Roy Tang

i am totalitarian so i will vote for education for all. tough question though.

If the objective is progress of society, and those are your two options, I would suggest to focus on something else, like making more money to finance good education for all. Best to provide a bit of both (like we're doing today). We need to upgrade secondary-educa tion-level employment to allow those without good (i.e. tertiary) education a chance to improve their state, or maintain a good lifestyle despite lacking tertiary, but also require people who received free good education to give back to the community.

You're trying to go off topic! Obviously if you are able to make more money you should just go for higher education for all. But that's not one of the options! I'm not asking for a workable solution, I'm asking which of the options given is better, all other things being equal.

By the above, I'm addressing Jaime :p @Peng, I'm not sure I understand how totalitarianism relates to it.

Then I'd go for higher-quality education for a select few. If all things are equal. There are enough people who are, at the moment, able to afford good education on their own, or apply for scholarships without overloading private schools. Government-mand ated education will help what they can. Enforce rules to avoid brain drain. Make it enticing to work here. There are not enough opportunities to work locally anyway. But it's very unfair though. I would not want to decide who gets it and who doesn't. The other situation is more socially acceptable.

"There are not enough opportunities to work locally anyway." — Referring to Low-quality education with a diploma. Even if it were high-quality education for the masses, we wouldn't have enough jobs yet. It has to be gradual.

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@habeo so it’s ok for us to have a number of ppl graduating from school with a lower level of education than what their diploma implies?

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@habeo the betterment of society as a whole

@roytang I know. shouldn’t we therefore think about alternative approaches? Cramming them through school is not necessarily to their benefit

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@habeo that’s because most people here go through a terrible primary/secondary school system, so they need college to make up for it

oops. mali ang socsci ko. i meant utilitarianism- greatest good for most number of people.

Under the assumption that education can translate to higher standard of living, even exposure to education has a benefit. Education should enable students to conceive better conditions for self and environment to motivate them to improve. Self-motivation is a goal that cannot be shared without education for masses - it will be difficult for the few better-educated to impress upon their fellows that things need to get better if they don't know any better. A self-motivated individual has better purpose for both themselves and their community, government, etc. Education is the most common-denomina tor tool, with a better transmission rate than mass-media (though these two can work together), since it can be recontextualize d for individual consumption.

@Mike, what percentage of public high school graduates to do you think have sufficient levels of self-motivation ?

I suspect a higher percentage than if you restrict it to those that won't necessarily care enough to make it count. Mind you, motivation doesn't need to mean wanting to continue getting an education. I remember telling some graduating students in high school that if they already knew what they wanted to do in life and knew how to get there, college education was likelier to be detrimental than helpful. Sometimes you just need to know enough, and anything more is a waste of time and effort. Knowing when its enough is the trick to education, and motivation unlocks it.

I understand that Michael's/ Lorenz's comments are against my own, but I see the wisdom in what they say also. If you cast "low-quality" education in that light - which is, education is not necessarily a tool for learning and success only, but as a means of motivation and an opener for self-discovery (which then leads to success), then yes, the idea is rock solid. It will be up to the individual to bridge the gap between education, life goals, and what they will make with what limited tools they have - but this should be enough, if the person really wants to get ahead in life. I believe my idea operates on the premise of a good job/career = success per se, and expects this to be the most common means of success (may or may not be true), which quality education will unlock, versus low-quality education.

@jaime: agreed.