Accountability
Sometimes theology, sociology and economics make strange bedfellows. We've seen this in the ideas and ideals of 'liberation theology' and of the 'prosperity gospel' – the former more about liberation than theology, the latter more about prosperity than the gospel.
I was struck by the image of ultimate accountability presented to us in the Bible. "As the eyes of servants look to the hands of their masters... so too do we look to the Lord our God," the psalmist says. It is the accountability of the master to the hireling, the slave and the servant that we find in stark words throughout the entire Mosaic code. It extends to lines like, "Do not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn" – an injunction to allow labourers a cut of the proceeds and a reward for their toil.
In the Book of Job, we further learn that a man whom God considers upright has this to say about what comes from God: "Shall we not receive good at hands of God, and shall we not (also) receive evil?" It is clear that the argument, as it develops through the book, lays the responsibility for ultimate events in the hands of ultimate authority. What seems to be good or ill to us, the ultimate authority has chosen to be accountable for, and faith is a matter of accepting that.
What gets to me sometimes is the cavalier fashion in which the instinctively authoritarian react to good and bad news. I've seen in government officials and educational administrators the attitude that good comes from their actions and responses to the world, while bad comes from the people they are supposedly serving or responsible for. It is only too common to see a school laud the top scorers and claim their excellence as a sign of school prowess, while blaming the tail end on parents, society and computer games. It is also common to see government officials ask for huge personal salaries because the economy is booming while blaming investor panic and events beyond their control when the economy tanks.
I think that what's right is that those who claim authority must also claim responsibility, for both good and bad. In my tenure, I took my departments results out of a level below national average and fixed it firmly ahead of the national average. At the same time, I was also pretty much an irritant and rather tactless in dealing with colleagues. It was perhaps divisive, and rightly seen to be in some quarters. I was young then, but to this day, I will take responsibility for both things. But I do not think that I have met many authorities who would publicly admit their flaws and failings. I have shirked that responsibility myself in some areas, to my shame; I am not so sure that those authorities would feel any shame at all.
The city-state in which I work has one of the highest government salary scales in the world. The rationale for that is that the local system, in many ways, has displayed great success even when measured against far larger powers.
But in education, for example, there is a problem: we give the same kind of homework as educational superpowers like Thailand, Rumania, Hungary and Iran, as well as like Hong Kong, Cyprus and the Russian Federation. Officially, only 9% of the homework given was ever used to grade students. These are the findings of the Third International Maths and Science Survey. Yet, we rank far higher than any of the other nations using similar systems of classroom pedagogy. One interesting difference is that we pay our private tutors a lot more than we pay our teachers; the average tutor at high school level possibly earns about US$1.20 per minute while the average teacher at high school earns about US$0.35 per minute of work.
There is nothing wrong with having a large tuition industry; Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong all have that too. But surely there must be some contribution to results from the shadow sector, and we would be terribly dishonest not to admit it.
Similarly, when the economy booms, ministers get huge salaries; when it tanks, the cost of electricity goes up 20% and employer contributions to employees' retirement funds are reduced. I've seen ministers' pay frozen but not reduced in line with the economic performance of the nation as a whole. But haven't they accepted blame for both good and bad by claiming such high salaries in the first place? Is there no two-way moral hazard thing? I don't see it.
All this leads me to one main conclusion: if good things happen, I'm not responsible; the authorities are — and if bad things happen, the authorities aren't responsible; I am. That happens whether it is in school or in the financial sector. I don't believe it's true, but the people in power do, and that's what counts.
I could be wrong; I would really love to be wrong about all this. But I don't see much evidence against my hypothesis. I have so much evidence for my hypothesis that I might as well write a book, except that I'm not so minded.
So how do I feel? Actually I feel very happy. It brings home one main point to me about the conclusion I have come to in the previous paragraph. Whoever the authorities are, they are nothing like the God I believe in. And that is why I rejoice all the time in whatever I have received.
I was struck by the image of ultimate accountability presented to us in the Bible. "As the eyes of servants look to the hands of their masters... so too do we look to the Lord our God," the psalmist says. It is the accountability of the master to the hireling, the slave and the servant that we find in stark words throughout the entire Mosaic code. It extends to lines like, "Do not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn" – an injunction to allow labourers a cut of the proceeds and a reward for their toil.
In the Book of Job, we further learn that a man whom God considers upright has this to say about what comes from God: "Shall we not receive good at hands of God, and shall we not (also) receive evil?" It is clear that the argument, as it develops through the book, lays the responsibility for ultimate events in the hands of ultimate authority. What seems to be good or ill to us, the ultimate authority has chosen to be accountable for, and faith is a matter of accepting that.
What gets to me sometimes is the cavalier fashion in which the instinctively authoritarian react to good and bad news. I've seen in government officials and educational administrators the attitude that good comes from their actions and responses to the world, while bad comes from the people they are supposedly serving or responsible for. It is only too common to see a school laud the top scorers and claim their excellence as a sign of school prowess, while blaming the tail end on parents, society and computer games. It is also common to see government officials ask for huge personal salaries because the economy is booming while blaming investor panic and events beyond their control when the economy tanks.
I think that what's right is that those who claim authority must also claim responsibility, for both good and bad. In my tenure, I took my departments results out of a level below national average and fixed it firmly ahead of the national average. At the same time, I was also pretty much an irritant and rather tactless in dealing with colleagues. It was perhaps divisive, and rightly seen to be in some quarters. I was young then, but to this day, I will take responsibility for both things. But I do not think that I have met many authorities who would publicly admit their flaws and failings. I have shirked that responsibility myself in some areas, to my shame; I am not so sure that those authorities would feel any shame at all.
The city-state in which I work has one of the highest government salary scales in the world. The rationale for that is that the local system, in many ways, has displayed great success even when measured against far larger powers.
But in education, for example, there is a problem: we give the same kind of homework as educational superpowers like Thailand, Rumania, Hungary and Iran, as well as like Hong Kong, Cyprus and the Russian Federation. Officially, only 9% of the homework given was ever used to grade students. These are the findings of the Third International Maths and Science Survey. Yet, we rank far higher than any of the other nations using similar systems of classroom pedagogy. One interesting difference is that we pay our private tutors a lot more than we pay our teachers; the average tutor at high school level possibly earns about US$1.20 per minute while the average teacher at high school earns about US$0.35 per minute of work.
There is nothing wrong with having a large tuition industry; Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong all have that too. But surely there must be some contribution to results from the shadow sector, and we would be terribly dishonest not to admit it.
Similarly, when the economy booms, ministers get huge salaries; when it tanks, the cost of electricity goes up 20% and employer contributions to employees' retirement funds are reduced. I've seen ministers' pay frozen but not reduced in line with the economic performance of the nation as a whole. But haven't they accepted blame for both good and bad by claiming such high salaries in the first place? Is there no two-way moral hazard thing? I don't see it.
All this leads me to one main conclusion: if good things happen, I'm not responsible; the authorities are — and if bad things happen, the authorities aren't responsible; I am. That happens whether it is in school or in the financial sector. I don't believe it's true, but the people in power do, and that's what counts.
I could be wrong; I would really love to be wrong about all this. But I don't see much evidence against my hypothesis. I have so much evidence for my hypothesis that I might as well write a book, except that I'm not so minded.
So how do I feel? Actually I feel very happy. It brings home one main point to me about the conclusion I have come to in the previous paragraph. Whoever the authorities are, they are nothing like the God I believe in. And that is why I rejoice all the time in whatever I have received.
etched with acid at 4:02:00 pm
1 Comments:
I aluded to this in my post, though my point was more about credibility than moral authority.
The problem here is that there must be SOME things in which the Government has no control over, some good, some bad. Yet by claiming control over ALL good things, the implication is that the government has control over ALL things, which they obviously cannot live up to.
By making such dumb promises (even implied) to justify their salaries, they shoot themselves in the foot.
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