Reflecting back on the seminar - No education: No Freedom, No opportunity - and concentrating more on the objectives that the foundation (IAF – FNF) had set behind the seminar, I realize that it has communicated in-depth and achieved to a very great extent what they had set out for. With well structured sessions which wholesomely covered to an extent every issue in education that needs to be debated from a very liberal perspective. Extending from the 7^th of February to the 19^th the seminar had an interesting bend of 23 participants – teachers, policy advocates, students, educational consultants and most importantly people wanting to work for better and liberal policies for their countries.

The moderators of the seminar, Dr. Stefan Melnik and Dr. Monica Ballin provided a culture that not only helped the thought process going amongst the participants but also facilitated the intermingling of minds. Conversations with the moderators over breaks or dinners were invigorating, leaving the participants thinking and debating on issues even they were left to themselves.

Education, a pressing need for quality practices and that for a deviance from the archaic methods and systems being used the world over, makes it an interesting field for liberals to provide solutions for. The seminar’s design, comprehensive enough, covered possibly all the issues or at least gave an opportunity for every participant to address his views, ideas or policy concerns from his or her country.

To begin with the session on “How we learn” – the first session - got into philosophical discussion on how to learn was innate and a necessary condition for survival. The enthusiasm picked here never dropped. Setting down the ground principles of liberalism and making the distinction clear over the difference in the liberal solutions for the education sector today the seminar pulled of onto a string of solutions based on the free market and the superiority of the individual.

Obviously we had to find out what the other countries present consider to be the chief educational problems in their respective countries. Interesting as this session was, the countries were divided on their economical standings to prioritize the political reforms as liberals were needed. The changes from each category of the countries did scream for accountability in the system with a variable degree of the free market policies in each presentation. This was interesting to know that wastage of government money due to unaccountable and inefficient systems existed all across the spectrum from developed nations to the third world countries.

Later on after watching a video by Sir Ken Robinson, I am very certain that the schooling systems across the world hinder creativity. This made us question the overall structure of formal education and the whole institutional structures of education. Larger debates on curriculum were looming in the air. The teachers – a main stakeholder – gave their inputs on how they believed that the process of imparting knowledge and also the process if learning could be made better with some freedoms at the hands of the teachers. However, the shackles of ‘moral codes’, that comes with the profession as it comes in with the other professions such as doctors, was hard to break in a work group on “Code of Ethics for teachers”. I managed to squeeze in the concept of mutual understanding between the teacher and the student (or parent) and their mutual agreement on a code of ethic – what ever works best in their interests is the only ethical code – more or less self imposed.

As liberals it was important to debate on what would work a radical liberal solution or a gradual change of policies. However radical my views on the education or for that matter any other sector, the question of how practical they are has already perturbed me. So this was an important debate. By the end of it and after some more contributions from the moderators I believe that working towards it gradually is a right way (especially considering the Indian perspective). Also considering the Voucher idea with government money and monitoring is workable than being radical and wanting the government out all together.

My presentation on the voucher idea and the pilot studies in India was received well. It was astounding to know that almost no body had heard of the vouchers in education earlier, even individuals from countries that have experimented with vouchers earlier. It turned out that the pilot projects being run in Delhi are in particular the only ones that implement a huge number of free market principles and offer a real choice to the poor. The idea interested a lot of the participants who said they would follow our program (school voucher pilot projects) closely and look for avenues for such programs in their respective countries.

The next two discussions that left an impression on me were the ones of education as a tool to promote propaganda and that of religion in education. Civic education and the need to have religion being taught in educational institutions – the two most controversial topics of the seminar. The workgroup on civic education believed that the responsibility of civic education should be with the political groups and be more open than just limited to schools. We also defined how this will be carried out. Each political party having its foundation (picking the German example) and a council will be formed from each of such political party foundations that would then be responsible for imparting civic education. Though the process would be defined and make a general philosophy of politics necessary – leaving the receiver with the choice to decide which political model he/she prefers.

Religion however was unanimously ruled out as a necessary part of education and was deemed as something self imposed. Considered to bring in some sort of propaganda (religious or political), religion was left at the disposal of the individuals discretion – the one choosing to study can use the various avenues present.

Another interesting discussion was on the brain drain theory that was interactively played by 5 participants from the health industry. I played a health specialist from the developed nation helping to set up a health facility in a developing country. There was a predominant view that the people educated in a country with the state money should be bound –morally mostly – to serve the country and not move away for greener pastures. However, the view that a free market would itself prevent such situations of extreme brain drain – demand of a profession and respect for the profession would define if the professionals want to stay or move. Curbing individual freedoms and not incentivizing services is an ideal culture for brain drain.  

Vocational studies today provide a wide range of expertise to cater to the needs of the various jobs available in the globalized world. I see an importance of vocational studies in India – with a whole gamut of skilled workers in India, it makes more sense for them to enroll for a specific training in skills than complete schools (simple learning levels to read and write suffices needs and makes them capable of enhancing their endeavors). The vocational training facilities that we visited in Germany, though advanced, had something liberal which is that the private organizations funded the training of these individuals and absorbed them there in; however the students were not bound to do so if they chose to - an interesting model for companies in India to emulate.

Taking a peek into the privately run day care centre in Germany, I noticed how the children were becoming more responsible by being given freedom in things they did. Inducing responsibility into their actions would make them better citizens – the philosophy behind. The aspect that the child would learn by himself and would be held responsible for any wrong done was a good application of liberal minds.

Petra Pabst a liberal candidate, presented views and policies they have been using in their campaigns. Again some interesting points to be seen on the political horizon, some liberal ideas though for gradual change. This leads to the final presentation in the seminar – to narrow down to a few possible liberal policies that we would like to implement. The framework had already been prepared through the past 11 days in the seminar. This was probably the toughest working group; coming to a consensus on what the actual policies was a battleground with each participant wanting to put forwards his opinions in. The final presentation had a the following angles – an accountable system with changes in the manner which the government funds education, an opening up of the system to private institutes with monitoring of course, deregulation but not complete delicensing, incentive based structure for teachers, focus on life long learning and vocational training institutes were some of the major points. Accountability in the system was a unanimous outline in all the final presentations. On a whole the participants were inclined for a freedom in the educational ecosystem and wanted certain free market principles to be adopted for transparency and accountability in the system.

That the group took home the voucher idea was warming enough for me. However an interesting aspect of participating in the seminar was to observe and experience group dynamics – how people are divided in their political thinking and behave in a group discussion. Working democratically to a consensus and presenting ideas to the active participants was invigorating as well. As a whole I can now relate to an educational problem from different facets and look for a most workable situation, thanks to the international perspectives from the seminar.

The impressions of the seminar will definitely be highlighted in my endeavors at CCS. AS an hour long presentation I shared the important aspects from the seminar. All resources I accumulated from the different workshops at the seminar will add to the CCS library. The most important resource I have gained though is the network of participants. Even after more than a month after the seminar, I keep getting updates on important political scenarios from the participants. It sure makes an impact on how I can contribute to CCS.