Are our students starving? How many of them are so miserable that they can do nothing but weep over their lack of resources to feed themselves? Are there enough of these helpless souls to make us wonder what’s gone wrong with our society?
The answer is yes. Yes, there are many students who face significant difficulty in trying to survive with their daily struggle against hunger while trying to complete their higher education.
The lack of public sympathy is astounding. It’s clear that there’s an appalling failure to recognise that students come from diverse financial backgrounds, that sizeable numbers are children of poor families.
Indubitably, when the larger part of the population falls under the B40 income group, some students out there will starve. This is not because their families don’t care or because the students themselves are not financially prudent, but simply because there just isn’t enough money to go around. It is easy to enclose ourselves in our little urban echo chambers where the population is largely middle class, and fill the Internet with sceptical comments because we cannot bring ourselves to believe some people just have it that bad.
We cannot compare the situation of a middle class child with that of someone of much less financial capability. Yes, teach our children prudence when it comes to spending. Back in 2007, my mother gave me enough for two meals of nasi campur and bus fare. If I wanted money to go out and splurge, I would have to earn it myself. That’s an important virtue to inculcate in our kids, but remember that circumstances are not the same for everyone. I remember course mates who scrimped and saved every single sen to make sure they would have something to eat on the morrow. This was years before GST and before the drastic weakening of the Malaysian ringgit.
One of the things we can do to address the situation is to ensure that scholarships and other forms of aid are targeted more effectively, taking into account such factors as the size of a student’s family and the income and educational background of his parents.
Rest assured that if nothing is done, some students will not have any chance to succeed. They’ll be bogged down with multiple part-time jobs when what they ought to concentrate on is their studies so that they can make a future for themselves and their families.
Some of us who happen to have the advantage of social mobility and financial security often fail to think about how the other side lives. We pass by an uncle with leukaemia selling toys by the roadside and don’t stop to wonder how much money he really makes with so much effort. We see a makcik on her feet late into the night selling keropok and don’t ask why she would tire herself for pittance.
Yes, there are among our youth those who cannot control their spending, who are irresponsible with their money. These are the ones who need to learn their lessons. But there are others who often don’t have enough to spend on what we would call a square meal, much less to even imagine what it feels like to spend on something unnecessary. To dismiss their complaint with a generalised observation about the carelessness of youth is to be as callow as the privileged but irresponsible young men we spoke of above.