Like almost everyone in Quebec, I am happy that the most recent education strike has ended. Although I don’t have children, I work with people who do and I have seen how having to take care of several children at home slows down professional activity. Then, more generally, in a context where the skills of young people in different school subjects are still recovering from the repercussions of the pandemic, there was an interest in this conflict not stretching out further.
Like many people in Quebec, I would like education to be more valued. And I am certain that François Legault meant everything he said about 4-year-old kindergarten as the main reason for his commitment as Prime Minister at the time. But wanting it is not enough. If we don’t make an effort to understand why education is not as valued as we would like, then it is only a good intention – and doesn’t the expression say aptly enough that is hell paved with it?
Let’s take a typical indicator of the value of education in a society: teachers’ salaries. Let’s compare it with, in health, the salary of doctors. Even if some consider that doctors are overpaid, most people say that they deserve it given their contribution to health and the value attributed to health. If education were as valued as health, teachers could be paid as much as doctors. (Especially with our public education and health systems, this would require significantly lowering doctors’ salaries, a measure that would encounter resistance for all kinds of reasons; follow me in the thought exercise anyway.)
What prevents education from being as valued as health and why teachers, instead of being paid as much as doctors, frequently have to fight just to that their salary does not decrease with inflation? I think the problem is not where we think it is. It is not that we neglect, in themselves, the advantages of education; it’s that we don’t see them enough.
For example, if we agree that the doctor should be well paid, it is because we see the link between his skills and the years of life that he can save thanks to them. However, the quality of education contributes to the acquisition of these skills. So, the better we teach doctors, the more years of life they will save. But the link is easier to make between doctors and the years of life saved than between medical teachers and these same years of life.
Moreover, obviously, there are not only medical teachers. There are preschool educators — and the children they help educate may become doctors, but that connection is even harder to make. What link, also, between the years of life and the contribution of philosophy teachers to CEGEP? This contribution concerns the quality of life rather than the quantity of years of life, but it can be significant – as much as it can be zero. When it remains abstract, it’s difficult to say… and therefore difficult to value.
For education to be valued, we must better quantify what it creates. How can we know when students’ potential is more or less developed? Are academic results sufficient? Are they sufficiently linked to concrete future achievements in which students will apply their learning? If so, where does the discomfort of some educators with encrypted bulletins come from? If not, how can we modify the evaluation while avoiding dequantifying education, as some do… which aggravates the problem? Answering these questions is essential to quantify education and better value it.