47 - School Is Dead, Long Live Education

Summary

Under the rubric of Nation-building, countries throughout modern times have been struggling to construct institutions that can safeguard national independence, bring economic growth, and create a harmonious society.

Thus, small and new countries like Malaysia have been frantically trying to put their house into some semblance of good order, and play catch-up on as many fronts as possible. It is a valiant – and yes, defiant – project. But the trap they tend to fall into is to adopt a defensive attitude in protection of the often innovative measures taken by their founding fathers. In the process, they also perpetuate the national nationalistic mindset that was appropriate in earlier times.

This navel-gazing – which is what it becomes in the end – saddles later generations with leaders and civil servants who through lethargy if nothing else, are keepers of the past and not nation-builders for the future. It leaves them oblivious to the fact that the race is not so much against time as against further global technological and other advancements moving beyond its people ability to comprehend and utilize. Once that happens, provincialism takes hold and scientific thought is ignored.

So, this brings me to the importance of education—and to the challenges that developing and even developed nations face. What has democratically been an incredibly liberating factor in modern life is the universal access to education. Except among Talibans in Afghanistan, this is now an unquestioned claim.

Nothing undermines authoritarianism the way a good education does, and nothing spurs social mobility in post-colonial and post-feudal societies the way mass education does. Without the enormous investments put into schooling, the huge income gap that now troubles successfully developing countries like China, Singapore and Malaysia would be much worse. Poor kids can beat a path to a professional career and a decent living through education.

However, schooling and education are not static things. As we know, the school system that most countries still use today was actually constructed to serve 19th century industrialisation. [Here, I would suggest readers listen to Ken Robinson's lectures available at http://www.ted.com.]

The speed at which new knowledge is being generated is exponential, and simply beyond imagination, be this in biology or computer science, mathematics or geography.