Maravi

Privatising public learning institutions

Privatising public learning institutions
By The Post
Wed 26 Jan. 2011, 04:00 CAT

Education is a vital component of any society, but especially of a democracy.

As former United States president Thomas Jefferson wrote: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was and never shall be.” For this reason, a society which values its future affords the highest priority to providing education for all its young people. As it is commonly put: “Young people are the future of the nation.”

Literacy is accepted as a prerequisite for modern social life. Thus, there should be equal opportunity for all in this country to attain complete literacy irrespective of one’s social position. Modern states accept their duty to educate all their people by placing an equitable burden on all taxpayers in proportion to income. Access to education should not be on grounds of economic position. To make education opportunities available for some sections of the population who have the money to pay for it, while others who don’t have money are restricted or impeded from them, is to create feelings of superiority and inferiority. The right to education entails equal opportunities to education without discrimination. There is discrimination in the field of education when any person or group of persons’ access to education is limited to education of an inferior standard.

It is difficult to understand why the government should today be thinking of giving itself powers to privatise public learning institutions. We have a critical shortage of learning institutions at all levels of our educational system – from kindergarten to university. Ours is a poor country with poor people. Over 60 per cent of our people live on less than one dollar per day. This in itself means that the great majority of our people are not able to pay for any social service, including education. They depend on social services that society is able to provide for them. Privatising public learning institutions robs the poor of their very limited opportunities for an education. We can’t do this even when rich societies are still providing free education in public institutions to their people.

We need more learning institutions. And we are not opposed to the private sector taking part in providing education. But the role of the private sector should be to increase opportunities by building new institutions of learning where there were none before. And this should be encouraged but it should not be at the expense of increasing or expanding public learning institutions. We still need them. We applaud the efforts the Church has made in this country in building schools, colleges and now universities for our people. And they should be encouraged to continue doing so. We also recognise and appreciate the efforts private entrepreneurs are making to expand the horizons of education in our country. They also deserve support. But they are not a substitute to public learning institutions; they are simply complementary. Whatever the problems the government has in running some of its educational institutions, the solution is not to privatise them but to work hard and ensure that they are well-funded and conduct their business in the most efficient, effective and orderly manner. The standards of education in all public educational institutions of the same level must be equivalent, and the conditions relating to the quality of education provided must also be equivalent. The government should set a minimum educational standard for private schools. We say this because the right to education also includes the right to an education that is also integral – an education that is directed towards the full development of the human being in all aspects: intellectual, spiritual, moral and so on and so forth.

The obligation and, consequently, the right to education of children is inviolable. Yes, there are many problems and challenges in running educational institutions to acceptable standards. But again the solution is not to run away from responsibility by privatising them. This is not something the government can run away from because education on an increased basis is necessary if human beings are to increase their knowledge, to become enlightened citizens, and, in the modern world especially, to be equipped with those skills by means of which they acquire a reasonable degree of material wealth and at the same time contribute to the good of the community. And moreover, lack of proper education is one of the principal causes of poverty and lack of development. The final solutions to the problems and challenges we are facing in our education sector will demand generous increases in the resources made available to education.

We know that the privatisation of corporate entities that were owned by the state has almost come to a close. Almost everything that could be sold has been sold. And there were great benefits to those who were involved in the selling of these entities, to those in government and in consultancy firms. They have made huge sums of money for themselves. They don’t want this business of selling institutions that the state owns to come to an end. They will have to find something to sell. After selling all the companies that the state owned, today they want to sell schools. And tomorrow it will be hospitals. And before long, all the roads will be sold. They need to make some commission – they have a cut in everything. These are men and women who believe in nchekelako. They don’t sell anything for nothing. They know how to make money from privatisation. After they have sold all these, they will even start selling rivers and lakes, if they haven’t already sold them in form of leases and other concessions. There appears to be no end in what they can sell because they are selling even their own souls.

But society has to put an end to this reckless behaviour because not everything is for sale. Not even the most capitalistic countries have privatised everything. There are still many public institutions in most of these countries today. They have not privatised their learning institutions. What they have encouraged is efficient running of public institutions through all sorts of innovations. They have also encouraged the establishment of profitable private learning institutions. We are not opposed to that. What we are opposed to is the unnecessary corrupt privatisation of public learning institutions. We still need the government to build more primary schools, secondary schools, colleges of all sorts and universities. We need our poor people to have the opportunity to send their children to good primary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities without being limited by their poverty. We don’t want to make education, especially quality education, a preserve of the rich from which the poor are totally excluded. This is not the time for this type of thinking. We are still very far away from even thinking about privatising education at any level. Let’s put all our efforts in building more public schools, colleges and universities instead of thinking of schemes of how to crookedly privatise them.

Labels: EDUCATION, NEOLIBERALISM, SCHOOL FEES

posted by MrK @ 3:15 PM