Free Education
Just read a post by Kusal Perera and wanted to comment but it needs me to sign up, and I’m feeling a tad lazy so i’ll just post it.
Couple of thoughts, the benefit of education is not nil if one doesn’t get into university. The fellow who writes the bills in the kadey across the road probably didn’t go to uni, but had he not gone to school he wouldn’t have learnt how to read/write.
The problem with education in SL is not the fact that it is free, it’s the fact that the syllabii and teaching methods have been quite poor. I mean, memorising the day that Dathusena last scratched his nuts isn’t going to help us much is it? So the answer isn’t abandoning free education but in looking at improving syllabii and teaching methods. And I think thats under way, don’t know how long it’ll take for the benefits to materialize though. It’s easy to criticize free education whilst forgetting that it gives a hell of a lot of ppl some shot at a decent life, despite it’s many ills I think free education should live on.
So, onto more important topics, I am ill. And i’m not happy about it. Runny noses, sore throats and I don’t enjoy one another’s company.
problem is who decides what should be the useful syllabuses and teaching methods? some bureaucrat? that will be the result if the education is free. or should one let the market to decide by competition?
Comment by sittingnut — August 23, 2005 @ 6:58 pm
Just to make a contradiction, I believe what you meant by the refernce to Datusena was about the history teaching, but do u think that we should leave it out? Americans have a 200 year history and thinking big about it. Should we forfeit 2000 years becuase we dont find it usable?
I think the problem is in almos everything, for once I KNOW FOR A FACT that the teachers who teach are not qualified enough (err… I have ‘inside’ sources
) The methods and attitudes are what I think that needs to be changed.
(And also the Sri Lankan education is deteriorating by the day with respect to higher education. The local education is simply NOT ENOUGH for higher education now. And this is with regards to pure sciences. I dont know about the other fields though. And Mahangu, I seriouisly think that we need to deepen the studies, not make the wider.
Differences of opinions I suppose
Comment by Kulendra — August 24, 2005 @ 3:52 pm
Sittingnut - You and I both know that the market is usually better at allocating resources than the government. But in the case of education in a developing nation equity becomes a serious issue, so government allocation has to come in as a second best alternative.
Kulendra - I don’t have a problem with teaching history, I have a problem with how history is taught in our schools. We just had to memorise names, dates and what not. History can be taught in such a way that it develops one skills of analysis, research and creativity. Rote learning has no place in today’s world, it’s about time we accepted that.
Comment by ddm — August 25, 2005 @ 8:30 am
question is whether a government (even a democratic one) can really be ‘equitable’?
Comment by sittingnut — August 25, 2005 @ 8:17 pm
The inability of Governments to be purely equitable is a case of Government failure, and that’s not a good enough reason to abandon government intervention. Market failure also exists, that doesn’t mean we abandon the use of markets does it? Free education has resulted in us having a society more equitable than one without free education.
Comment by ddm — August 29, 2005 @ 7:49 am