Community
It is my sense of Australian society - perhaps even most society in the modern age (but i will not comment on that which i do not truly know) - is confused with the concept of money, having earned monetry reward and their place within their society. Education, and the arguments for and against paying for education, seemed to be a good starting point for illustrating the concept (misconcept) that i am speaking of. The issues that must be raised here are the benefits of the individual and their use toward the communtiy that provided services.
My first assumption....one that i believe is a truth, is that education can only be provided by a functioning community. An individual may learn on its own merits, survive on solidarity, but intellect is derived purely from conversation and for that to take place their must be some sense of community in which indivduals bind together in order to share something (discussion of knowledge) in a public space. (It is not at this point that i wish to define public space and thus introduce myself to Rawlsian dillemas and Marx's manifestos). Rather a public space for this part is common ground that all parties may contribute and that no third party may tax or take something away without giving up something of their own first. (The discourse i am placing here is not an argument of sorts that justifies a response or requires proof of previous arguments; it is but merely an observation spewing forth in preparation for an argument/response).
In this sense then I am lead to believe that a number of people are missing the key elements as to what "free education" is all about. The tenets, when simply put are as follows: When one pays for an education with monetry tender they are paying with what society deems as credit earnt for individual work on a larger project that others within the community use. Thus further education is being paid by previous work. This can be very hard to justify in real terms when most of education, in reality, we undergo at very early years within our life when most of us can contribute little to earn social credit or money. Thus in this scenario the credit is paid forward, the theory is that the education being provided to young students will ultimately help them to become even better at contributing to the society in which they will undoubtedly become an individual of. The position of earning an education is now pushed into the future of the students and what their potential as citizens may be.
The two methods of post and pre payment options seem clear enough; however it is when these two options are used together and the bizarre behaviour of money is factored into the equation that everything seems to go a little pear shaped, more complex, and hardly understandable. This delimma is current within Private Schooling, and Tertiary Education within Australia.
Within my next blog i will discuss the behaviours of money (inheritance. endowment, credit), the mixig of post and pre payment options with education, social status, and physical education resources.
Labels: notes, philosophy