I just want to ask a very simple
question that we as a student community cannot just skip and turn away. Now
Education is our birth right with the implementation of RtE (Right to
Education) ACT 2009. All parents strive
for their child’s education and want them to become educated individuals. Irony
is that the term ‘Education’ and ‘Educated’ has been so rampantly used with the
presupposition we know so much about it or it does not need much consideration.
The truth is, ‘education’ or ‘educated’ words are not valued neutral but it
comes with a baggage of its own normative meanings. So, it compels me to say
that we are indulging education like a drug addict indulges in his/her kicks.
Let me try a jargon free writing as far as possible to score the point clear
and loud.
Are
you educated? What it means to be educated? Are student/learners by default
educated? These question could be logically answered as we answer questions
such as what is education and what are the aims of education which make us
educated persons. To decode the term ‘education’ let me echo R.S. Peter’s
definition of education- ‘Education means achievement of something
worthwhile and desirable (valuable)’. By this count, if you are
educated you ought to be a reformed person. Valuable achievement in education
is intrinsically valuable, meaning valued in itself and for its own sake. The
knowledge and understanding obtained becomes the features of oneself and shapes
the outlook of the person. But, treating education as a mere instrument of obtaining
a job or attaining certain skills demeans the true aim of education. The critic
of highly educated German society during Nazis tyranny could sum up in Wiesel's
words on education: ‘It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human
beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions,
ideology and efficiency rather than conscience.’ Introspecting into our
present society, I think the barbarity is increasing and will only escalate in
days to come. So we hinge in a very crucial position as we would not like our
society to go rampage in barbarity. The ferocity of the problems looks like
uncontrollable but the solution is yet simple. Has our education empowered us
to uphold the fabric of Equality, Liberty
and Justice which are at the core of our democratic society? Identifying
ourselves as educated person, are we liberated from the dogmas of bigotry? Through
education are we becoming a more peaceful and self-actualized individual or
more distressed, ever ambitious, self-righteous, self-centered people? Has the
education system that aims at making us more Rational, Autonomous and Conscious rather made us capable of
manipulating, violent, corrupted, and siphoning public welfare for personal
gain? Has our guilt feelings and consciences stopped pricking us for any wrong
deed? Not to mention of blind submission to a status or an ideology without any
critical analysis. There is nothing such as ‘one day’ or ‘someday’ where we
will manifest the quality of being educated but there is ‘today’: we as learners/students
should uphold the values in all sphere of our life.
There is lapse in what we see in
our society and what ought to be, where education prevails. Where is the
problem? Is something wrong in the way we are educated? Have our school, institution
and educators successfully educated us? Has the increment in individual education
increased the education of our society? These questions brings us to another
criteria of education, the criteria of procedure. Again let me echo R.S. Peter,
‘Education
should be brought about in a morally acceptable manner and should not infringe the
willingness and voluntariness of the learner’. Let’s introspect and see
if we are conditioned, indoctrinated and brainwashed more than being educated? Rote
learning of rhymes, national anthem, definitions and theories (without a clue
about the concept of the subject) by screaming at the top of the voice has
taken the hell out of our childhood. The institutions and teachers which were
supposed to bring us up as responsible, peace loving, non-violent individuals
were just the opposite for many. For average students it was not less than a
slaughter house where our ingenuity and childhood had died every day and fear
had ingrained in us since then and our emotional being hijacked. Please don’t
acknowledge the beating we received in our school time. Many may credit saying
that it is because of those smacking they are here today. Don’t fool yourself
and don’t give me that dame naïve explanation because without that you could be
a total transcendental person. The truth is, this practice is the mother of all
violence in our society. Just look around and see how many of our class-mates
have pursued higher education. Consciously or unconsciously we have detested
school and teachers somehow.
When our physic and psychic are
forming at best, when an average child smiles more than 100 times (some studies
claim 300 times) in a day, when curiosity and wonders struck us every second we
suddenly find ourselves cramped into a small room called ‘class room’. Your
knees are folded, backbone curved and finger on the lips; we become all time
successful passive listener and a ‘blank slate’ to all-knowing figure
(teacher). Each one is pushed into ugly competition with the help of
examination system. The joy of learning something worthwhile will always be
poisoned by the fear of passing the exam. Children are categorized into ‘caste
system’ where some are destined to success while others are doomed to remain untouchable
forever. How on earth does this education system promise equality in our
society?
Call me an alarmist or an
extremist but I least care your emotion because even today, thousands of
children are dying every day, they are injected with dead facts and information’s
in the name of knowledge, and they are cramped in small rooms supervised by
fear of teachers with cane stick. Schools have to stop this atrocities, they
have to open up a physical and emotional space for children to learn and grow.
Learning with joy is possible. Furious teacher and her Cane stick (symbol of
oppression) should be replaced by humane facilitator and reasoning and dialogue
should be her tool. Teachers and schools should stop behaving like a law giver.
Dirty competition should be replaced by healthy co-operation. We should turns
towards comprehensive development of children. Consuming indigestible facts and
information should be replaced by meaning making and understanding. Activity
based learning should replace passive receiving and children should be allowed
to construct knowledge. Radical transformation is calling out. We have to pay
head to it for heaven sake, our future is at stake. I could only scratch the
tip of the revolution required in our education. But, I hope it draws the
attention of those who have a heart of conscience and mind of reasoning because
for the rest George Gordon
Byron says “Those who
will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare
not, are slaves.”
