Ghost Teachers

This morning, I watched a BBC program focusing on education in Sierra Leone, in which a correspondent toured the West African nation. The Virgil to the BBC reporter's Dante was blind musician Sorie Kondi, whose photograph is to the right.

The well-developed, approximately twenty minute segment, visited different areas of Sierra Leone, including the "blood diamonds" region. Its approach skillfully blended big-picture concerns with interviews of teachers, parents, teenage children, and local advocates for social change. BBC online provides a clip of the segment, but try and view the segment in its entirety.

One issue that hampers Sierra Leone's educational progress is the phenomenon of "ghost teachers." Essentially, the term refers to instructors remaining on the payroll even after they've passed away, moved, or simply cannot be found during a roll call. No one knows, at least for the record, where the money for the ghost teachers goes.

The segment also interviewed a parent, whose daughter was taught by all too human an instructor. The teacher knocked up the teenage girl (and another girl, as well), and presumably bribed his way out of legal and administrative trouble.

When people complain about the American educational system, they should take a harder look around the world and stop being so hysterical about "success." Concern regarding America's "diminished academic competitiveness" are often put into a framework of fear and implied racism. The current fashionable comparisons are to the academic achievements of student masses in China and India. It wasn't so long ago that similar comparisons were made about Japan. Do we really want to emulate Japan's educational system? Or China's? Really? And if America's school systems are so ineffective, how does one explain the current "success" of America's CEOs and senior management?

It's not as if they were educated in Asia or Scandinavia, or by West African ghost teachers.