Education in today's society is a privilege when it should be a Right that is constitutionally enshrined. At a time when education is increasingly becoming a commodity to be bought and sold on the market place the government is implementing cutback after cutback in public expenditure on education. At present the Irish government spends a pathetic 2% of its GDP on education, in Sweden 15% is allocated to the education budget.
In 2001 in UCD, Ireland's largest university had just 937 students whose parents were in semi and unskilled jobs. 8,354 students however came from employer and professional backgrounds. Equally the cost of education, between books, food and rent is extraordinarily high. Students on grant aided schemes are more likely to fail to complete the courses chosen. These students are more likely than others to be working more than sixteen hours per week to supplement their inadequate funding. Students with parents from professional back grounds are more likely to be able to bear the indirect costs of going to college.
Geographically there are schools and districts around Ireland that have generations and generations of people dropping out of secondary school at a very young age. The apparent Celtic Tiger which benefited the sector of society which I earlier mentioned was built on a huge service sector in society. The Government regularly talks of how they have reduced unemployment and how great the economy is, however do you really think Bertie Ahern would be happy if his daughter was part of this great service sector and worked 50 hours a week in Miss Moneypenny, or if Charlie McCreevys son worked 40 hours a week for the minimum wage in a software factory in Cookstown Industrial estate. I think not.
The current education system is one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and free thought. It discourages critical thinking and promotes subservience to the ideas and policies that allow inequality to exist in the first place. Despite what television tells you and glossy reports that promote the university as a centre of excellence and learning , university today consists of nothing more than the depositing of uncritical information into the mind of a student. A good student is therefore classified as to how good and how easily they receive this deposit.
The chief role of the university is to train you how to be obedient in an unequal , racist, heterosexist, neo liberal, oppressive and alienating society. It is not within the interest of the state, or our new God the free market or its religion consumerism , or the University to have students fighting for real equality. These institutions are bound up in the web of Capitalistic bureaucracy and benefit from the inequality that exists today. They are part of the very structure that allows oppression to take place.
Ask yourself why a politics graduate with a degree in their hand cannot tell you anything about alternative political systems and have never studied outside the realms of parliamentary democracy. Ask yourself why 99% of commerce graduates believe that success depends solely on increased competition in the free market and the growth of the economy regardless of its social and environmental destructiveness is the most important thing in life. Ask yourself why students involved in media are generally more concerned about their portfolio for their career and have little interest in tackling their colleges and our government as it may upset their possibility of rising up the ranks of the state and corporate media empire.
Ask yourself why in a world where there are thousands of academics and students we still live in war and turmoil . With all these educated people why is it that millions still have no access to basic education, healthcare , basic foods and sanitation. Why is this educated community which is alive today not building social change and constructing a planet free from oppression . Why is it that only a tiny minority of these educated people are aware that only 3% of the worlds population go to third level education. The answer is that these people have been trained by the state and free market economics in their universities and are now agents of the state. Every tyrant needs an army of obedient foot soldiers to maintain their position in society. This is a bit harsh , maybe that's the way man is you may say , this is the result of mass uncritical consumption of social Darwinism I say. Man is bad you say, man is also compassionate and rational I say. Things will never change you say, I agree unless education becomes as Paulo Freire says 'the practice of freedom.'
Education must end its period of hibernation in theory and come out into the light of action and agitation . This is what is often regarded as `praxis`. The organic intermingling of theory and action. An idea is nothing unless it becomes grounded in material existence. We must act on our ideas . Nothing is inevitable but everything is possible. While we fight against educational disadvantage in society lets also fight for an end to obedient education and promote an education system that puts back into the community what it takes out. If we are in the epicentre of learning lets resist obedience to theory that allows and has created a system of oppression.
I believe in education, real libertarian education that is promoted by many including Paulo Freire should be accessible to all but for this to occur we must abolish how our current education system is run and what is taught. Tackling educational disadvantage is undoubtedly a core principle of social justice. Our government will not tackle educational disadvantage and grant access and opportunity to all because who will work for pennies on our factory floors to keep the wealth of their bosses intact. Despite good efforts the University will not open its borders to the masses of working class men and women eager to learn because it is more economically productive to invest research money into one PhD student to devise new methods of destroying the environment by Genetically Modifying new crops.
This investment is regularly hailed as the knowledge based economy. That is why we as students have a social responsibility to effect change both inside and outside our university. We must link our struggles for broader social change if we are to really be a centre of learning. A true education system is on which encourages peoples full participation in the world. A social awareness and eagerness to act. Do not sit back as a passive student, learn but as you learn act. Active reflection. Reflective action. Agitate and educate so that you can be free. Let this article be nothing more than this, a template for further action.