Do we serve the economy, or does it serve us?

FR Tom Kelleher (Letters, June 4) asked the right question: Have the so-called “productive” disciplines of technological and economic studies taken over exclusively in all third-level institutes and universities?

There is a fallacy taking wing and growing in the current economic climate.

It is that our education system must be geared to teach only those subjects that will produce people who will serve the “knowledge economy”?

The elite who stand to profit most from such ventures are the loudest in preaching this new balderdash.

Let me tell you that an economy based on soft jobs will crash again.

The purpose of education is not to churn out slaves for the market economy. Rather, it is to draw out the best in each person, not to beat in passing fads.

The greatest gift that education can give to people is the ability to think and reason for themselves.

We must not throw away three millennia of humankind’s finest achievements for a basket of modern baubles and trinkets.

My question is: do people exist to serve the economy or does the economy exist to serve the people?

Michael Mernagh

Raheens

Carrigaline

Co Cork