Education: Fatal conceit of ignorant State

Fatal conceit of ignorant State by Sauvik Chakraverti

All Indian opinion makers, without exception, consented to prime minister Manmohan Singh’s ‘education cess’ imposed by the Central government upon all income tax payers in 2004. This is a sign of fatal ignorance. It means that they all agree not only that the State is in possession of knowledge, but that it must be given the resources to transmit this vital knowledge to children of the poor. Their central proposition is that poor children cannot survive without injection of knowledge from the State. Yet does the State possess the knowledge that poor children need to succeed in the emerging market economy?

The market economy functions on the basis of what Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek termed the “fragmentation of knowledge”. Each and every person who works in a market economy does so with a tiny fragment of knowledge all his own. We not only trade goods; we also trade knowledge. This knowledge is in many cases uncodifiable, and cannot be transmitted through books and classrooms — like how to drive a taxi, how to play a violin (a fretless instrument) or how to harvest coconuts. This marketplace reality has deep implications for education, especially of poor children.

The first implication is this: children of the poor need just one fragment of knowledge to succeed in a market economy. But the schooling system that has been imposed upon them is generalised, and myriad bewildering ‘subjects’ are taught. Such generalised education is of no use to poor children. On the contrary it’s a burden. This is why they prefer to opt out of school — the high ‘dropout rate’. The State is trying to reverse this by offering free mid-day meals in schools. Yet, this is simply pouring in good money after bad. We might as well close down government schools and open government kitchens everywhere to feed children. This would save money, and it would leave children with enough free time during which they could pursue the acquisition of real knowledge — which will enable them to succeed in the market economy — by apprenticing themselves with motor mechanics, tailors, goldsmiths, beauticians, carpenters, weavers, chefs, musicians and the like.

In other words, there is no ‘knowledge problem’ that requires State action to resolve. Real knowledge is transmitted through people who practise various trades.� In an earlier age, a village child would need to know about crops and seasons, how to build a mud house, how to look after and milk cows, and much more. In the modern world, a child needs only to know how to do one thing well, like play the guitar. If he succeeds as a musician in a city, he can hire a cook, a chauffeur, an architect. He can rely on the fragments of knowledge that others possess.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and his protege Manmohan Singh are therefore dead wrong when they say that the State must have a major role to play in the education of our children — and that too, in a closed economy. If the economy were open, more knowledge would be available for all. A child who has learnt how to be a motor mechanic could learn how to repair a Mercedes Benz motorcar. Free international trade, which Manmohan’s anti-commerce minister, Kamal Nath, doggedly opposes, would bring in more useful knowledge than all government schools put together. Sen and Singh believe in central planning and state education in a closed economy. This is a prescription for disaster.

Indeed, this disaster is already upon us. If we look around, we will find that we are suffering most in all the areas where the State has a monopoly — electricity, roads and water, the bijli, sadak aur pani that all people are crying for. Whatever is ‘planned’ is a failure. Why should government schools be any different?

The conclusion: the state is an ignoramus. it does not possess any worthwhile knowledge. All government schools, colleges and universities should be closed down. All government teachers should be sacked. They are all, in any case, propagandists on behalf of the State. Schoolteachers in villages are political party hangers-on. That is why every chief minister is only too happy to hire lakhs of ‘teachers’ — all party workers. What do they know to presume they can teach?

What poor children really need is hope and encouragement. They should be told that they need to learn enough for just one vocation — and they must find a real guru for the purpose. They should be informed this is not a huge, uphill task, and their inspiration should come from stories of the innumerable people who have become rich and famous without going through formal school education — from Bill Gates, Dhirubhai Ambani and the Beatles to the chaatwallahs of Delhi and Bombay, many of whom are millionaires. This will give them the inner strength they need. Free schools and mid-day meals offer no hope, no strength and no real knowledge either. Nor, indeed, good nutrition.

Friedrich Hayek titled his last book Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. We in India must now see the State as a conceited entity. The political elite and civil servants are all prize examples of this “fatal conceit”. They should not be allowed to teach. They should be asked to learn.

(Sauvik Chakraverti is an author and journalist closely associated with India’s liberal movement)

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