Public Higher Education and Democracy

BAYANGGUDAW NOTES. 3 SEPT 2016. SAT. N1.
Public Higher Education and Democracy.

THE EDUCATION OF citizens is a moral and legal obligation of the nation, or its contemporary articulation, the nation state (sometimes with the hyphen in between).

The obvious must be belabored: When citizens are educated, there is more democracy.

When citizens are not THAT educated in civics and citizenship, we expect the reverse: an Orwellian society of 'animal-farm-like' mentality, with the Big Brother telling us what to do because that Big Brother knows more than we do, and knows what is best for us all.

Propaganda for the wrong reasons becomes the tool, and Hitlers of all kinds come to reside in our heads, and the 'non-wisdom' of the Furhrer becomes the covenant of goodness, of the substitutes of egalite, fraternite, and liberte.

It is far easier to manipulate--and seduce the populace into following the whims and caprice of the Fuhrer--when citizens do not have the capacity to think for themselves.

And it is far easier for people to become cattle: to just follow orders from a megaphone, literal or figurative.

In the case of the United States and all other countries following the capitalist dictates of globalization and free trade (that most of the time is not at all free) and the economic development of countries based on the bean-counting technique of GNP, the higher public institutions are now at the receiving end, with universities and state colleges forced to put in the money needed to educate citizens by (1) offering more student loans, (2) increasing tuition, and (3) reducing subsidies.

At the far end of all these, liberal education is now being threatened, with government support becoming less and less visible.

While other countries are on track removing university tuition altogether, higher public institutions such as those of the USA (and the Philippines too) are being forced to put in more tuition dollars to pay the cost of educating the citizens.

Something is definitely wrong somewhere here when the seduction of the corporatization of public universities and colleges is becoming more and more the mantra of 'public' education.

Huffington has said it right.