ARTICLES

Source: East West Cultural Development Centre, August 1998

Discussion Paper on
Economics and Education

The role and relationship of education to economic development have evolved through the ages. In ancient time, there seems to be a clear distinction between training to make a living and training for life. Forexample, in ancient China, scholars were taught the "Six Arts", which prepared them for an understanding of ethics, aesthetics, culture and their relationship with the community at large. They were also taught the importance of rituals, or protocols governing the dealings between individuals in a society. The acquisition of economic skills such as learning a trade or developing a speciality tended to be done separately through a parallel system of tutelage and apprenticeship.

This situation applied not only to ancient China, but also to other ancient cultures. Education in ancient Egypt appeared to have been centredon the priesthood and has strong theocratic (and hence moral and ethical) elements. Through the Dark Ages in Europe, when monastic education played the important role of preserving and advancing education, right to the eveof the Age of Enlightenment, education's priority seemed to be the spiritual, philosophical, cultural and moral needs of Man.

Following the Enlightenment, which laid the intellectual foundations for the Industrial Revolution, economics began to play a more and more important role to daily life. Economic principles gradually seep into the philosophy of what constitute a 'good life'. Because of the initial successof the new economics to create a better material world, the basic assumptions in economic theory gradually became accepted as the truth. Whatwas good for the economy became what was good for life.

For example, the principle of division of labour, rooted in the philosophy that truth can be found by breaking an entity into smaller and smaller components, is mirrored in early streaming of school children andthe greater and greater degree of specialisation of many academic disciplines. The principle of economy of scale is reflected larger andlarger campuses. The spirit of competition finds its early manifestation in the classroom.

Since one of the functions of education is the transmission of values,the curriculum must necessarily be formulated according to the societalvalues of the day. If economic development is good, then the intellectual 'tools' for economic development will find its way into the subjects taught, initially as facts and data, later in theories and principles and ultimately as guiding philosophies. Thus the message that growth, profit and competition filters into the fountainhead of modern education thinking.Education exists to serve society, so if economics take up a larger part of society's concern, then education will increasingly become a servant of the economy. The economy needs people with certain skills and mindset. Theeducation system aligns itself to the economy's needs and produces theright kind of people. It becomes a supplier to the economy, not too dissimilar to the supplier of patties to a hamburger joint.

The graduates and scholars of such a system, finding its way into businesses, industries and government will of course hold as unquestionable truths the principles of development, growth, profit and competition. Asthey rise to positions of leadership, where their collective action canmold the direction of the society, they will act involuntarily to reinforce these principles whose values they hold dear. Therefore, if development,growth, profit and competition are good, then more development, growth,profit and competition must be better. As opinion makers, or as 'movers andshakers', they create a paradigm in which a man's worth is measured interms of his propensity to growth, profit and compete.

Thus, a cycle of cause and effect is set into motion: economics drives education, and education in turn drives economics. Education sustains theeconomy, which in turn sustains and nurtures it so that it can increase its supply of intellectual raw material to fuel its further expansion.

This cycle is not necessarily bad. If it is indeed true that growth, profit and competition will bring about a better and better society, then this cycle should be maintained. And long may it last.

However, it is felt by many thinking persons that the cycle is not spiralling steadily upwards to reach some ultimate utopia, but rather spiralling out of control, downwards, into problem areas which we are only just beginning to understand.

What are these problems? These are: the breakdown of relationships; the emphasis on consumption; the subordination of the future to the present; the damage to the environment; the development of technologies that can destroy the world; the emergence of new strains of dread diseases; the rapid growth and collapse of economies -- to name a few.

This leads us to re-examine the nature of the problem, and the contribution to it by the cycle of economics and education that we have earlier identified. A direct result of the present self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling paradigm is the ever-quickening pace of economic development and global integration. Commercial consideration drives NorthAmerican investors towards the goldmines in Kalimantan, Indonesia orSingapore state-owned companies to Suzhou, China. The economic issues are well considered; the underlying cultural considerations are not so clear.Even if there is an inkling that there are many cultural problems that need to be overcome, our present education have not equipped us with the necessary skills and mindset to solve them. If, for example, we know nothing of our own heritage and traditions, how do we deal with a problem caused precisely by cultural and philosophical differences, except to'fight or flee'? If our training has by economic necessity brought us into a microscopic world of greater specialisation, how do we deal with complex problems brought about by faster global integration whose only solutions can be found through a holistic understanding of all the issues, through dialogue, negotiation and accommodation?

This economics-centred education comes with one other problem - that of the evaluation of choices. A person is educated so that he can make the appropriate value judgements. In a situation dominated by economic consideration, it is natural that money becomes the common denominator withwhich to evaluate choices. In a world of international trade -- indeed, inthe future world of e-commerce -- there are fewer opportunities for direct personal contact, unlike the old days in which a housewife haggles with hergrocer in a face-to-face contact. Decisions must be made, and money frequently becomes the only yardstick. Separated by this amoral commodity, judgements can be made without the decision-maker having to see or livewith the human consequences of his action. By degree (like the housewife buying shrink-wrapped chicken breasts from the supermarket) he isconditioned to separate the economic from the moral and emotional consequences of his action.

Even though money is an amoral commodity, man cannot escape his morality. Ultimately, all his decisions have moral consequences. A system of thinking, founded on economic premises, whose decision making criteria is reduced to the single dimension of money, can only bring about an unbalanced society.

Perhaps it is time to re-look at this cycle of interdependence between education and economics. Perhaps there are ways to adjust it, so that cultural education (in its broadest context) can be brought back into thiscycle, so that over time the downward spiral can be arrested and reversed. This adjustment cannot be done by educators alone, because if the 'products' cannot find a market as a useful input to the economy, the idea will eventually be rejected. It cannot be done by economics restructuring alone, because very deep-rooted value systems must be changed, and onlyeducation can do so.

This paper therefore serves as a focus for a dialogue between economists and educators in trying to come up with a model for a more sustaining development through the fine-tuning of this economics/education cycle of cause and effects.