Our Desk | The State of Education and vice-versa

Renato Marques

As an educator by training, and as a father, I have always nurtured both a significant interest in, and a concern for, education.

When I first arrived in Macau, long over a decade ago, I realized that Macau had very favorable conditions for something that I always dreamed of but that was impossible to achieve in closed and over-controlled education systems such as the Portuguese one, from which I had migrated and in which I had been trained.

If this was the view I had as an outsider, when I started to work in Macau I began to realize that the system was not as “open” as it looked in theory.

With time and experiences collected from different institutions, I soon realized that schools in Macau are far more concerned about complying with regulations and guidelines than realizing the real needs of their population and developing ways to facilitate their interests and overcome their difficulties.

Going back to the book of memories, I recall that long ago (maybe nine years ago), I heard in a lecture on the topic of education, held at a local university, a high ranked official of China’s Ministry of Education saying that “China cannot afford to have one education system but, instead, it must have all education systems” operating simultaneously and with a constant evaluation of which one(s) are working better in a given context and time. Well, if you ask me, this is pretty much the old education system of Macau that allowed almost everything if properly justified.

The fact is, we once had a “poorer” system in resources but we were more evolved in fundamentals. This system has been recently and gradually replaced by a mechanistic, retrograde and obsolete system in the name of something called the “financial stability” of schools.

Nevertheless and despite this “trade,” in the past we did not experience a much lower charge on tuition fees to the parents and, I also suspect, the teachers and school staff have not gotten any richer either.

It is also a common practice in many sectors in Macau to throw the guilt away like throwing a rock in the lake. Most of the time people throw their “stones” as far as Beijing. Perhaps it is easier to do that rather than looking at one’s navel and realizing that the source of evil is, in most cases, right inside our home.

Education as one fundamental pillar of any country, nation or political system is vulnerable to all kinds of influences and is surely the quickest way to change mentalities and ideas.

In this context, a freer system, less controlled in every single step of its different stages and, above all, with a vision of the future, starting from who we are and why we exist, would definitely be an “ideal” for which it is surely worth fighting.

To begin with, we could start the reform by retiring some of the regressive, unqualified, and highly biased school principals who inhabit many of the region’s schools (not all fortunately), wielding their imperial scepter as owners of truth, thereby giving way to a more open and more interactive system among proficient pedagogues.

Honestly, I do not believe in a police state, especially when this police state spreads and gives way to an “educational police,” who suggest “guidelines” in exchange for subsidies and, when something goes really wrong and cannot be swept under the carpet, issues financial fines, working in this way more like a financial ombudsman than an education bureau.

That is the system we need to reform – urgently!