“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.” – Marian Wright Edelman
The moment one sees the phrase ‘preventive care’ one would think about one’s health since we often talk about prevention in the context of disease and ill-health.
Though the famous saying ‘prevention is better than cure’, attributed to the Dutch philosopher Erasmus, is often used in the context of disease prevention the basic idea of the phrase fits any other situation where it is better, easier, and less expensive to prevent something bad from happening than it is to deal with after effects. People all over the world experienced this during the Covid-19 pandemic where simple measures such as wearing a mask, keeping the distance, and frequent hand washing could save them from a lot of trouble they would have had to face if they contracted the virus.
In some cases, those preventive measures certainly would have saved their lives. People usually do not hesitate to resort to preventive measures to stop crimes from happening, especially protecting their personal belongings and properties, and to stop accidents from happening.
In fact, it can be used anytime one has to make a decision. A student preparing for an examination could benefit by studying hard to prevent getting a bad grade since it is easier than having to repeat the exam and fall behind.
Price comparison
It is better to learn about a product and do a price comparison before you buy it to prevent having to deal with an inferior product and/or disappointment of not getting the value for the money. It is very important to read and understand everything, including the fine-print and the annexures, before one signs a legal document or any type of an agreement to prevent unexpected troubles that can be created based on what one has signed and agreed. Most of such decisions people make by looking at the gains and losses individual basis.
Prevention certainly is better than cure even if the decisions are made collectively with the intention of making the group better. The Covid-19 pandemic reminded everyone that the suggested preventive measures not only protect one from the disease but also will help protecting the people around him/her from contracting the disease from him/her. Especially since the virus could have transmitted through people who did not show any symptoms of having the virus.
Therefore, those preventive measures reduced the risk of getting infected for all others in the community as well. Preventing road accidents not only save lives and protect people from injuries but also help reducing insurance and healthcare costs.
A reduced number of claims will help keeping the premiums low for everyone in the community and reduced healthcare costs will help the authorities to use that money for any other useful aspect of community development.
Crime prevention
Crime prevention also not only can influence a community in reducing the cost of investigations, legal procedures, incarcerations, and rehabilitation but also can improve the living conditions of the people in the community and increase the property values.
Another aspect of crime prevention through proper awareness and law enforcement is that it will discourage would be criminals from committing the crime so that they will have better chances of living their lives as law-abiding citizens.
Their families will not have to go through the trouble of dealing with the legal procedures of defending a criminal and/or worrying about them being in the prison.
If a community is capable of establishing strong reliable crime prevention procedures, then people in that community will really feel the freedom of living without fear. Women and children will not be afraid of walking on the streets alone or with their friends and family. People living without such fears will enjoy life better and that in turn will make them more productive and contribute more to the economic development of the community.
What do all these preventive measures and their consequences have to do with Education? Perhaps a better question is: What does education have to do with all these preventive care analyses?
Especially since ‘education’, as most of us have come to accept, is what one has to go through in order to gather some qualifications so that one can find a decent job to earn a living.
Embedded even in that narrowest definition of education, one can argue, are the characteristics of being a sustainable preventive care measure since people with such educational qualifications and respectable jobs usually have ways and means of taking care of their health, do not become criminals and are usually productive members of the society.
This may not be completely true since most of the white-collar criminals and politicians also belong to this category. If the education system produces medical doctors whose primary motive is to make as much money as possible by maximising the number of patients, they see by spending the minimum amount of time with each patient then they are not able to educate patients about prevention.
If the primary motive of the engineers at the electricity board is to maximise their personal gain by blocking all avenues of developing alternative energy projects, then not only the sustainability is lost but also the opportunity to make people aware of ways and means to prevent an energy crisis is also lost.
Education system
If the teachers coming out of the same education system are only worried about the students in their tuition classes and are not concerned about the plight of the other students in the state school system, then not only the equity in education is not sustained but also an opportunity to guide children out of poverty and out of the cycle of producing criminals is lost.
If the politicians who come to power are only interested in making themselves, their families, and friends rich by stealing public money then not only the sustainability of the country’s economy is lost but also an opportunity to prevent any economic, social, and political crisis from happening is lost.
There is no better time for Sri Lankans to understand the concept of education in a much broader sense than today since we are all trying to find solutions to, perhaps, the most serious financial and political problems the country has ever faced. Unfortunately for the citizens of the country, our law makers and most of the officials, most of whom are political appointees themselves, the group that has been chosen to manage the country, have not shown any sign of such an understanding yet.
More than fifty percent of solving a problem involves understanding the problem and the way it has been created. Any solution that does not address the root causes of the problem is bound to fail in the long run, though it may serve the purpose of getting the politicians reelected in the short run.
If we are to learn from the history of the world, we should be focusing on short-term solutions immediately that can be converted into long-term solutions without digging the hole any deeper than what it is now. One would first have to put the fire out and then start looking for the cause of the fire so that one can implement preventive measures to stop similar things from happening. One of the first things to do in that process, as Marian Edelman has said, is to understand that “Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it”.
The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic for over twenty years in the USA and fifteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]