A round of applause please for Canada's teachers

The high school teachers stood in a row, left arms stretched forward, right arms back, hands waggling. The choir had hit the big finale and the audience of mostly parents roared its approval.

Vaudeville-style performing teachers were only one thing that made this year's high school holiday concert a huge step forward for us parents. Let's just say that at last year's primary school version there was hardly a dry eye in the house. Music played to make you weep.

For parents, as well as being a cheap night out, these school concerts are a wonderful opportunity to hear something other than, in our case, the darn viola part. (I feel for the parents of the kid who played the triangle.)

But what we are also experiencing in these situations is something of an economic miracle: schoolteachers taking unruly youth and turning them into a reasonably sophisticated orchestra playing in concert. It is both example and metaphor.

In this holiday season, when we get to enjoy our little darlings full-time, unmediated, it seems a perfect occasion to consider the economic value of teachers in creating a rich and healthy Canadian society.

As a society, we have several ways to celebrate this kind of contribution. Movie and hockey players can get their due in glory. Bankers and business executives are compensated with big salaries, though, these days especially, little respect.

Of course, all those who participate in the economy, from garbage collectors to TV producers, do their part to keep the machine humming.

But teachers are a special case. They add value to the economy at many levels.

Indeed,those recent OECD figureson education where Ontario, Alberta and B.C. scored so high, are a powerful testament to Canada's teachers.

But they also reveal another interesting feature: In those countries with the best performance rates, the teachers came from the top half of the class. In other words, teaching in Canada is not a job for people who can't find something else.

The respect they deserve

Adding value, however, doesn't mean that teachers get the respect they deserve, points out D.W. Livingston, a professor at the world-renowned Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

"The job of a teacher is one of the most complicated jobs in society," says Livingston, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Life-long Learning and Work. But, he says, "it's not widely recognized."

As well as knowing their subjects, teachers have to be psychologists, counsellors, communicators, leaders, administrators, as well as performer, judge, part-politician and lion tamer. In fact many teachers take these skills on to other jobs.

The prime minister of New Zealand was previously a teacher, as was former Ontario premier Mike Harris and Alexander Graham Bell, to name just a few.

Livingstone says that because most of us are so familiar with what we think teachers do, we feel we can do the jobs ourselves.

"That's one of the delusions we suffer," he says.

Human capital

But how do you measure the value of the teaching profession?

Modern human capital theory rejects the old economic idea that workers are just interchangeable units of labour.

Instead, economists such as Nobel laureate Gary Becker, considered the father of human capital theory, say that the success and strength of an economy depends on the level of education of all the individual members of society.

Like many economic theories, this one can be demonstrated by a simple example: A society of illiterates cannot benefit from the economic advantages of reading, whether books or BlackBerry messages. So teaching an entire population to read increases its value and productivity exponentially.

One clear connection between a good education and individual economic success was reported recently by CBC Radio's Mike Hornbrook: For Canadians who didn't finish high school, unemployment is currently in the 20 per cent range. For those who have a postgraduate degree it's about four per cent near what economists call the natural rate of unemployment.

In other words, for educated people, even in these times, unemployment really doesn't exist.

Put your hands together

Still, the human capital theory probably falls down for those at the very highest levels of education, says Livingstone.

So many young Canadians getting advanced degrees these days will never get jobs suitable to their education, he says. They're employed, but they are underemployed.

The quality of instruction, however, really makes a difference at the high school and primary levels where international studies show a direct relationship between the quality of a nation's schoolteachers and its future economic health.

For people like Livingstone, that means teachers deserve the same levels of compensation and respect as other professionals.

According to Statistics Canada, we have more thanhalf a million teachersin this country, the vast majority paid by the public purse. So giving them all a little Christmas present of a pay raise up to the level of doctors and lawyers probably isn't going to fly.

But teaching does have its own economic advantages. Teachers may not earn as much as some professionals during their working years, but, according to David Chilton ofWealthy Barberfame, their big payoff comes in retirement.

"When you get two teachers working together and they've got two defined benefit pension plans, in almost all instances they come out with a much higher retirement income than two affluent people," says Chilton, who is coming out with a sequel himself shortly.

That doesn't mean teachers are getting a freebie. Chilton says the amount teachers put into their retirement plans, in the form of direct contributions and employer contributions negotiated in lieu of a higher salary,is considerable.

Plus, as the politicians have been telling us lately, most Canadians don't have a pension plan, and even rich people without compulsory pension plans just don't save enough.

But besides continuing to honour these pension plans, is there any other way to attract and keep the best teachers? I think there is.

In traditional Chinese culture, where education is highly respected, the term teacher is a title of honour.

In places such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, these traditions persist and it shows in the high rankings these countries achieve when educational systems are compared by agencies like the OECD.

None of the people I know who went into teaching did it out of greed. Nor did they expect to get rich.

More than doctors even, most teachers are driven by a moral purpose. Like farmers, they are nurturing. Like artists, they create. Like business people, they add value. And they are building our most important asset.

Canadian teachers deserve our respect. They are interesting and useful people. As the OECD report showed, they can hold their heads high. Even when they are not singing, they deserve a round of applause.