Racing for education?

Moreover, think of the money you save! If you can cram your child through school as fast as possible then you do not have so many fees, do you? Education is a race, isn't it, as well as an open bazaar? What is the importance of childhood, or growing up at a steady pace, compared to the passion to save money? Let them go to university when they are too young to handle the experience! Let them go off to coaching centers, some of them with their circle of drug peddlers, who know full well that young people who are not getting enough emotional and caring support are ready victims for them! Why care that such pupils are encouraged not to bother with any subject that does not have an examination attached like Music, Art, Drama and PE? Why bother if they do not get cultural and social activities, field trips, and any training in emotional intelligence? Such things come from a 'proper' school life that is far too 'boring' because it takes things more slowly and includes such 'unnecessary' things as the education that comes from the rough and tumble of class-room life where they learn how friendships are made and broken, nurtured and damaged and how to live as one of a community rather than individuals who just appear for their coaching sessions and disappear when they have finished. Why bother to train them in anything more than rampant individualism that only cares for its own advantage and profit?

Let us not think of the numbers of university graduates, in every country today who have fancy degrees but who are not only unemployed, but unemployable! It is a truism among many employers today that it is pointless to employ bright young men straight out of university because they think they know everything, think they deserve ridiculous salaries, do not grasp how much training they need in order to be useful to their employer and have no skills as a team player because they have never had to be one! Let us not look round our own place of employment and muse on the number of people there who were NOT among the high-graders but are first-class men and women who are more than earning their salary! If we are employers, then let us not remember how often we look at the academic qualifications on the application form and discover that they pale into insignificance besides other qualifications such as experience and personal recommendations and, of course (what we can learn in an interview) those attitudes of heart and mind and that readiness to learn that make someone a pleasure rather than a pain to have around!

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Let us forget all these things and just be swept along with the tide that says anything but a high grade is not worth having and there is no pressure we should not put on our children to gain it! Let those of average and below average intelligence, who are fine young people, be given a sense of total failure as 'bad students'! Let them stagger home from school and go, almost immediately, into the hands of their private tutor! Let them grow up without learning the joys of playing with their siblings, having long conversations with parents, pursuing a hobby or interest and learning how to handle a social life! Let them grow up obsessed with computer games and television because that is the only dross we offer to their hungry souls!

Excuse me, I am feeling sick and want to go and lie down and think of (and thank God for) some parents and teachers I know who are part of a new generation who are truly Millenium people. They do not only want their children to do as well as possible in their examinations but also to grow up balanced and happy human beings with the desire to live their lives generously and with some skills to do so. These people understand that education at school is only the beginning of a process that will continue for their children's whole life-times and not something that is left behind with relief because it has been such a boring and soul-destroying process. Such education demands extraordinary commitment from teachers, who deserve far more than most of such schools can afford to pay them, for they actually care for the personal, as well as the academic well-being, of those in their charge.

Dear reader, let us not think, for one moment, that we are being of any service to God, man or nation by drifting along with out-dated and dangerous habits of thinking about education. These may bring high financial profits now but the bill will have to paid by our beloved children, and their nation, in the future. Who can stand by with indifference while this is happening?

Angela MV Robinson (Rev Mrs) is Principal of The British School.