Get The Morons Out Of Education

After having called for “roads, roads and more roads” just yesterday, I found a deadly seriousness in Jug Suraiya’s hilarious piece today. Read it – and think: What are they “planning” if this is Gurgaon, a brand new city, bang next to New Delhi, their Capital?

But my attention was particularly drawn to a news report in the same paper that talked about corruption in India’s government school system (thanks to Satyajit Dey).

According to a wide survey carried out by the Indian branch of Transparency International, the BPL poor, especially in rural areas, are paying good money as bribes to get their children admitted to school, to have them promoted from one class to another, and even to get a school leaving certificate.

My essential point is this: The poor are “paying” for education?

So why talk of “education vouchers,” as Gurcharan Das does today, an argument based on the premise that the poor are too poor to pay for anything.

According to Professor James Tooley, who has done extensive field research on for-profit schools for the poor in India, the central point missed by advocates of vouchers is that the poor are already paying for private education and getting it.

And now it seems that the schools run by The State are taking money from the poor anyway.

The children of poor people do not need the long road to a high school diploma. Instead, they need the short cut to the market.

In the market, you need just one kind of knowledge in order to survive in the division of labour. Just one. You do not need a “generalized education”; you need specific specialized education.

This can be obtained by apprenticeship (as, for example, to a motor mechanic or a chef); it can be obtained from a for-profit private institute; or it can be learnt from the efforts of educharities (and there can be plenty of them in a free market, no State scenario in education).

The children of the middle class and the rich do not need government education. The only talk is about poor kids – and reality bites here.

I am therefore of the opinion that there should not be any role for The State in education. Primary, secondary and higher education by The State should be closed down. All the government bureaus prescribing curricula and supplying text books should be closed down too.

In such a situation, knowledge will be imparted by those who are in possession of knowledge that other people want.

I will also start a School of Catallactics.

What’s that?

Well, you gotta pay me money to find out.

And they don’t teach catallactics at the tax-funded Delhi School of Economics.

So I’m in business.