I havent quite followed the controversy over Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's statement on government schools. From the video I saw, he says naxalites often from government schools and he is saying this from his organisation's experience in Jharkhanad or some such place. The AOL runs 185 free schools in tribal areas all over the country and would know a bit about school education.
Now, saying many naxalites come from govt schools is not the same as saying govt schools churn out only naxalites- the thread TV channels have taken. It's so easy to distort what people say. I have seen it far too often in my field and am particularly amazed at the non-chalance and regularity with which the TV channels continue to invent controversies to feed their time.
Anyways, the issues takes me to the whole point of our education system, and whether it is working.
I am one of those who has never EVER donated a single paise to education anywhere. Ya, I know this is cruel considering I am a huge beneficiary of education. If my parents did not decide to send me to school, college and post-graduate college, I would be just one more woman serving time in a household under some autocratic husband's thumb. This is not to say educated women dont get autocratic husbands.
Jokes apart, the reason I cannot support education as a cause is because I believe the kind of education we receive here and today reduces us to selfish, insensitive, consumerist and petty people who think only about themselves. Think about it.How many times have you seen teen collegians checking themselves out in the mirror to see if the makeup is in place but who doesnt look before throwing garbage out of a running train? It's the educated who frequent malls, supermarkets to get their groceries and other consummables including all that food in the food courts in disposable plastic or paper. If the first is ruinous for the environment, the other too is, by virtue of depriving us of that much wood and, thereby, trees.
How many educated people have you seen standing respectfully in queues, waiting their turn, giving way to elderly people of helping the disabled. I have seen only the uneducated or less educated do all of these.
This is because community living was just a thin textbook is our schools, with barely 50 marks annually, and did not exist in our colleges. At least this is how it was in the early seventies and from that I can tell, things havent changed much.
There are two primary issues with our education. First, we continue with the Macaulay thinking that churns out clerks proficient in managing tables, offices and laboratories. We have refused to change that. Our focus is information and not knowledge.
Second, after retaining Macaulay in spirit and form, we have added insult to injury by getting our school syllabi and textbooks written by extremely motivated historians and writers, all of whom are dyed-in-the-wool leftists. After all, Nehru was a capitalist who wanted everyone else to be leftist. And the rightists and centrists, if they existed back then in the public space, were known to be consumed by their anxiety to protect Hindu culture including obnoxious caste and anti-women practices. They were not educated and educatinng anyone was not on their charter.
So, we had these clinical books written by cold rationalists whose worldview conformed to what could be seen and heard. It did not have any place for values, respect, culture, emotions, sensitivity and such profound matters that are required for refined living. Their goal was to bombard people with enough information that is available in the domain of verifiablefacts-- history, geography, maths, sciences, etc.
In the process, we became human robots and turned uncomfortable at the very mention of religion. I spent years wondering why I felt so odd to admit I pray at temples. It felt so infra dig and uneducated thing to do. I struggled with this whole host of questions about my self-image and the reason I was not supposed to be doing pujas etc. For the record, I dont do any. But that's because I dont want to. My point is why did I feel I could not, whether I wanted to or not.
The roots go back to my schooling. Not many teachers told me to value my roots, nobody told me about the Hindu calendar, the story behind the festivals, Vedic math, the social and economic milieu of a typical urban India. These subjects would have made me gel and blend well with my people, the space I lived in. And that was where education has failed me. So, I dont know anything about the samvat calendar and frantically look for the English one to celebrate birthdays. I dont know how Diwali is celebrated in the south, or why Onam is celebrated in Kerala. I dont know how to treat neighbours at home or eldlerly at railway stations. If I do know something, it's because of my upbringing. The schools havent helped at all.
Now I come to the reason I hate education most. Our education teaches us to be competitive. Instead of grooming us, it trains us to process all the information we have learnt so that we can rival everyone else on the planet, The sole purpose of the education system is to get each one of us marchng ahead and fighting with one another in that race to the top. Instead of telling us how to live together and promote each other's growth as co-partner's in a community's and nation's and world's growth, we learn only how to survive for ourselves. We cheer each time we get a better increment than the others. That would be fine. But that becomes the leit motif of our existence and the essence of all discord. Because someone somewhere has got to give. And when that happens, there is misery all round.
For every step ahead we take, there is someone out there who is being deprived of the opportunity to 'grow'. This is sheer leftism, I know. And this is Murphy's law. It works. But more than left or right, it is the truth. Economists will find ways to bungle out of this and prove this is not true But the fundamentals of society are based on the tenet of inequality.
That, is my problem with education. We get cold and cocky in our cocoon.
Now, saying many naxalites come from govt schools is not the same as saying govt schools churn out only naxalites- the thread TV channels have taken. It's so easy to distort what people say. I have seen it far too often in my field and am particularly amazed at the non-chalance and regularity with which the TV channels continue to invent controversies to feed their time.
Anyways, the issues takes me to the whole point of our education system, and whether it is working.
I am one of those who has never EVER donated a single paise to education anywhere. Ya, I know this is cruel considering I am a huge beneficiary of education. If my parents did not decide to send me to school, college and post-graduate college, I would be just one more woman serving time in a household under some autocratic husband's thumb. This is not to say educated women dont get autocratic husbands.
Jokes apart, the reason I cannot support education as a cause is because I believe the kind of education we receive here and today reduces us to selfish, insensitive, consumerist and petty people who think only about themselves. Think about it.How many times have you seen teen collegians checking themselves out in the mirror to see if the makeup is in place but who doesnt look before throwing garbage out of a running train? It's the educated who frequent malls, supermarkets to get their groceries and other consummables including all that food in the food courts in disposable plastic or paper. If the first is ruinous for the environment, the other too is, by virtue of depriving us of that much wood and, thereby, trees.
How many educated people have you seen standing respectfully in queues, waiting their turn, giving way to elderly people of helping the disabled. I have seen only the uneducated or less educated do all of these.
This is because community living was just a thin textbook is our schools, with barely 50 marks annually, and did not exist in our colleges. At least this is how it was in the early seventies and from that I can tell, things havent changed much.
There are two primary issues with our education. First, we continue with the Macaulay thinking that churns out clerks proficient in managing tables, offices and laboratories. We have refused to change that. Our focus is information and not knowledge.
Second, after retaining Macaulay in spirit and form, we have added insult to injury by getting our school syllabi and textbooks written by extremely motivated historians and writers, all of whom are dyed-in-the-wool leftists. After all, Nehru was a capitalist who wanted everyone else to be leftist. And the rightists and centrists, if they existed back then in the public space, were known to be consumed by their anxiety to protect Hindu culture including obnoxious caste and anti-women practices. They were not educated and educatinng anyone was not on their charter.
So, we had these clinical books written by cold rationalists whose worldview conformed to what could be seen and heard. It did not have any place for values, respect, culture, emotions, sensitivity and such profound matters that are required for refined living. Their goal was to bombard people with enough information that is available in the domain of verifiablefacts-- history, geography, maths, sciences, etc.
In the process, we became human robots and turned uncomfortable at the very mention of religion. I spent years wondering why I felt so odd to admit I pray at temples. It felt so infra dig and uneducated thing to do. I struggled with this whole host of questions about my self-image and the reason I was not supposed to be doing pujas etc. For the record, I dont do any. But that's because I dont want to. My point is why did I feel I could not, whether I wanted to or not.
The roots go back to my schooling. Not many teachers told me to value my roots, nobody told me about the Hindu calendar, the story behind the festivals, Vedic math, the social and economic milieu of a typical urban India. These subjects would have made me gel and blend well with my people, the space I lived in. And that was where education has failed me. So, I dont know anything about the samvat calendar and frantically look for the English one to celebrate birthdays. I dont know how Diwali is celebrated in the south, or why Onam is celebrated in Kerala. I dont know how to treat neighbours at home or eldlerly at railway stations. If I do know something, it's because of my upbringing. The schools havent helped at all.
Now I come to the reason I hate education most. Our education teaches us to be competitive. Instead of grooming us, it trains us to process all the information we have learnt so that we can rival everyone else on the planet, The sole purpose of the education system is to get each one of us marchng ahead and fighting with one another in that race to the top. Instead of telling us how to live together and promote each other's growth as co-partner's in a community's and nation's and world's growth, we learn only how to survive for ourselves. We cheer each time we get a better increment than the others. That would be fine. But that becomes the leit motif of our existence and the essence of all discord. Because someone somewhere has got to give. And when that happens, there is misery all round.
For every step ahead we take, there is someone out there who is being deprived of the opportunity to 'grow'. This is sheer leftism, I know. And this is Murphy's law. It works. But more than left or right, it is the truth. Economists will find ways to bungle out of this and prove this is not true But the fundamentals of society are based on the tenet of inequality.
That, is my problem with education. We get cold and cocky in our cocoon.
