GORDON ON EDUCATION: IT'S NOT CLASS SIZE AND CURRICULA - IT'S GOOD TEACHERS

Senator Richard J. Gordon underscored the need for a substantial increase in the salary of the country's public school teachers to attract and retain the best educators?

During the Senate deliberation on the budget of the Department of Education, Gordon cited studies which show that neither class size nor school curricula produce bright and good students but good teachers do.

"Our country has the right population age to greatly contribute to the development of our country. But we're going to miss the bus if we're not going to improve the quality of education of our young population. To be able to educate our young population to enable them to compete with the best in the world, we have to provide them with good, well-trained and properly motivated teachers, especially in the public school sector," the senator noted.

"Never mind the class size and the school curricula, it is good teachers that we need. Our children would be smarter and more competitive if they have good teachers. How can we entice the best instructors to teach in our public schools when the salary of our public school teachers lag behind teachers in our neighboring countries in Asia? We have to give them better salaries," he added.

Gordon said we should strive to become Asia's intellectual superpower.

"We have to leave our mark in the sense that we made the country better. We have to make our people become better educated so that we can be the intellectual superpower of Asia," he said.