YOU can feel the vibrancy of the discussion at the recent National Dialogue On Education chaired by Tan Sri Wan Mohd Zahid Wan Nordin at Putrajaya International Conference Centre.
While we are familiar with some suggestions, parents and teachers put forward many new ideas. The positive views give us hope that the next phase of the reform review will be an exciting one, moving from schooling to learning!
The challenge lies in tertiary education or post-secondary education. This is a global concern, even in countries that we hold in high regard as models to emulate.
Take education in the United States. While almost every generation in US has had substantially more education than its parents, this may no longer be true according to a recent report (The Wall Street Journal, April 26).
The reasons US education levels are no longer increasing are numerous.
High school dropout rates remain stubbornly high, despite years of effort to reduce the numbers. Rising tuition fees discourage high school-leavers from entering college or completing their programmes after enrolment.
"Over the past 10 years, for instance, average published tuition and fees (not counting room and board) at four-year public colleges rose by 72 per cent to US$8,240 (RM24,720) from US$4,790, adjusted for inflation" according to official sources.
Even after grants as well as tax deductions and credits, the average net price rose by a much smaller sum -- US$1,160 -- to US$2,490 over the decade, but that is still an 87 per cent increase.
Not so long ago, a New York Times headline screamed: College May Become Unaffordable For Most in US (December 2008). Quoting the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, published college tuition and fees increased 439 per cent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 per cent over all.
This increase was before the 2008-2009 recession, threatening to put higher education out of reach for most Americans.
Some claimed that costs have skyrocketed faster than healthcare over the last few decades, and student debt has ballooned to over US$1 trillion, surpassing credit card debt, according to the Federal Reserve Board of New York.
Associated Press (April 22) reported that about 1.5 million, or 53.6 per cent, of US bachelor's degree holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest in 11 years.
Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.
Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.
In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000).
More people were working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000).
More graduates were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).
All these spell a widening of access and equity on the education front. According to the NYT story, tuition at a public university costs 55 per cent of the income of the poorest fifth of Americans, up from 39 per cent in 1999-2000.
The situation in Malaysia may not be as dire due to highly subsidised education. Yet there is no guarantee that we will not face the same predicament.
Invariably this goes back to pre-secondary education as a preparatory ground for higher education which also faces the problem of rising cost.
For example, there is an enormous difference between the performance of urban and rural schools. The latter is almost always behind, reflecting the abysmal infrastructure and facilities available to it.
Without proper learning foundation and ethics, many students will face a difficult time ahead, regardless of the standardised test-taking skills imposed on them. Life is not just about passing examinations.
There may not be an easy short-term solution but shifting from the idea of schooling to learning where all sectors of the community are involved seems to be a viable approach. Only then can education take its rightful place in the making of a so-called knowledge society.