Education

Skills and Instincts are inherited in us and we use them for our pleasure and joy. We try to learn new things and enhance our existing skills. And after a while it becomes very difficult for us to differentiate life and survival. We forget happiness and joy in the pages of academics and career. Generation after generation, bar is raised to new heights and literally there is no objective reason for doing so but we still do it. Every generation try to make a mark in this world. As per our great anthropologist, we had evolved starting from:

Ardipithicus ramidus
To
Australopithecus
To
Homo habilis
To
Homo erectus
To
Homo sapiens (heidelbergensis)
To
Homo sapiens (Neandertalensis)
To
Homo sapiens (Cro-Magnon)



And finally, to the current state: ‘Modern’ human being. Mostly the study deals with the step by step growth of bone structure, tools and skillfulness of the prehistoric man. People may find some more skeletons and will introduce more stages in the evolution of man. The important lesson is, all this is explained to a 5th grade student (In much more detail) irrespective of his interest in it. There are many such topics, for example, congress sessions all across Indian cities, are nothing more than collection of names and dates. And the moment we call them legacy of our ancestor, it becomes much heavier for a kid to carry (at least in his school bag). Everyone get puzzled when they are graded based on there response to questions like “where congress session held on 21 Oct 1888?” and to make things worst, when we understand that some students don’t like it, we try to further complicate the process and try to find different ways to make the child understand or rather push-in such issues. We don’t care about his evolution in his present life. We all had studied all this (Some of you may not even remember) and people had graded us based on our capabilities of spelling, remembering some events and formulae mostly irrelevant to our enthusiasm. Welcome to the Education System.

Some more people thought on a cup of coffee/tea in their cozy government edifice that only Human evolution or historical legacies are not enough, Students should know biological, mathematical, scientifically, zoological, anthropological, physiological and psychological fields too (mostly illogical). The result, child who is not interested becomes victim of education system. Overlooking the hard side of the situation, there is a possibility of student becoming aware of such fields early in his life. This certainly gives an edge to interested students because they can choose and excel early in their lives. But the theory is an exception not the rule. The rule, on the other hand is, most of the students never explore other possibilities in life and that’s the reason for such heavy competition in very few fields which is because of lack of open minded Education.

Overall, our education system primary focus is on only 5-7 subjects and this shows the petite hands with which we are dealing with education. The education is certainly not confined to mere 5-6 subjects but it should also be a tool to introduce a student to different aspects of life. If the current education is given to farmer kids or traditional artist kids, it will not help them much and they too will become Engineer, doctor or some other professional. With such education system we actually face a threat of creating monolithic Unicode society. And once education is made available to everyone, people will start falling in to the same pit. Already migration has started and some traditional art and artist are facing this problem. Not providing education is one face of problem, but sofar quality education issue is not even addressed.

Education needs a much bigger definition than just being a grading agency where people are fetched, weighed and graded on standard scale. The courses should be realistic (if not related to real life) and should be more practical. The purpose should not be just education to everyone but everyone should get quality education. After all as a living being we are devoting the most important time of our life to make ourselves ready to enjoy life. The best way to do it is to do the best you can. If a child has traits of an artist he should be trained in a suitable way. And his grades should have more weightage to his art credit than to his math or science. I am not saying that he can’t do well in math, but my point of view is why everyone needs to be good in math? A visionary once said, “Why we need poems of Shakespeare, an art piece of Leonardo da Vinci or equations of Albert Einstein to gauge and inspire? Why don’t we let the child invent himself and create history?” give the student a equation and he will understand, reproduce and reuse it, but give him a blank paper and he will invent it.


Amidst all prominent problems we are confronting at present, the root cause is our lack of focus on education system. We don’t look for solutions but we indeed look for books and history to find answers. We often criticize politicians as experts in the field, but we don’t appreciate politics as a career. Similarly, we become judgmental when no one wins a medal at Olympics but we don’t give a damn to the fact that we ourselves discourage the very talent in the kids over studies in his school days. The appreciation for a good table tennis player and a school/class topper cannot be compare. Many kids actually never explore the opportunities in right minded career options.
Question 1: How many of us know a poet, a writer, an artist, a historian etc…! (Living person)
Question 2: Anyone knows a businessman, a film star, an Engineer? Didn’t we have a chasm in our mind? I bet all of us have answered for question 2 but for question 1 we need to refer history because we had stopped recognizing such personalities.

On the positive note, some initiatives are taken by corporate and other agencies to promote social work, art, sports and other exceptional contributions. Media is a great tool to explore such opportunities. There are some career counseling programs which introduce viewers to different streams. Unfortunately in a country of masses we don’t give much attention to such aspects. Education system does its damage by producing students from single mold education system and many ends up pursuing similar profession. We are not even introduced to 10 professions and we had already chosen our (As we say it) life goal or aim. Next time try to grow a plant, write a poem or even try to draw your thoughts using sketch pen on paper and you will know what I am trying to tell.

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