A FRIEND and reader reacted positively to my previous column and shared with me insights and data on education in some progressive countries. His stirring inputs motivate me now to push the envelope with this follow-up piece on the role of education in a nation’s progress.
There’s no denying I have a bias for Immanuel Kant’s philosophical thinking, according to which the purpose of education is to enlighten people towards maturity. He then defines maturity as the ability to trust one’s reason and have the courage to be guided by it instead of by the dictates of others.
Immaturity, correspondingly, would be the state of being unenlightened when a person simply follows the dictates of others and blames them for all the brokenness in his/her life.
From these definitions one sees that a mature citizenry spells the difference between genuine and elitist democracy. If for instance those in power, oligarchs and their allies in Church and government, want to maintain their power and privilege in the existing elitist democracy, they would not prioritize enlightening education. They would not prioritize education, period, because what they want are people who dare not reason their way into assailing the existing inequitable social order.
That is exactly what happens. The low priority Filipino elites give to investment in education naturally results in poor educational standards. Graduates of Philippine schools are said to be among the least equipped in terms of critical (enlightened?) thinking and technical skills. In a recent international evaluation, didn’t we hug bottom scores in reading comprehension and in science?
A survey by Switzerland’s Institute of Management and Development shows that the Philippine government spends an average of $376 per pupil per year, the third lowest of countries evaluated. Singapore invests $12,890 and Singaporean students are rated the second most intelligent in the world.
Scandinavian countries used to be dirt poor until Nordic elites did something Filipino elites have never done yet. They established “folk schools” that in the long term effected a complete moral, emotional, intellectual, and civic transformation of their peoples.
“The Nordic Secret,” by Lene Rachel Andersen and Thomas Bjorkman, attributes the success of “folk schools” to the use of education as “the way that the individual matures and takes upon him/her ever bigger personal responsibility towards fellow citizens, society, humanity, and the global heritage of our species: moral and existential freedoms.”
We thrash around in the doldrums because we are schooled but not educated. Home school does no better either when children are told to just shut up and do as they are told.