Commercialized Christian Education with Corruption

Christian urban schools and colleges are corporately following the line of corruption by commercializing education. With the soft coated ‘donation’ over the high capitation fees, admission fees to new section within the same schools and colleges, are only few signs to prove this point. The market economy with cut throat competition and hedonic consumerism has found headway into the Christian schools which are meant to serve the poor and the neediest. This proves the moral vacuum and value deterioration that the school management extend to the students and parents, breaking down the educative cultural ethos of the society. Money making game has crept into the Christian education system, poisoning the minds of the students and adults in the society, encouraging to create prejudices and hatred against the Churches. This is a war being waged between the rich, including the school management and the poor

dalits, adivasis, minorities and backward classes who get all the more marginalized. This serious situation calls for special interventions of the higher authority of the Church to curb immediately the public and ‘subtle’ game being played by some of the schools and colleges. This is a big injustice. In fact, these Christian educational institutions are being accused of profit seeking, thus contributing to the commercialization of education. Where will the poor go? Where has the credibility of the Christian educational institutions gone? Will the Christian Education Policy look seriously into this serious offence? Is this the ‘reign’ that we want our money-god to bring on this earth?

We need to remember what the CBCI, in its General Body Meeting on Education, 2006, has said: “To ensure that every Catholic child has a place in Christian educational institutions. No Catholic child, dalit/tribal or otherwise, should be deprived of quality education because of a lack of means. We keep in mind that a Catholic School has a special obligation to cater to Catholic children.” Education is a pastoral ministry, an evangelization process that teaches the Gospel values and promotes the culture of love and justice through counter-culture move in ushering God’s Kingdom. We need to distinguish the Church's educative mission to teach the Gospel values, giving a religious view of the person and the reality that is essential from the strictly development work. It cannot be seen in reductive terms, as something merely material. Therefore, one should not search for easy money making at best - the result will have negative consequences.
Justice that the Church wants to bring within the social, economic and political structures, has to be taught by the rational and upright self-witness, keeping in mind the entire human person.