A Study Of Shirking In Education

Although the problem of rural education has been advanced to a significant position in thenational development stratagem of our country, in reality it is in a tri-margin state. Therefore, itis a practical question for discussion to explore the real situation, probe the cause of theundeveloped state of rural education and propose the corresponding cures. Methodology lies on question. The core question of this research is the attribution andcountermeasures of the shirking phenomenon in education. There are two master lines: one isthe concrete manifestation of shirking phenomenon in rural education, the other is the solutionof shirking based on an elaborate analysis. The former decides the use of investigationmethodology, and the latter decides the literature method. This paper attempts to apply thePrincipal-Agent Theory of New Institutional Economics to analyze the shirking phenomenon,which is discovered by investigation, and tries to discover the cause of shirking, from which theauthor designs a series of incentive and restraint mechanism to unify the goals of the principalsand the agents in education in order to enlarge the country's interest in education in the highestdegree. There are three layers of principal-agent relations: Peasants, as 'initial principals', relegatethe education rights and resources to the central authority and the Ministry of Education (MOE),and the latter, as the agent, provide educational service to satisfy the principal's interest. Andthe central authority and the MOE relegate the rights to local authorities and the educationaladministration departments, layer upon layer to execute the education policies and providepublic education service to local inhabitants. Rural schools, as the 'final agent', carry out theeducational policies of central and local authorities and offer the education service to peasantsand their children. In these complex educational principal-agent chains, each layer of agent needs to takeresponsibility for his corresponding principal. Due to the complex chains, there are the seriousasymmetrical information, insufficient inspector and inspiration, "the moral hazard" and "theadverse selection" frequently happened. In the first layer of principal-agent, through the analysis on the management system ofeducation investment, educational policy and in the value orientation of curriculum policyformulated by the MOE since our nation founded, this article discovers that the formulation ofthe education policy faces the validity crisis which can't satisfy the public interest. The reasonis that the educational official's attribute to "the economic man" causes them to pursue theirown maximization of interest equally with other people, and when they take the most importantconsideration of their own children's education interests, it is easy to constitute the educationpolicy inclined to the interest of city. But the peasants, as" the initial principal" in the flawsituation of right, does not have the power and the way of the surveillance. In the second layer of principal-agent, the education policies formulated by the centralgovernment which is related to education investment, the personnel system reform as well asthe new curriculum reform and so on, receives all sorts of hinder in the process of execution. Itis created by many reasons, for example, the central and the local committees aren't unified onresponsibility, authority and interests, the present financial system and the taxation reform facethe danger of falling into "trap of institutional supply", the culture focusing on "theofficialdom" causes the huge population provided with the finance and so on. In the third layer of principal-agent, the education policy made by central government doesnot manifest the public interest fully, and receives hinders in the process of execution, Underthis dual pressure, the rural schools are crisis-ridden: The school survives in the heavyembarrassedly burden, the teachers strike, the students drop out, the problems of newcurriculum reform grow thickly, and so on. T...