It’s ‘Community-Education’ and not ‘Free-Education’!
Harin Corea, contemporary at Peradeniya University, has opined that
the ‘free’ in ‘free education’ is a misnomer and moreover dangerously
misleading in terms of the mindset it creates, nurtures and entrenches.
He elaborates thus:
‘“Free” implies at-no-cost. However, the cost of this education is
borne by the community and should probably be called
“community-sponsored” education, and in our case, more specifically
“tax-payer- sponsored” education. Just changing the terminology, might
serve to remind the so-called “champions” of “tax-payer-sponsored”
education, that it is neither “free” nor their God (or Marx) - given
“heritage” in any form.’
Harin continues: ‘It is the very category they identify as the
“enemies” of tax-payer-sponsored” education that is actually paying for
it - i.e. the so called “capitalist mudalalis”. And what if tax-payers
whose children cannot access “tax-payer-sponsored” education, would like
to have some other educational institutions where they could
individually educate their own children at their cost?’
This is a complex issue, clearly. In general I am opposed to making
education a luxury. I am also opposed to denying higher education 80
percent of the students who have qualified for the same, just because
the state is lacking in resources. If the country requires 100 doctors
and the state can fund the education of just 20 medical students, for
example, and if 80 more have qualified, they should not be forced to
wander into some other career if they can afford to pay for their
education.
I am not in agreement with Harin on the issue of ‘taxpayers’ to the
extent that there is no one who doesn’t pay taxes. One doesn’t have to
fill relevant forms or have a certain amount of one’s pay cheque held to
be counted as someone who pays taxes. We pay taxes when we buy seeni
(sugar) and the-kola (tea leave); corporate entities routinely pass the
tax-buck to the consumer, or rather extract it from the consumer plus a
little bit more. Profits don’t fall from the sky. They are in fact
nothing more, nothing less than the congealed form of surplus value
generated by unequal terms of exchange embedded in given production
relations.
What is important to me in Harin’s conceptualization is the un-free
character of education. He is absolutely correct in that the term ‘free’
has misled generations of students and helped work out all notions of
‘responsibility’ in the mindsets of the beneficiaries. A lot of things
come together to make higher education possible and students are for the
most part pretty much unaware of a lot of the relevant factors.
Way back in 1985, there was a proposal to dismantle the Peradeniya
University and toss its parts all over Kandy, which was to be called
‘Vidyarajapura’ (if I remember right). The Arts Faculty was to be
shifted to Dumbara (because, it was argued, all you need is a black
board and some chalk - no white boards back then), the Medical Faculty
was to go to the Peradeniya Hospital. Agriculture was to be shifted to
Mahailuppallama. The prison was to be moved to Peradeniya. It didn’t
work out, happily. I remember, however, Prof Ashley Halpe observing that
opposing Vidyarajapura makes no sense at all if the university community
does not recognize the importance of everyone, the non-academic staff,
the academic staff, students, senate etc., in making the university what
it is. He might have added (I can’t remember if he did) that the
university is also made by all those who in one way or another
contribute towards the relevant budgetary allocation.
The university is not made of students, their grievances and
aspirations. It is made of all these things plus curricula (badly in
need of rehabilitation), laboratories, libraries, hostel and
recreational facilities, processes of teaching/learning and research
(again, badly in need of rehabilitation), limited resources and woefully
inadequate human resources. It is made also of anger, malice, petty
in-fighting, caste-consciousness, racism, egos, academic dishonesty,
lack of integrity and, as Harin points out, a scandalous reluctance on
the part of student activists to recognize that the university does not
belong to them but that they belong to the university and this too only
for a brief period of time.
The university belongs to the general public. It belongs to the man
who ‘paid’ taxes when he purchased 100g of tea. It belongs to everyone
who laboured, from Day One to this morning. ‘Public’ is a better term,
but ‘community-owned’ is sweeter and might infuse that little bit of
responsibility in those who rant and rave about this thing called ‘free’
education but do not do the one thing that justifies their studentship,
i.e. be serious about learning, acquiring knowledge and comprehension.
When the student sees the Senate Building, or the lecture theatre, or
the library or the swimming pool or any other part of the university,
when he/she hears a lecturer, uses a computer, sits on a park bench with
friend or lover, does he/she see ‘community’? Does he/she see mother,
father, grandparent and neighbour? If they did, then they would hesitate
when they vandalize walls. They would see that they are drawing a sharp
instrument across the face of their parents and themselves.
This is not to say that agitation is out of order. It is not. Young
people should stand up and give voice to concern, protest that which
they believe should not be allowed to continue without objection. There
has to be, however, a sense of proportion, a sense of responsibility.
These facilities are not the best in the world. They are all we have,
though. They are where their children might end up 20-30 years from the
moment they break chair, desecrate wall and scream at a lecturer.
Time is long. At some point we have to look in the mirror at who we
are and what we have done. When we do this, if we see everyone who
contributed to that image, then it is a short distance to ‘seeing’
university (for example) and recognizing in its every element, that
thing called ‘community’. If we all did this, we would duly abandon the
term ‘free education’ and replace it with ‘Community Education’. Harin
and I might argue about the contours of ‘community’ or the identities of
‘contributors’, but we will agree that it is certainly larger than those
who people the university at any given moment in time. Or the Government
of the time. [email protected]
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