May 18, 2006
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C.S. Lewis was an unhappy
victim of public schools and he said so in his autobiography Surprised By Joy.
“If the parents in each
generation always or often knew what really goes on at their sons’ schools, the
history of education would be very different.”The sad truth is, most
parents are happy to leave education to schools because of one or two reasons;
(1) Both mom and dad are working professionals with little time to pay
attention to junior’s schooling, and (2) both parents believe that educating
children are beyond their competence anyway. Leave it to the experts, they say.
We all have ideals, not least regarding the kind of schools and education we
think any decent child deserves, or what any government is obliged to offer.
But wishful thinking is a sheer waste of energy is it not?You can see I am a pessimist
by inclination. Unlike my friend – let’s call him Bob – who thinks one can’t
possibly maintain sanity in Malaysia without a modicum of hopeful thinking. It’s easy to
walk away, he says, but you can still make a difference if you work at it, try
hard enough, push the envelope. I have had dreams too, but present realities
have all but convinced me that one ought to work towards change but I’ll be
working harder on alternatives. It’s one of the primary reasons I
homeschool.
