We Deserve More...(II)

I was somehow admitted that year, and with all the experience I had, I was regarded as the bravest and the most mature boy, in the class…yeah, some were two years and some one year younger to me. Those fools had some kind of connection with tears and departing parents, and just could not manage to hold them back, even during the class, and I thought I was the only one who felt some freedom from the homely (dis)comforts and hassles at the school.

Getting back to the point...I used to have a superb calligraphy. But in due course of time, it was all ruined…reasons…the education system. Stop assuming things and read further. So, I had this teacher who was not very fond of me, and one day scolded me, I think unnecessarily. That was it. I only scribbled in my notebooks that day, and on, and now I just can’t seem to get rid of the habit. Second…I used to be a studious student, I used to work hard, and without much of results. What was even more barbaric of the teachers was that they didn’t think I deserved passing in subjects like MORAL SCIENCE and DRAWING. Huh…morons…didn’t, in fact couldn’t, even realize that I was the one with the best hand at drawing INDIA’s political map, with all the states. The worst part of it was that over the years, and following the continuous drawing debacles, I have lost my perfection. Moral science, I think the ones who know me should explain better.

What do I do next? I stop studying and the decision immediately bears fruit. I get the first second rank in my life. A moment of realization of the futility of the education system, or perhaps the fact that I was not in the best of schools. Anyhow, something revealing that I learn, and quite unconsciously, is that you ought to have a good relation with your teachers. Damn you, I don’t mean anything physical. Only that you need to be the apple of the eye, through your active involvement in the rubbish of the class or the academics. The latter of course helps, simply because once you manage to create a reputation, it continues for the rest of your life. At least this is what happened to me. And the only thing it does is that it destroy anything that qualifies as an intellectual or, academic, for that matter, capability in you. It carries with itself, as sense of false security, a false sense of satisfaction and the detrimental effect of blunting your sharpness. Now, what happens is that you score only in the subjects that are not absolute. Yeah, I scored only in History, or Geography (this one was objective), English, Hindi and Moral Science. (I should have hurled my M.Sc marks in the face of the one who detained me, and said, “Now take this, in your face, asshole”). I barely managed to pass in Math, or Physics. I did well, though, in Biology, and Chemistry, and ironically, I am in the career that would not even remotely connect to Biology. (I enjoyed all the subjects I did well in, for the record).

So, after my matriculation, I go to this Kota place, and there too, education disappoints me. It so happens that we are required to take tests on a regular basis, and upgraded or downgraded, depending on our results. Now, the lesser mortals like me can barely manage to pull off some 70 percentile, and hence find ourselves in the bottom of the merit list. Education manifested the imperfection. Here, I should mention an important observation, of one of the toppers…he said that education did its bit in bringing out the perfection, but examination of that bit of education effectively overrules the verdict of education. He would then go on to say, behind my back, that may be some possessed lesser degrees or superlativeness in some areas. Now Mr. Topper, wherever you are, let me get my message to you very straight…this form of education does nothing more than establish fools like you as the kingpins of our society and we all know how the society fares. Or more of an admittance, yes, some of us are not perfect in all ways, and my point of contention is the validity of my opening statement, and in that sense you and your education fail miserably. So does swami Vivekananda, who so ignorantly went to claim this aphorism.

I am now in supposedly one of the best colleges in India, and what is manifested out here in students is no less than shocking. Very unwittingly, most of them discover their potential in terms of booze and cigarettes, or weed so to say, some of them realize they were not meant for studies, and decide to pursue a career in sports, the remaining bastards are good for nothing people who simply waste the government’s money. A few others, who find comfort in music or literature, curse the choice having been forced upon them, and don’t give a damn to whatever happens of the hopes they had managed to raise over the past 17 years. I am not trying t make a commentary on the status of the schools in India, but my point is the social system regarding education and the academic inabilities to cope up with them, leave alone molding them. What educations uncovers in places like here, and not only here, almost everywhere, is that half the people are dumb, the remaining have a share amongst them who should not bother the society much and the choicest few, who manage to surface as the perfect, are the ones who are, generally, the most inappropriate form of perfection.

It is of course a point to be made, about the form of perfection that had been talked about. I mean, how the perfection in music can be manifested without a proper guidance in music. You can’t just mug up some physics formulae about frequency and quality and stuff, and claim to have perfected the knowledge of music. Bull shit. And how can the perfection in sports surface through some, let’s say mechanical theories. You don’t calculate the trajectory before throwing a cricket ball or hitting a football. And they don’t teach you proper literature or that stuff here. So, my basic contention is that the form of education that has been widely accepted, and of course I am totally writing account on the basis of a personal experience, needs to be changed, even if in the idea of the system.

A good example would have been the thoughts of the legendary Gandhi, or the suave Vinoba bhave, who had this concept of taleem, or education from the very roots. Now, we had the British question the highly value based form of education in Indian culture, and even plans of wrecking this value system. My point is that without even the modernity introduced in the education of their period, the Britishers had the fear of the system of education prevalent in India. Yeah, we owe our current system of education to Lord Macaulay, who during Lord William Bentick’s rule made an assessment of the Indian form of education, saying its ancient form of education was its greatest strength and to colonize India, we must first enslave this education. And where do we stand now…the lack of this education, the one for the development in the individual as the primary objective, the one where one takes education out of an interest in the respective field, the one where nothing of the domain of knowledge is commercialized, nothing of the development aspect is compromised, none of this is to found. As the Acharya says that education just for the sake of it, just for the hope that this education is just a means for not the enlightenment of the self, but just that it might one day help you break away from the cruelties of the world economy, and perhaps, the idea that one might not have to be involved with any form of physical labor, is no education at all. I don’t know, if I am correct in judgment, but the Indian economy is now-a-days more of services oriented. Where is the manufacturing sector, where is the investment in education, where is the investment in the basic living amenities, where is the investment in the moral sentiments of the nation?

Our education is particularly dominated by mainly the left brain subjects, like math, science or language (the poor bystander), the right half things like arts, craft music and others are simply ignored, or considered as extracurricular…and the education which deals only a half of the brain, is not only incomplete but also dangerous, so to say. ‘Ek sachchâ shikshak apne shishya kâ bhi shishya bankar rahta hai. Yadi is drishti se apne shishyon ko sikhâne kâ kâm karenge to âp unse bahut kucch pâyenge.’ (Gandhiji). In the modern India, where do we find teachers, with a genuine interest in their teaching? All they have become, a bystander remarks, is t(r)eachers. Education is now becoming result oriented, and cut throat. The cause is not far from known. The society, after colonization, had derived too much from the western form of learning, and that too in a corrupt way. Gandhi said, that the motive of education should have been to develop the head, hands and the heart, whereas in today’s education, the hands have been atrophied, only the half of the head is in the focus, and the soul, the heart have been totally ignored. Where are we heading towards? The English Babu has gone, and we are still burdened with the yoke of the Brown Saheb.

I think I have talked enough to successfully get you away from my blog for once and for all, but let me mention one last point. The idea behind the manifestation of perfection should not just be confined to the left hemisphere, but extended as well towards the development of the overall structure of the knowledge process. Why do we need education after all? Yes, of course the purpose of education was civilizational advancement, and we all know that no technological progress can be ever viable without the proper realization of the purpose of that idea. Never should we tend to confuse the purity of knowledge, by aligning it with ulterior motives, and never should we try to quantify things which are much more valuable to the civilization, in absolute, material ways. The concept of education, I don’t know about elsewhere, but in India needs a paradigm shift, and one man who thought of this has long departed from amongst us. This cannot be achieved without a general introspection of desires, motives and the very purpose of education. It is not just about literacy, or may be about freedom from physical labor or profit, for the record. It’s about learning, the idea of education is not just to absorb things, values and knowledge, but to assimilate it in a way that contributes towards the wholesome advancement of the soul, mind and last and certainly not the least, body. It’s about the choices, the stress on their freedom, at the same time, a concerted effort towards the proper guidance of these choices that promotes the value of education.

Today we are still living in a transitional chapter of the world’s history, but it is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the race. At this dangerous moment in human history – the nuclear age – the only way of salvation is the Indian way.

Education should not try to manifest the perfection, in a way that has been misinterpreted by the Brown Sahebs, but strive towards a general harmony between the mind, the body and the soul. Once again, Education should not be dictation, but didactic. Education should not surface the imperfection, but look to find the areas of perfection and further polish them. Education should not a yoke, friends, but a will.