Unsung heroes

It is no fun being an unsung hero -- ask a housewife or teacher and they will say they can do with fewer accolades and more, much more, tangible signs of appreciation.

Which is why so much hope has been placed in the new law on teachers and lecturers, which aims to erase decades of neglect of our teachers and provide a significant boost for their welfare. The House of Representatives endorsed the law on Tuesday with little fanfare.

This is a long overdue measure. We all require teachers to guide us and show us how to live independent and useful lives, yet few people here want to dedicate their lives to the teaching profession because of the woeful lack of monetary compensation. Instead of the brightest minds heading off to teaching schools, these schools are often the last refuge for students who fail to get into any other institution.

There is a joke here that a teacher is the last choice for a son-in-law.

The late rector of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, Andi Hakim Nasution, was a virtual lone voice when he wrote in one of his many astute articles on education that all secondary school teachers should have at least a postgraduate degree, to allow them to prepare their students to thrive either in college or the real world. He was bemoaning the streams of freshmen entering his institute unprepared for the demands of higher education.

The professor's dream remains as far from a reality today as it was when he wrote his article, because postgraduate students are far more likely to seek jobs where the forms of appreciation are much more immediate and material.

But the new Teachers Law has drawn little praise. Teachers and critics point to other regulations already on the books that were meant to improve the lives of educators but in reality have had little effect, such as the regulation on subsidies for teachers at private schools. And any benefits of the new law would likely take years to reach most teachers, who would first have to meet diploma requirements spelled out in the legislation.

While the new law may be a good start toward realizing the vision expressed by Nasution, we have seen for years teachers struggling to pay their way through graduate school on their meager salaries.

The side-jobs teachers have to take to supplement their incomes are unimaginable to many -- like, perhaps, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who was shocked and offended to hear a poem compare schools to chicken coops. Some teachers reportedly have even taken up construction work in their spare time, when they should be preparing exciting lessons and projects to stimulate the intellect and curiosity of students.

The situation is not likely to improve as long as the central government continues to fail to allot 20 percent of the state budget for education, as required by the Constitution. Maybe we should take a page out of Singapore's book and simply rule that teachers will be the highest paid professionals, whatever the budget.

If they were the highest paid, much would be demanded of them, given our high expectations for the profession. Only then might we see young people saying they not only aspire to be CEOs, actors or physicians, but also the teachers who guide these people toward excellence.

We do not mean to imply the government has done nothing to improve the welfare of educators. The grade promotion for teachers who work as civil servants is faster than for civil servants in other government offices. The Jakarta administration regularly increases teachers' allowances, including those who work in private schools, making them the highest-paid teachers in the country. But what teachers, and the nation, need is a nationally designed system to ensure the best people are educating our children, and are being generously compensated for their critical work.