Learn From Singapore: Hairdressers And Engineers Can Teach

The Danish Education Minister Bertel Haarder will have hairdressers and lawyers
to teach in primary school.
    “We need to attract hairdressers or lawyers, who may have an old dream of
becoming teachers. We must recognise that they have some different skills that
schools can use, “he says.
    According to Haarder, there is no alternative to the new teacher types at a
time when many teachers will soon retire, unemployment is at record low, and
where too few will be teachers. In Singapore they have offered the
graduates a one year long education and promised a job as a teacher since 2000.

    With great success, says head of an international education think tank, Lee
Sing Kong:
    ‘Many former bankers and engineers have taken up the offer and schools very
much appreciate the practical knowledge that they can bring to education”, he
says.
    “Reintegration teaches them to get in touch with the students and to learn
from it,” says Lee Sing Kong.
    Denmark have much to learn
from Singapore‘s
success in finding new teachers in a non-traditional area, believes Bertel Haarder.
He has no plans though to create a new, national education, but calls on the seminaries
to get started.
    ‘It is up to each Seminary, how to do it, but I think we as from next year will
see new educational offerings. ”