Common problems - individual solutions?

Read an editorial today in Swedish morning paper DN, which so totally missed the point that my jaw dropped. The basic premise is probably correct - the low status of teachers is a problem. One of the reasons presented for this low status is that teachers are expected to perform all sorts of other, non-teaching, duties. Such as keeping track of students belongnings, mediating and coordinating bickering parents and put together special study programs. It didn't occur to whoever wrote the editorial that not only are these things lowering the status of the teaching profession, they also have a negative effect on the quality of teaching itself?

So what is the proposed solution? It is said that we need a higher quality education for prospective teachers. This is thought to make more people want to become teachers.

Well, sure, better educated teachers is never a bad thing, but this is simply dumping a lot of the responsibility on individual teachers. And it also implies that it is the teachers fault, even if indirectly, that our students are underperforming.

This goes well in hand with the next idea. Individualised salaries. A "good" teacher should get better pay. Which even further moves the solution - and the problem - to the individual.

It is claimed that a big problem is the school reform in 2001. But it is a well-known fact that since the last crisis back in the 90's, and all through the economic boom that followed - funding for education has dropped significantly. One of the major problems is that we've totally abandonned the attempt to find common solutions to common problems, and instead have started to try and find individual solutions to common problems.

This is ridiculous. The problems remain common, and we now stand without any way of solving them. When it becomes obvious that the problems cannot be solved this way, blame is put on the individual teachers or we funnel even more funds towards helping them in this impossible task.

Yes, I can understand the fear of common problems and common solutions, in the light of "hardcore" socialism and communism. We urgently need to find a new vocabulary and new concepts in dealing with these problems. Because what we're doing today clearly isn't working. And this is not just a problem in education, it is a problem all throughout society.

I think that the emerging complexity science, in particular the field of Sociology and Complexity Science, holds a lot of important insights. Not any magical solutions - but the tools desperately needed, and without which we cannot even begin to deal sensibly with the problems we face.