The short on privitisation and education

What does a typical politician understand about the term privatization? My personal observation is as follows:

1. Privatization is simply understood as an opportunity, arising out of a legal provision, for a government organisation to do business.
   
2. When the government does business that gives opportunities for serving and retired politicians to earn extra allowances (through appointments such as chairman and directorships) and also opportunities to milk the business.
   
3. When government does business as when they takeover some monopolistic enterprises, they stand to realise capital gains.
   

These to my mind, is what the term privatization means to the run off the mill politicians. To add an impression of sophistication in their thinking, they justify privatisation as a means to obtain private sector management expertise. This is simply a ruse as the records by most GLCs are simply cases of bright promises, dismal performances. This led to the corruption of the term privatisation to piratisation.

In any case, let's humour the common politician's view on privatisation. Let's take the justification on piratisation privatisation on private sector management expertise grounds. This politicians' obsession with 'private sector management expertise') is actually a misnomer. What they actually mean by privatisation is make the profits private, the liabilities public's. This whole argument about private management expertise is screwed up if it does not actually mean the introduction of a new management with a better-developed profit motive but more importantly, it must include as the overriding goal, to increase autonomy, choice and competition, and to focus services around consumer interests, rather than producer ones.

Social mobility and the closing of the road.

This whole thing about reversion to the teaching of maths and science in Malay may actually be a design by the elite to keep the common folks in their place. Education then becomes a means to curtail social mobility. Being multilingual may provide a ladder for talented people from poorer backgrounds, but this avenue may be swept away in a fit of egalitarian enthusiasm which resulted in a levelling down and the closure of opportunities.

We forget that egalitarianism is better achieved if people have choices. This fit of egalitarian enthusiasm and this resurgence in nationalism can actually impede egalitarianism. Consider further some of the issues confronting our educational system. We have already spoken about the possible impact of the closure of linguistic choices on our country.

Think now about the lowering of standards. Yes, we know that the key to social mobility has always been education, but despite an emphasis on education it has largely failed people of disadvantaged backgrounds. The government pressurizes universities to lower admission standards for people from poorer backgrounds, thereby discriminating against talented youngsters who happen to have middle class parents. It then becomes a disadvantage if people come from the middle class.

Lowering the standards of admission for example is like the minimum wage argument of Milton Friedman. We think by lowering admissions requirement or passing marks, we are allowing more pupils to pass or enter colleges and even universities. We are doing no such thing. What we are actually doing is to encourage those who under normal circumstances cannot enter or pass, earn a diploma or degree which they find out later cannot qualify them to get a job demanding higher level skills.

Lowering standards is not the answer, neither a valid nor a fair one. The better approach is to raise the standard of schools so their students can qualify on merit. The way to do this is to forget egalitarianism and to allow a variety of schools to flourish, and enable parents of all backgrounds freely to choose between them.