Thoughts on the Budget 2008: Education

From scanning through the bullet points summarizing the Budget 2008, I got some thoughts in mind:

Primary and secondary schooling in Malaysia is FREE!!

The examination fee for Sijil Tinggi Agama Malaysia and the annual fee for primary and secondary schools will be abolished.

Beginning the 2008 school session, the Text Book Loan Scheme will be provided to all students, irrespective of their families’ income and with no restrictions on the number of eligible children. With this, 5.7 million students will benefit from this Scheme compared with 4.5 million students currently. With these measures, schooling in Malaysia is now completely free(*).

So in theory, a student could possibly go through Standard One to Form Six without paying a single cent to the school. Of course that is not true is practice as individual schools charge other fees, PIBG etc…(though not much) besides the administrative ones.

Again, the text book loan scheme sounds good in theory, but I can ask whether or not there are enough textbooks to go around. You can be sure that while more students benefit, even more students wanting to save on unnecessary book buying will demand a textbook loan as a right. The numbers will rise to more than 5.7 million for sure. And so when resources are scarce, how will the school decide? Need and income levels right?

Either (*) was quoted verbatim from the PM’s mouth or theStar has lousy reporters. I take it that the reporters quoted verbatim from the PM’s speech. But I am of the opinion that while basic primary and secondary education is a right, a student (and his/her parent) must not get the impression that it costs nothing.

Malaysia is not a country where the people are incapacitated. The majority of parents can, and should work hard to earn the money to put their children through school. As education is a right of every child, it is thus the responsibility of the parent to ensure that their child’s rights in this aspect is fulfilled. This must be understood by those who are poor. Incapacity is not permanent, and poverty is not an excuse to wait for the government to make things easier for the poor and their children so that they(the impoverished parent) can persist in misery and self pity. Dangling election carrots like this is not the way to help the needy.

The argument that education is so important that it should be made freely available is does not hold water. Education, like books, pencils and school uniforms should be treated the same way. Just we pay for school uniforms with our own money, why shouldn’t we also pay for our education, which is of far more value than a school uniform? Why is this responsibility suddenly relegated to the government, of which schoolchildren have the furthest of emotional connections? The reason why fishmongers wrap fish in newspaper is because it costs almost nothing to them.

We have all heard stories of how a mother slaves away washing dishes to put her son through school. Stories like this inspire us with the virtues of hard-work, perseverance, hope for a better life and selflessness. Of course she could use a little help, but her situation while hard is not demeaning nor should her sacrifice be thought of as an indignity.

The previous administrative fees my parents had to pay my school every year is very little compared to the price of tertiary education( which I believe is NOT the right of everyone). But I think reinforces the idea that basic education is something to be treasured and appreciated not something to be demanded as a right.