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Aren’t there enough math teachers? Then you simply have to pay them more than their colleagues, said Stefan Wolter, a professor at the University of Bern, recently in the “Sonntagszeitung”. “If there are no math and science teachers, when there are more than enough German or geography teachers, you have to ask yourself how to get mathematicians and physicists into the classroom,” says Wolter in the “Beobserver”.
This article is from “Observer” magazine. More exciting articles can be found at www.bewachter.ch.
This article is from “Observer” magazine. More exciting articles can be found at www.bewachter.ch.
It’s a typical Wolter. Always good for a title. Inspired by faith in the market. Not exactly a contender for the Humanities Scholars’ Popularity Award. “Read the name Wolter and immediately closed the virtual newspaper again…”, was a reaction on Twitter. But it’s not that simple.
The secret minister of education
When it comes to schools and education in Switzerland, no one can ignore the 57-year-old education economist. For more than 20 years he has been director of the coordination office for educational research of the federal government and the cantons in Aarau. Every four years he and his twelve-person team write the Swiss Education Report, the most important because it is the official report on how the Swiss education system is doing.
The “Aargauer Zeitung” calls Wolter “the secret Swiss education minister”. No other education expert is as well-networked in administration and politics, and not as often in the media, as the eloquent suit-and-tie wearer, who is always impeccably dressed. “He explains what is going well in the schools – and what is not. He receives heads of state, ministers, even kings and explains to them about vocational training».
“Educational neoliberalism camouflaged by social policies”
But Stefan Wolter also always offends. For example, with his proposal for the follow-up tuition fee. “Unfair and hardly thought through”, research colleagues from the University of Bern wrote in a replica in the “Tages-Anzeiger”. The online portal Infosperber called it “educational neoliberalism camouflaged by social policy”.
Simply put, academics have to pay back their tuition through taxes. If you don’t earn enough later and don’t pay enough tax, you have to pay extra for the study costs.
The professor thinks that students should think better about whether they want to study psychology for eight years first and then later become an artist or a bartender. “A doctor who voluntarily works only part-time lives at the expense of the cashier, who helped finance the doctor’s medical studies with her taxes,” he said in the “Tages-Anzeiger”.
High Priest of Vocational Education
While Wolter’s continued praise for vocational training earns him plaudits from commerce and industry, high school teachers often see it as directed against the Matura. Do away with homework in secondary schools to relieve young people? For the son of a KV graduate and a mechanic “an insult to all pupils” (“Tages-Anzeiger”). The MBO students are already more stressed than their Gymi colleagues.
Those schoolgirls who don’t belong in the gymnasium anyway would suffer the most from the homework. “No one is helping to make the Matura easy – as we can see in the education report, the weaker Matura graduates are just more likely to fail the universities.” Hard facts, hard to say – that’s also typical Wolter.
For the educational economist, education is an investment. It costs a bit at first; time, effort, money. A return must be derived from this later; higher wages, an exciting job, but also innovations and bright minds for business and society. This vision of education has been central to Swiss education policy since the 1990s. For many, the fact that the federal government and the cantons have appointed Wolter, a former banker and chief economist of the federal government, to lead Swiss education research is a manifestation of this. His predecessor had been a sociologist.
A broken social contract?
Wolter lives what he says. All his childhood he wanted to be a historian, and history is still his favorite hobby, he says in an interview. However, during the study coaching he discovered that few history students end up in historical research. “Studying something for years that you can’t apply, that wasn’t for me.”
When it comes to who pays for education, FDP member Wolter speaks of a social contract. If the public pays them, they should get something back from those who benefit. And in the form of tax money. So for Wolter, the part-time doctor or bartender with a degree in psychology does not fulfill the social contract. “I am liberal, everyone can study and live as they please, but it should not be at the expense of others.”
Always from an economic point of view
Is the right-liberal professor a fighter for the little people? No, says left-wing high school teacher and university lecturer Philippe Wampfler. “Stefan Wolter stirs up sentiment against female humanities graduates because he says they don’t do much for the economy, and he wants to keep the number of high school students down because they cost a lot.”
Karl Weber, former professor of continuing education at the University of Bern, has a different opinion. Reducing the educational economist to the mere cost-benefit maximizer does him no justice. “Stefan Wolter’s role as author of the education report is to focus on values such as efficiency. As a researcher, I found him more open and impartial than many others.”
Inequality hardly addressed
How much education report is there in Wolter – and how much Wolter in the education report? “Although Stefan Wolter and his team collect research results from all disciplines, the economic perspective and a one-sided positioning in favor of vocational training predominate,” says Regula Leemann, professor of sociology of education at the University of Education Northwestern Switzerland.
For example, it has been empirically proven that the early classification of children into different levels of achievement creates educational barriers and inequalities. “It’s hardly ever a problem.” Nor that young people should choose a profession at the age of 14.
‘Everywhere the most normal thing in the world’
The State Secretariat of Education refused. The education report is based on the requirements of the federal government and the cantons and examines education in Switzerland in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and equity, i.e. equal opportunity. “Asking whether educational goals are being met, or measuring the educational success of different population groups, is certainly not something purely economic.” The team of authors of the education report also includes female educators, sociologists and political scientists.
“In education, as an economist, I’m just something exotic,” says Stefan Wolter himself. “Anywhere else, for example, my idea of higher wages for math teachers would be the most normal thing in the world.” Regarding the accusation of economist glasses, he refers to his minor in psychology and to the many articles he has published in non-economic journals for sociology, pedagogy or political science. “It would be exciting to find out how often my critics have published in journals outside their field.” Also this tip – a typical Wolter.
suggestions are pouring out
The question remains how much a clandestine education minister can actually achieve as a person in Switzerland. Wolter’s word, everyone says, carries weight in federal Bern as well as in the cantons. And the education report is undoubtedly the most widely read report in Swiss education policy.
Wolter’s front-runner ideas, on the other hand, are having a hard time. Although the employers’ organization also proposes to postpone tuition fees in its latest position paper, the proposal seems politically pointless. In Lucerne, for example, no other party wanted to know about a corresponding FDP request in the cantonal council. His exotic bonus for math teachers has also not been taken up by anyone. Wolter’s advances may annoy some, but they shouldn’t scare anyone.
Source:Blick
I am Liam Livingstone and I work in a news website. My main job is to write articles for the 24 Instant News. My specialty is covering politics and current affairs, which I’m passionate about. I have worked in this field for more than 5 years now and it’s been an amazing journey. With each passing day, my knowledge increases as well as my experience of the world we live in today.
