What's Education For

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What's education for?

First posted 23:07:35 (Mla time) January 30, 2005 Conrado de Quiros

Inquirer News Service

GILL Westaway, British Council executive director, had aninteresting thing to say last week. The Philippines, he said, could besuffering from too many colleges and universities. "There could bean oversupply in some areas. In a country like the Philippines,where resources are scarce, it's better to have fewer universitieswith quality rather than allowing hundreds of universities that arediluting the overall quality." Westaway based his remarks on a one-year study made by the British Council with funding from the AsianDevelopment Bank.

Well, if the point of education is merely to enable students to find jobs, then I agree with this wholeheartedly. A college or universityeducation in this country is superfluous, even counterproductive. Itis four or five years' waste of time and effort. A couple of monthsfrom now, thousands of college graduates will line up before theirschool officials to get their diplomas, and we will hear again, ineditorials and various commentaries, about how so few of thosehopeful faces will turn radiant in the next few years. Most of themwill end up glum from unemployment. There are simply no jobsavailable for most of those commerce, accounting andcommunication graduates.

If the point is landing a job abroad, then the four or five years spentin colleges and universities are just as well a waste of time andeffort. You won't be working as a doctor, lawyer, or media person inother countries anyway. They won't take you in those capacitiessimply because you have a degree in medicine, law, orcommunication from a Philippine university. Your employers are notentirely to blame, to go by the Newsweek ranking of colleges anduniversities some years ago, where Ateneo, UP and La Salle landed

among the lower rungs of the ladder, a far cry from 30 years beforewhen they were among the top 20 in Asia. You have a degree inmedicine, law and communication from a Philippine university, youwill work as a caregiver, a bank teller, or a fast-food attendantanyway.

If the point of education is to merely give students employment,here or abroad, we would be better off scrapping colleges anduniversities and putting up nursing and trade schools and schoolsthat teach survival English across the country. Many colleges and

universities are already doing it, opening up nursing departments inresponse to the demand for caregivers in the United States, Canada



and elsewhere. And teaching functional English so the nurses andmaids can communicate with their employers. I am not beingentirely facetious when I say maybe we should also put up popmusic schools. That's our main export to Asia-musicians and bands.

But if the point of education is more than just employing people,then the problem becomes a lot more complex, one that isn't solvedsimply by lessening the number of colleges or universities. Theproblem precisely lies in the fact that our whole educational systemis now predicated on enabling students to find work. That is asnarrow and unenlightened a view of education as you can get. Thepoint of education is not just to enable students to work, it is toenable students to think. The point of education is not just to impartskills, it is to impart vision. The point of education is not just toprepare the youth to face the "outside world." The point of

education is to educate.

I grant giving students the skills to find jobs is important as well,particularly for a country like ours. I found nothing short of heroicthe efforts of my mechanic some years ago to see his son throughdentistry and his daughter through nursing school. At the end of theday, he would pull himself up from underneath the car he had beenfixing, grimy and sweaty, to greet his kids when they came homefrom school in their smart all-white uniforms. People like him haveevery right to expect his children's schools to give them a crack at a

more secure future.

But that isn't all that schools can, or should, do. Certainly, that isn'tall that colleges and universities can, or should, do. The business of colleges and universities is to bequeath to the world a generationthat can think, that can aspire to know the what and the why andnot just the how and the how-how-the-carabao. I remember againthe irate letter-writer who demanded to know what I had againstcaregivers and maids-I had asked what we were doing turningourselves into the toilet-bowl cleaners of the world-when both didcompletely respectable work. My answer then, and now, is that I

have nothing against them, just as I have nothing against janitorsand forklift operators. What I have against is the attitude that wecan only exist in survival mode and that we can't be better. What Ihave against is an educational system that imagines its role in lifeto be to cater to the export labor market by producing standardentrants to it.

I remember again too the non-joke about Pinoy and Chinoy collegegraduates. When Pinoy graduates meet, they ask each other, "What job have you landed?" When Chinoy graduates meet, they ask each

other, "What business have you opened?" We can say the samething about the graduates of our colleges and universities and those



of other Asian countries. When they meet, our graduates ask eachother, "Which country do you want to go to?" When the graduatesof other Asian colleges and universities meet, they ask each other,"Where do we want our country to go?" The first is calledresignation, the second is called ambition. The first is called

desperation, the second is called direction. The first is called gettingby, the second is called getting ahead.

We just want the first, let's not bother reducing our colleges anduniversities. Let's scrap them altogether.

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