No Stars Here: A Call to be Teachers in the Twenty-First Century

There are teachers that I still remember as if it were only yesterday. Mr. Lim taught me geography and English but he taught me more than that. Mr. Lim taught me by his own example that we should always aspire for the lofty heights. All we needed, he said, was to aim high. "The higher you aim, the higher you climb," he would say, "and the higher up you will be even when you fall. Aim low, and when you fall, you fall right to the bottom. So, always aim high." There was also Encik Ahmad, my Malay language tutor, who made learning fun. More than that, he taught me that there is nothing too difficult if you only set your heart on it – not even learning what was then our first go at Bahasa Kebangsaan. There are, unfortunately, teachers that I don’t really care to remember. There was Mr. Thigarajan, my history teacher, who used to walk into the class in his woollen sweater in the heat of our Malaysian sun only to proclaim that it was too hot to teach, and then summarily ordered us to take turns reading aloud from our history textbook, one paragraph per student until the bell rang. Then there was also my additional maths teacher who declared that dy/dx is zero in his strong Chinese-school accented English. I remember that he was a graduate from the University of Queensland. I remember too his response when I asked him why dy/dx should be equal to zero. His curd reply was, "When I say ‘geelo,’ I mean ‘geelo’!" To this day, I cannot remember his name. I thank God for the laughs I still get out of my memory of Mr. Thigarajan and my additional maths teacher, but I thank God most of all for those who instilled in me the spirit to learn, and to learn some more. I thank God for the Mr. Lims and the Encik Ahmads. Yet, we didn’t make stars out of them. All that was almost forty years ago.

Zoom ahead to the twenty-first century and little has changed that is good in the way that we treat our teachers. We live in the age of the "stars". Day in and day out, both international and local mass media focus our gaze on the stars of entertainment, sports, politics, and the arts. There is, however, hardly any focus on the true unsung heroes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – our teachers. We glorify and glamorise movie stars, sports stars, the stars of business, law and politics, but we hardly ever make stars of our teachers. There are the Oscars for movie stars, medals galore for sports stars, an abundance of wealth and royal titles for business and legal stars, and power and prestige for the stars of politics. However, as the Royal Bank of Canada (1989) notes, "Nobody ever got a Nobel Prize for teaching achievements." Yet, good teachers have become even more important in the twenty-first century than in the twentieth.

We are now living in a world vastly different from that of the twentieth century – a more uncertain world, particularly for the young. The emerging global economic order is making it increasingly difficult for young people to make successful transitions from school to work. Andy Furlong (2002, p. 2) notes that "In many parts of the world, young people’s attempts to make transitions to work are being thwarted by rising levels of unemployment. For increasing numbers of young people, employment is precarious and may not provide the means of subsistence." Furlong (2002, p. 1) warns, "without radical solutions we are heading for a global catastrophe (our emphasis) that will have a particularly strong impact on the lives of young people." It is now becoming increasingly clear that if youths are to avoid falling into repeated cycles of unemployment and even poverty, we must equip them with the ability to thrive in high-productivity work organisations and the flexibility to respond rapidly to an ever changing economic environment. In particular, we need to equip our children with the traditional three R’s (Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic) plus Reasoning and Relationship skills (President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology & International Labour Organisation).

There are two important questions here: a) How should we then teach our children? and b) what kind of teachers do we need? After decades of trying to understand what school characteristics and policies increase learning among children, social scientists find that much is still unknown (Glewwe, 2002). The reason why social scientists have found so little that is useful is that they have not ventured far beyond their repertoire of traditional, quantifiable school inputs such as pupil-teacher ratios, class size, and textbook availability. In so doing, they have missed the mark.

The keys to effective teaching and effective teachers are to be found in the way God instructed Israel to teach its people. Deuteronomy 11:18-21 states:

To escape false worship and find prosperity in the promised land, Israel needed an effective and wholistic education programme. Important as they may be, the key educational inputs are not the quantitative inputs like pupil-teacher ratios, class size and the availability of pedagogical materials. An effective and wholistic education programme calls for the best of human behaviours because education is essentially about human behaviours and interactions. In particular, Deuteronomy 11:18-20 tells us that an effective education calls for:

1. A Clear and Shared Vision – God shared with Israel the vision of its children flourishing in the Promised Land;
2. High Expectations – Israel had to set high standards for all its children for they were required to know God’s word in all aspects of their lives;
3. Effective Leadership – for Israel’s education to be effective they needed effective leadership on the part of the leaders and the entire adult community in ensuring that God’s words would be in their hearts, and in the hearts of their children, whether they were awake or asleep, going in or going out;
4. A High Level of Cooperation - the entire community had to work to ensure that God’s words would be tied to their hands, their foreheads, written on their doorposts and their gates, and they were to talk about God’s word; and
5. Complete Commitment – God expected them to commit themselves completely to His words.

In addition, a wholistic education calls for an emphasis on:

6. Religious Knowledge – knowing God’s word, and knowing it well.

We can sum up the keys to effective education as: a common vision, high expectations, effective leadership, community involvement, and commitment. Recent students of successful transformations of high-poverty, low-performing schools into high-poverty, high-performing schools have found these same key elements (see also Lee, 2003). However, as Deuteronomy 11 tells us, a wholistic education programme also calls for the teaching of the sixth R – Religious knowledge; not in the sense of rules and regulations, but in the sense of wisdom to make the right choices in life, particularly in the post-modern age of relative values. Interestingly, in the world of formal education these keys are in fact not of recent origin.

Looking back, we find these same key elements at work in the early Christian mission schools in Malaysia and Singapore. In a tribute to these mission schools, the Government of Malaysia states, "The Missions were also pioneers in education for girls and fought resolutely against conservative opposition and prejudice. ... It is a striking tribute to the selfless service of those men and women that they should have gained the ready confidence and affection of both parents and children despite differences in religion and culture" (Loh, 1993, p.7). Similarly, Singapore’s former Prime Minister Mr. Lee Kuan Yew remarked, "The missionaries did a good job in producing leaders ... Christianity brought mission schools and they laid the foundation for an elite class of administrators who still carry the burden of the bureaucracy" (Far Eastern Economic Review, 1980). More recently, the Honourable Minister of Defence, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, paid tribute to the La Salle Brothers for their "deep commitment and tireless efforts of the La Sallian brothers, especially during the formative years of the country ..." (The Star, Dec. 29 2002)..

How did the pioneering missionaries accomplish so much? Loh Soon Choy (op. cit., p. 10) argues, "What made them special was the fact that they were not just people out to ‘do a job’. These pioneers of Malaysia’s modern educational system also had a transforming vision. ... They taught ‘the Three R’s’ (Reading, wRiting, and aRithmatic). But they also gave more by their examples of holistic living, morals, work ethics, reverence for God, life, and sex; and respect for people of any race or creed, transforming values which no book education can give." Robert Hunt (1993) argues that it was the ability to forge a critical spirit rather than acceptance of the status quo that was the greatest contribution of the missionary schools to modern Malaysia. In short, the early missionaries had:

1. A transforming vision for those they sought to educate;
2. High expectations as they sought to forge a critical spirit in the boys and girls under their charge;
3. Effective leadership by men and women who set themselves out as examples for their pupils and students to follow;
4. High levels of cooperation as they worked with the local communities to gain their confidence;
5. Commitment; and
6. Sound religious values.

The impending catastrophe of youth unemployment will be particularly severe in developing countries because, as the Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz (2001, p.9), notes, "changes in the global economic architecture, including capital market liberalization, have enhanced risks, beyond the coping ability of many developing countries (our emphasis)." We can, however, minimise, if not avoid, the pain of dislocation by teaching our children the six R’s. To do so effectively, we need teachers of high calibre. We need teachers with transforming visions; high expectations for those under their charge; effective leadership by example; the ability to work with children, youths, parents and other teachers; commitment to carry through the task; and strong religious values to equip our children and youths with the sixth R.

This is a call to the Christian community to steer increasing numbers of our young people into the teaching profession so that they, and the Church as a whole, can rekindle the pioneering spirit of the mission schools and play a major role in transforming the lives of young Malaysians in the twenty-first century. There are no stars here, and we cannot promise that the world will ever make stars of our teachers. The reward in participating in the effective and wholistic education of all our children is seeing each of them shine as stars, as mature and responsible citizens contributing to the overall growth and development of a caring, and even prosperous Malaysia. Who else better to teach all our children, regardless of class, colour and creed, the six R’s so that they know how to care and thrive in the twenty-first century than those with strong religious values whose God is love!

Dr Lee was a Professor of Economics at Universiti Malaya. He is temporarily residing in Washington, D.C. and working as a consultant to the World Bank.

References:

1. Far Eastern Economic Review, April 4, 1980:p. 25
2. Furlong, Andy. "Global Youth Employment and the Impending Catastrophe," paper presented at the Expert Meeting on Global Priorities for Youths, Helsinki, 6-10 October, 2002: p. 2
3. Glewwe, Paul. "Schools and Skills in Developing Countries: Education Policies and Socioeconomic Outcomes," Journal of Economic Literature, XL(2), June 2002.
4. Hunt, Robert. "Past Christian Contributions to Malaysian Education: A Response," in Chan Kok Eng (ed.), Educational Challenges in The Malaysian Society: A Christian Response," Petaling Jaya: National Evangelical Christian Fellowship of Malaysia, 1993:p. 41
5. International Labour Organisation, Learning and Training for Work in the Knowledge Society, Report IV(1), Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2002.
6. Lee, Kiong Hock, "A Response to "Education and Poverty: Priorities, Problems with Program Design, and Practical Suggestions" by Paul Glewwe," paper presented at the Association of Christian Economists 20^th Anniversary Conference, Washington, DC, 5-6 January; and forthcoming, "Reforming Education for the Global Information Economy," Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies, XXXVII(1/2) 2003.
7. Loh, Soon Choy. "Past Christian Contributions to Malaysian Education," in Chan Kok Eng (ed.), Educational Challenges in The Malaysian Society: A Christian Response," Petaling Jaya: National Evangelical Christian Fellowship of Malaysia, 1993:p. 7).
8. President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, Panel on Educational Technology, Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K-12 Education in the United States, Washington, DC: Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President, 1997.
9. Stiglitz, Joseph. "Employment, Social Justice and Societal Well-being," Key Note Speech to the ILO Global Employment Forum, Geneva, 1-3 November, 2001:p. 9
10. "The Importance of Teaching," The Royal Bank Newsletter, 70(5), September/October, 1989
11. The Star, December 29, 2002, http://thestar.com.my/services/printerfriendly.asp?file=/2002/12/29/education/decend.asp [accessed January 3, 2003])