They take their little boys and girls, walk them to the gates of hundreds of primary schools across the country and encourage them to go inside. It is a symbolic gesture and a meaningful one. By this, these parents are saying a simple thing: "We will entrust our beloved children to this education system." In that simple act, they entrust our public education system with not just the future of their children but the future of their families and indeed of this country. However, most parents do this with a heavy heart, for they know that it is a risky business they are engaging in. To be sure, some of them wish they could afford a better choice because our public education system has become a veritable hellhole fit only for those who have no alternative. Every parent in this country who can afford it - and increasingly many who cannot - has lost faith in the public education system to such an extent that they risk lifelong debt to put their children through expensive private schools.
To illustrate this, there are not many teachers in government schools who would put their own children through the same schools where they teach, if they can help it. If a teacher, let alone the education officers and the Minister of Education and all his/her Cabinet colleagues, cannot bear the thought of his or her child going though the public education system, then for whom was the system carefully devised? The great unwashed majority? Of course, that is common cause.But when even the lowest rung of the middle class - including the teachers, the school heads and education ministry officials - cannot bring themselves to tolerate the system, we must, as a people, realise that we are confronted by a crisis of horrendous proportions.
