Daily Times

Education is a right of every individual in almost every nation of the world. This right is secure in the civilized and progressive world but has so far diminished in the not much developed societies.

Consequently, the individuals in such societies do exhibit an abhorrence to education and seldom find themselves at the comfortable level with the ones who are educated.

The humanizing factor, therefore, is missing in such societies and more intolerance, hate, prejudice, and anger can be frequently witnessed. Many of the civilized worlds initiated this humanizing effort long ago. The novels like ‘Great Expectations’ by Dicken portrays the efforts of the people to get individual schooling possible even by bearing costs themselves for the education of the young and the poor. In Dickens novel, Mr. Pip is helped getting education and becoming a gentleman and same is the case with miss Havisham who spends for Stella.

The same is the case with the novel ‘The Mill on the Floss’ by George Eliot where we see that the father spends each and every penny of his home to get his son Tom educated at a very high cost. The same is the case with the religious societies who emphasized on getting education for men and women to make them humanized.

Great Expectations by Dicken portrays the efforts of the people to get individual schooling possible.

But the same factor got dominated by capitalistic philosophies. One of these is neoliberalism which emphasized profit for the greater good. “An Austrian economist and political philosopher, Hayek is often considered one of the intellectual forefathers of neoliberalism. His work, particularly his book “The Road to Serfdom” (1944), argued against central planning and highlighted the dangers of government intervention in the economy. He advocated for the protection of individual freedoms through a free-market system”. This philosophy propagated ever new dimensions of education that it can also be marketed to see and earn money and can be utilized to enrich the already rich and affluent.

This made education an industry to earn money instead of remaining an educational and humanizing institution. The states stopped or at least diminished the flow of money to guarantee education for all. And so, every institution wanted to earn as much money as possible by compromising on the quality of education and enhancing the number of learners without increasing the infra structure and faculty. Resultantly, the educational institutions became the machines of minting money and provided a product to the society who is neither equipped with skills nor with theoretical knowledge. And so is neither civilized nor useful. Such a product claims to have spent a huge amount of money and so demands the best possible job from society.

“Many countries enshrine the right to education in their constitutions or legal systems, mandating the state to provide free and compulsory education to children. This legal framework establishes education as a fundamental right and obligates the state to guarantee access to it”. Quite recently education has adopted the manifold role and has taken up new dimensions.

Other than general education, now there are many technical and scientific types of education ranging from human food to human security. General education used to be the privilege of the high and mighty while the proletariat classes used to get technical education. The matter is still the same, general education is a luxury in point and only a few can afford it but mostly the people are more interested in the technical side of education.

The state, however, has been investing in general education and has now divulged from its promise of funding education even for technical and scientific one. The gap created because of this policy has ruined the usefulness of general education and has supported and encouraged the private ownership to invest and earn money from the need of the hour that is technical education. And as the private education institutions are entrepreneurs would want to, the main purpose is to generate as much profit as possible. But there is no going back now.

The 21st century calls for doing away with the digital divide and demands for more than ever to equip the youth necessary tools to become a bread winner for his family. This is only possible when the strictures of neo-liberalism are a little relaxed by the state and puts its best foot forward to protect the rights of digital education of our masses.

The argument is not that private ventures may be done away with, but a healthy and positive competition is necessary. One of the ways is to provide short term courses instead of costly whole time BS program which takes a minimum of four years. It may range from a three-month certificate to 6-month diploma courses. However, the very first step begins with the provision of suitable and capable faculty along with well-equipped and state of art laboratories and access to digital library.

This very aspect of the education system now calls for concerted efforts by the government to extend funding and quality education to its people. After all these are the very people who would run the world after we have run out.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee