Education is a very sensitive topic to discuss and everyone has their opinion on it. It has become almost normal like taking breakfast to at least have some form of educational background in the world we live in now. Be it at elementary level or as we call it here nursery / kindergarten.
There’s no doubt some form of education is important in our lives. Without education, some of us wouldn’t be able to make posts on hive nor understand the crypto world. Some of us here have formal education that has allowed us to explore the hive blockchain.
Reading and writing and as it is globally termed ; literacy is important and forms part of education. I’ve encountered people who think literacy is all about being able to read and write in English. I also did till few years ago when I was made aware that literacy covers more than just the English language. Being able to read and write in any language is literacy and hence education.
In my country Ghana, we used to run this education system known as the progressive free education which meant that, students would still pay fees but gradually as the years go by some costs will be reduced and it would eventually become free.
The idea behind this was that, it would be too expensive to make all education free at once because our economy would not be able to sustain it. But everyone has their thoughts and little did we know the main opposition party at the time believed they could make senior high school education entirely free at a go.
They campaigned hard about this and it eventually gave them the victory. They didn’t disappoint. Indeed, in their first year senior high school education became free and everyone was happy and simple thought the previous government was incompetent.
Right now things aren’t going on as smoothly as we thought because there’s always talks of food shortage in the senior high schools. This among other factors have reduced the quality of high school education.
So going back to the question if I think free education is possible? I would say yes. Yes because when the economy grows and develops like the already established countries we should be able to run free education. Although not all the developed countries run a free education system but some do.
Free education can be understood from 2 school of thoughts; A tale of two sides as I like to call it. Those who can afford it will argue it will reduce the quality of education and to some extent they might be right but education is a basic right. Those that cannot afford education will use this as an argument and to some extent they’re right too. So I’m of the view free education cannot be a 100% justified.
However I do think before the economy is able to bear such costs, the quality of education will be affected negatively. We’re already seeing this in Ghana where students aren’t taking their studies seriously because we all think the politicians will make sure they pass just to create a false narrative of a working policy.
Free education will no doubt have huge pros and cons for us all. I think it’ll be a good way to level the playing field for everyone to get access to excellent infrastructure for studies. Currently when you don’t have a lot of money you’re limited to some choices but if education were free you’ll have more options.
The standards of teaching has been greatly affected negatively because there’s no motivation for teachers. Number of pupils in classrooms has doubled which makes work more difficult. If we have free education that doesn’t have unlimited or a huge funding, that policy will definitely suffer and most likely collapse. Teachers wouldn’t feel motivated to teach and students wouldn’t even bother to go to school.
So for now, I would say free education wouldn’t work in my country but I do believe in the future and I still stick to my earlier suggestion that free education can be realized.
The standard of teaching and the quality of education wouldn’t be affected if everything is put in order and there’s frequent cash flow. There should be a constant budget that is huge enough to cover the cost of everything including food, salaries, allowances, among others.
Thank you.