I am still a believer in education.
But I do not believe in shoving education down the throats of those who do not wish to have it.
Ignorance is a disease. And yet its youthful sufferers wear their symptoms and illness with pride and pomp. Each is so worried that his or her ignorance is overshadowed by another's! The older sufferers begin to find ways to heal themselves. The chronic sufferers are mostly in jail, dead or healed.
The path to healing is inevitably education. Sadly, the path called education is filled with treacherous pitfalls for some while it is wide and welcoming for the others. It is boring and loathesome for some but yet intriguing and challenging for the others.
Even the most hardened ignoramuses would not be able to deny the goals of education. What they have not come to terms with is the fact that getting an education is non-negotiable if they want out of the rut.
I believe the way forward now, given our limited resources, is to extend free medical benefits to the citizens while making users pay for education. We should not and do not aim to turn away the masses. We just want to make it legitimate for those who are NOT in want of an education to opt out by using financial difficulties as a reason.
Think of all the benefits that come immediately. We can reduce the class sizes, our National Institute of Education would not be hard-pressed to churn out teachers a la production line, our teachers may finally get to offer courses and students bid to get into those classes. Teachers, in the long run, get paid a salary commensurate with their actual performance in class (students vote with their legs!) instead of being subjects of subjective appraisals.
As time passes, give medical subsidies in proportion to the education level attained by the patient. This way, we can prevent ignorance from multiplying.
Looks like compulsory education, like communism, is a good idea but badly executed.
3 comments:
"Looks like compulsory education, like communism, is a good idea but badly executed." I’d have to disagree with you on this line of thought. Communism has never been a good idea based on the universal mandatory inclusion of individuals in a system which they are stripped of their agency. I recognize your indifference to that which I call God Given Rights, as you have clearly stated through past communications; however, even those without a regard for God often times will call such individual agency by a slightly less divine term such as natural or naturally occurring rights.
When such rights of social movement or agency are imposed upon, even when the general outcome is for good, the loss of the individual’s control of his own life has undermined any possible good obtained by that society. Time and again the communist mindset has attempted to control societies and each time, without fail, those societies have bankrupted themselves both financially and morally. Even when individuals join such a communist society voluntarily, such as religious orders in the past which used communal property as their form of government; even these have fallen due to the nature of mankind’s desire to enjoy the fruits of his/her labors rather than share that bounty regardless of ownership. There an be no successful “execution” of communism during mortality; as for the eternities, now that is yet another matter.
I think this proposal is problematic.
Firstly, while you give the people who don't want to go to school the option of opting out of education due to financial difficulties, you also find that the potential students with genuine financial difficulties who WANT to study will also opt out. The main reason why I wouldn't stay in Singapore for school any longer than JC was precisely this reason. I can't afford Uni in Singapore, whereas in good old welfare state Finland I can pursue higher education without a fee. Scholarship or no scholarship, I refuse to be indebted to anyone or any organization because they paid for my education. Period.
And that is only ONE of the reasons why I have to beg to disagree with your viewpoint on paying for education. It almost sounds like those privatisation tussles we have in every other sector of the economy. Surely we need not do the same when education is in question as well?
Maybe a more feasible solution is to make it easier for students to leave. Everyone has to go for a minimum period of time, but if for some reason education does not appeal to someone while they are in school, then they may drop out without a hassle.
Sorry for the incoherence of the comment, just came back from one and a half hours of solfage and my brains are about bursting with chord progressions. =(
Stern, we will agree to disagree on that.
Marlina, perhaps I should make clear somewhere in my argument that I had in mind pupils who meet attendance quota will be given almost free education (miscellaneous fees are payable still, like now) up to the first 10 years. University, however, is a privilege and it costs the state a lot. Having to co-pay for it at undergrad level is inevitable. We cannot afford to bankrupt ourselves providing free university education and then allow the top talent to leave cos it'll really drain our system doubly. Furthermore, universities dependent on handouts will find it tough to impose their own faculty recruitment terms and that might impede the progress of the university.
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