A news item in another newspaper caught my attention earlier this week. The dean of the Faculty of Education, Colin Calleja, was quoted saying that education should not just be at the service of industry. I agree wholeheartedly with this assertion and I would take it further – education should be at the service of all society and not just of the economy.
This is a theme that, as a country, we come back to regularly. It is a theme that generates debate not just in Malta but also elsewhere. Essentially it revolves around the issue as to what extent it is the responsibility of the education sector to prepare students for the world of work. This implies that education is there for the service of the economy. I do not agree with such a policy, even though my background is economics.
Students of economics know that education is referred to as a merit good. Merit goods are those goods and services which ought to be subsidised or provided free of charge so that access to them does not depend on one’s ability to pay for them.
Apart from education, merit goods also include healthcare, welfare services, housing, refuse collection and so on. Access to such goods and services cannot be reliant on one’s ability to pay as this would defeat the objective of maximising social welfare.
As such, the objective of education is to maximise social welfare and not to maximise economic growth. This is why I believe that education should be at the service of all society and not just of the economy.
Every time some type of skill is found to be missing in our economy, we turn on to the education sector and expect it to deliver that skill in sufficient quantities. We do not stop to think that before enough persons come on to the labour market with those skills, years have to pass.
Let us take one example which has been referred to recently – robotics. I do not believe that it is an exaggeration to state that we need between five to 10 years to have enough persons joining the labour market with this kind of expertise.
The same applies to everything else and we need to appreciate that education acts with a time lag, while business decisions are about the here and now with an outlook on the future.
When speaking of topics like robotics, artificial intelligence, software development, we also need to appreciate that most of what students learn could become obsolete by the time they come to put into practice what they would have learnt. The next point to keep in mind is what use would an expert in robotics be (or for that matter an expert in law or medicine or engineering, or any other subject one cares to choose), if the person lacks numeracy skills or literacy skills, or lacks critical thinking and problem solving skills, or lacks creativity.
Albert Einstein’s words – “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world” – appear to be very apt in this regard. To add another one for good measure, “The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
Rather than thinking in terms of what subjects need to be introduced into the curricula at all levels of education, maybe we need to start thinking of how to inculcate in students the ability to think critically, to communicate and collaborate with others, to be more aware of the world around them, to lead and show initiative, to be flexible, to learn how to keep on learning.
If we do this, we would be maximising social welfare, and we would be also be doing a great service to the economy. It would also make it easier to close the skills gap in areas related to engineering, information technology, sciences, and others.