How to solve the lack of qualified teachers?

This article appeared in de Pers, 11-9-2007. This is a typical example of a manager that has some crackpot theories about society that he applies indifferently to all sorts of problems. I highlight two lines of reasoning.

1) Education is important because it is necessary for economic growth.
This economic criterium replaces/neglects the original idea that eduaction is important because:
a. The human being is in essence a living being that can by learing use his reason and therein find his highest actualization. In the classical view 'all men have the desire to understand' (Aristotle, Metaphysics).
b. Education as a precondition for democracy. Democracy presupposes that each indiviudal can put his reason to good use. The American founding fathers stressed the importance of eduaction for a good functioning democracy.

2) 'Well understood egoism' (eigenbelang) and immigration
The author argues that because of the lack of teachters and nurses we will import working power from other countries to do this skilled labour following he principle of well understood egoism. People are treated here as things, a resource, like oil or copper: they are imported only because of their properties, their skills, not because they are human beings (see Marx idea of alienation). This 'economization' of immigration also denies the dimension of hospitality to strangers, so important in the classical and christian tradition. It also disposes of the idea of a home. People are at 'home' where economic demands brings them.

Defining the purpose of this blog

This blog will study the phenomenon of 'economization' (economisering). Economization is:
1) the tendency to propose economical solutions to ethical, societal problems
2) the tendency to propose 'the economy' as the ultimate criterium or better: cause finalis (better eduaction because the economy needs it, efficiency in health care because the economy needs it).
3) The tendency to explain problems, events, development in economic terms (the war in irak is in the end about money and oil and not about democracy).
4) the tendency to speak of 'the economy' as if it is a living person, entity, substance, natural phenomenon. 'The economy grows'. The metaphor for the economy seems to become its identity. The economy has needs, needs offers, gives bonuses, can be healthy or sloppy or unpredictable (see the comparison with the weather). The economys is depersonified in the same fashion as History can be depersonified, but as Marx said people make their history. The same applies to the economy.

Note 1: communism and capitalism are both ideologies that both belong to the phenomenon of economization. I propose that Marx saw the inevitable development of capitalism going towards a point beyond the economization of all things.
Note 2: the delicate subtletities of economic science have been transformed in vulgar people-speak. The manager elite (politcal and in companies) uses a childlike simplifaication. It is this simplifiocation without qualification that is the main object of study here.
Note 3: Quite some articles are in Dutch.