This country's education gap
by Andre Dumoulin
My experience of the education in Panama is not exactly that of
the average Panamanian teacher. European, married to a Panamanian
lady at the end of Noriega's dictatorship, I started to live in
Panama five years ago, in 1996.
Coming from a European country with a teaching degree in my pocket
and some years of experience as a teacher for migrants, I had
no problem finding educational businesses and institutions that
wanted my services.
For me, teaching here has been a fantastic experience, but full
of paradoxes. Financial interests and educational priorities are
often in opposition. The most striking example would be to describe
my average schedule last autumn: I was teaching English one hour
per day in a bank, with two students; four hours in a middle-class
private high school, to four classes of about 30 students each;
and finally two hours at a university, to a group of about 20
students.
It will surprise no one that my daily class of one hour at the
bank, for two students was better paid than my four hours at the
high school: In fact this hour was paid SEVEN TIMES better than
one hour of class at the high school, for thirty students. The
university was more balanced.
This example shows the paradoxes of the educational system. Most
educators are highly motivated and willing to dedicate great efforts
for their students. But if the most strategic jobs — primary and
secondary education, which are also by far the most time-consuming
— are the most poorly paid, what will happen? The qualified educators
will dedicate their main efforts towards the jobs that pay, not
towards the jobs that are the most important for the nation's
future.
I may be preaching in the desert, but a top priority for the improvement
of education in Panama would be less inequality in educators'
incomes. In Europe, an experienced kindergarten teacher earns
a little less than a university professor, but the difference
in salary is not very big.
In Belgium, where I come from, a National Assembly legislator's
monthly salary is about four times higher than the minimum salary.
In Panama, the difference is considerably higher. Here legislators
receive about 80 times the minimum wage. These same sorts of disparities
are reflected in the field of education, and their acceptance
by society allows Panama's economic inequalities, the most severe
in Latin America, to perpetuate themselves with new generations.
