bank accounts' are kept online.
ReplyDeleteThe teacher explained the game to us, and passed around the student and teacher's edition of the game (very expensive) MANUALS he has produced - these are what you buy. I think you also purchase online access; this is what you pay for each time you access it for a class.
Here's the lesson/game website: http://www.civicmirror.com/
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I worked at a for-profit ESL school in Bolivia. Public school children in the city did receive (a very small number) of (crappy) English lessons...the for-profit after-hours school I worked at was only for those who could afford it. Public school in Bolivia is of poor quality, so people/their kids take lessons on the side because English is a big ticket to job opportunity.
I was ok with the for-profit model in this context because the reality is that, in many similarly poor countries, it is either for-profit English education or you-get-no-good-education. Public school teachers are hardly paid enough to buy groceries...you can't blame some entrepreneurial teachers for breaking off and starting their own schools. Of course, it would be nice if the quality of English education in public schools in Bolivia and some other countries were better so that for-profit on-the-side schools weren't needed. Unfortunately the relatively rich get better education in poor countries and the poor get no or poor education. Does this mean that no one should be allowed to purchase better education on the side? I don't think so. While developing countries progress, some people need to be able to speak English well enough to run the tourism and international business. For-profit schools in this case are filling a hole.
Cullen Said….
ReplyDeleteSales for Profit-
I would have to agree with Toban. I was skeptical of the speaker as soon as I saw his copyrighted textbooks sitting on the table in front of me. Although the “Civic Mirror” simulation that was presented seemed to work for the individual presenter, I definitely questioned how applicable it would be to the average teacher, who simply wasn’t teaching civic studies. Furthermore, the cost of using the program would most likely fall upon us the teacher. The pamphlet says it all, “This is a great opportunity to test the program, ignite your classroom with student enthusiasm, and showcase it to your colleagues. Essentially we would be selling the presenters .com business for him, not for free, but at a cost to us, the teacher.
More “funny” is that this individual was paid by UVic to come present to us. So we all already paid for him to come sell us a product (with our own tuition?), to then be told to sell his product for him in our schools, all while paying to use the product per/class/year. I also had a bit of a problem with the simulation itself, as the entire premise of the simulation was to create “real world” capitalism right in the classroom. Although learning about capitalism is important, I would argue the simulation would also promote (some of which the presenter happily admitted) all the negative aspects that come as a by-product of capitalism i.e. competition, and more importantly a social hierarchy with “haves” and “have-nots”.
The rant aside, the presentation did have some notable positives. Firstly it illustrated to me that we as teachers can make the classrooms we will be teaching in as interesting as we choose. Okay this may seem obvious, but I think it is important. The speaker exemplified to us all what is possible when an individual has the will to stick to his or her principles, in order to create an atmosphere in the classroom whereby the sole objective is to inspire children to learn. Although I don’t agree with the simulation, or the way it was being sold to us, I agree with the principle, and for that reason alone I was inspired.
I first posted this comment on my Socials methods blog as a response to the Regan Ross presentation (what Toban has wrote about).
ReplyDelete"This is a tough one. Obviously Mr. Ross put a lot of time and effort into developing the simulation, and if he wants to "sell" it, he has the right as a citizen in our society to do so. I'm not sure who's getting all the money, but I'm sure it's complicated and that there are many "fingers in the pie" (or whatever the expression is). I would hope that some of it is trickling down to benefit the students. When it comes to the politics of education, I am still pretty ignorant, so I have no idea how much of an ethical problem all this really is. But I do know we live in a society where money makes the world go round, and in many respects, it seems like the education system is just another business, where profits have to be made and bottom lines have to be met. When I actually become a full-time teacher with many years of experience (maybe by the time I'm 50 or so--ha ha)I guess I'll have a good idea if Mr. Ross was "wrong" or not."
I won't touch on your socials class, but I will touch on the for-profit school systems. My experience overseas is actually in a non-profit school that was edcuating extremely poor students. Every student was in the top 10% of the country so they were receiving a top-notch education, but this was not the norm. Unfortunetly, working in this school you will survive, but that is about it. I wish I could go back there and make a decent wage. If I want a decent wage I have to enter international schools of for profit schools. The schools there for profit are of decent quality in comparison to government schools with 150 kids per class and a teacher who doesn't show up half the time.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sarah that for-profit schools are filling a gap that is at least needed in third world countries. If they didn't exist well there would be next to no education for anyone. Unfortunetly, these schools are needed because the governments actually profit off keeping their government regulated schools so poorly funded.
Check out the book Dead Aid which explains where the money Bono, etc., raise goes. In a nut shell it is distributed to countires based on a rating that comes from their schools, hospitals, etc., therefore governments actually put their money elsewhere (where it doesn't help their people, such as private plans) so that they can get this aid money. Next time anyone gives money to help peopl over seas they need to question where it is going. If it is going to a specific trusted organization then great, if it is going to a goverment then keep it for yourself. If people give to the majority of third world governments there will always be a demand for for-profit schools since the government schools will not get any funding.(sorry, my rant for the day)
I went to a private school in the Philippines from K-grade 7. I think I received a pretty decent education because I turned out okay. As a kid, I was oblivious to any politics that happens between the administration and parents.
ReplyDeleteLike many poor countries, the public schools there were always overpopulated. Because there weren't enough of them, public schools often had to serve a big area. I would say about 99% of the students that go to public schools can not afford to go to any other educational institution. So in a way, private schools ensured that students that can pay did not take seats away from those that had no other option than the public schools.