The Editor, Sir:

Though an apparently logical notion, The Gleaner in a recent commentary suggested there are effective models of performance-based pay systems in other countries, but they do not demonstrate the effectiveness of those systems and perhaps such worthiness is not as easily proven as it is stated. Indeed many such logical ideas are often lovely in print and lousy in life.

My understanding is that one reason teacher's unions generally resist such devices as performance-based pay systems is that they are, or rapidly becoming, tools for school administrations whose educational bias or political slant tends to skew the objective determination of performance - not because they object to the idea of associating pay and performance itself.

Blatant unfairness

Such blatant unfairness, even if only perceived, can destroy teacher morale, recruitment and longevity. To the point, in a country which cannot free itself from the cancer of corruption, a country in which morality appears tied to the dollar and not the church, in a country whose publicly-mandated school attendance is not backed up by uniformity and adequacy of facility, faculty and family structure, it's hard to imagine an objective pay system that will promote and not detract from excellence.

In other words, it makes for no better race to give prizes to all winners, when one course runs the plain and the other, the mountain peak, when some runners run barefoot and the others in sports shoes, and finally, when one is held in thicket, the other in green pastures.

I am, etc.,

Ed McCOY

mmhobo48@juno.com

Bokeelia, FL

Via Go-Jamaica