“Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation.” – John F. Kennedy
Education is no longer considered as a necessity for human development other than as an instrument for the advancement of the material world of the individual. Higher educational institutions have become almost like automated degree producing factories in their efforts to make the process as customer friendly as possible to attract better clientele.
These same institutions use phrases such as “student-centered learning” and “opportunities for individualised programs” that are contradictory to the assembly-line like process of issuing degrees.
The world has accepted this concept of using human brains as raw material for these education factories in the process of manufacturing adults the market needs to sustain the economic progress.
How much money from the national budget should be allocated for education, how that money should be spent in order to optimise the Return On Investment (ROI), what type of policy changes needed to improve the quality and the accessibility of the education system and so on have become common debates in most of the countries around the world?
Politicians rarely come up with educational and healthcare policies that can truly make a country a richer, happier and freer nation since their policy decisions, almost always, are based on their re-election strategies and individual wealth of themselves and their family and friends.
Election strategies
Therefore, only a handful of people who belong to such groups would be richer, happier, and freer. Decisions based on re-election strategies and personal wealth-building, at the most, would be effective within the term limit of the office the law makers are occupying at that moment.
However, most of the policy decisions involving education or healthcare of a nation have to be effective, at least, through one generation, which usually is about thirty years, since wrong decisions made in either of those fields can literally destroy generations to come.
Therefore, it is time every citizen of a country starts thinking about such policies rather than leaving it all to politicians and the parasites around them. For example, when the rulers of a country allocates a much bigger chunk of taxpayer money for defence, instead of education, health, agriculture, or renewable energy, especially when there is no military threat on the horizon, the citizens should be alarmed and should try to analyse the motives and possible outcomes of such decisions.
If there is no imminent threat from outside, then the military is strengthened to fight against the domestic threats which usually are people who do not agree with the Government.
This perhaps is why Edward Everett once said, “Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army”.
Unpolluted environment
What exactly is meant by “the common good”? One way to understand it is to think of it as, ‘a good to which all members of society have access, and from whose enjoyment no one can be easily excluded’. For example, all the people can enjoy the benefits of clean air or an unpolluted environment.
Any such thing can be a common good as long as it is a good to which all have access. Therefore, the consideration of something as a common good depends on the domain within which it is defined.
Though clean air and/or unpolluted environment can be common goods even if the whole planet is considered as the domain, there can be other things that may be considered as a common good in one country but not in another.
The domains could even be smaller than countries but should not go all the way down to just one individual. That is why‘ common good is sometimes defined as ‘the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment’.
Therefore, it consists primarily of having the social systems, institutions, and environments on which we all depend and work in a manner that benefits all people. Accessible and affordable public healthcare systems, education systems, effective public safety and security, just legal and political systems, an unpolluted environment, growing economic systems, and peaceful and mutually beneficial transactions among nations of the world are some of the examples of common goods.
Understanding what is meant by ‘common good’ would make it easier to see that virtually every social problem in one way or another is linked to how well these systems and institutions are functioning.
It also will make it easier to see that the common good does not just happen. It requires the cooperative efforts of many organisations and people. For example, if every user picks up after him/herself, then it is not difficult to keep a public park free of litter.
It might seem that since all citizens benefit from the common good, we would all willingly respond to policies and procedures we each cooperate to establish and maintain the common good.
Unfortunately, the very idea of a common good is inconsistent with a pluralistic society like ours. Even when all agree on the importance of healthcare, education, and national security as common goods the relative value of each of those would be different for different members in that domain.
Some would like to have a bigger allocation for healthcare than national security while some others would like to see the biggest allocation for education.
Another constraint faced by the proponents of the common good is the “free-rider problem”, meaning that there would always be people to enjoy the benefits of a ‘common good’ but not willing to do their part to support and maintain it.
When the culture of the country views society as an entity comprising separate independent individuals who are free to pursue their own individual goals and interests without interference from others, it is very difficult to convince people that they should sacrifice some of their freedom, personal goals, and some of their self-interests for the sake of common good.
The idea of common good is also challenged by the problem of unequal sharing of burdens.
Maintaining a common good often requires that particular individuals or groups bear a greater cost than others. For example, making the healthcare system affordable and accessible to all may require that doctors and hospitals reducing their charges, drug manufacturers and pharmacies reducing their profit margins, insurers reducing their premiums, and even asking some patients forego certain types of expensive treatments.
The prospect of having to carry such unequal burdens leads those groups to resist any attempts to secure common goods. However, such resisters themselves may have been the recipients of the benefits of an education system that was functioning as a common good.
As Michael Moore says, what if the decision makers for the country made no decision without asking the question: Is this for the common good?
The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic for over twenty years in the USA and fifteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]