The doors have got eyes. They see you as you close in and open on their own. The smooth and shining granite floor welcomes you as you smile at your own reflection on the tiles. Don’t forget to carry a helmet, lest you may slip and break your head. People are buried in their cushion seats in an air conditioned zone oblivious to the blazing sun outside. Beautiful women in deep blue blazers outnumber the nurses here. You are entering Columbia Asia, a recent addition to the chain of ‘Five Star Hospitals’ springing up at the outskirts of Bangalore. There is no accreditation to the number of stars, but with a small cup of coffee priced at Rs.15 and the same amount of milk priced at Rs.30, you won’t argue. If you belong to the typical middle-class-IT-Indian-insured-by-company, then you know that this is the place for you.
It was a tense moment for our family. My brother was being operated on his left leg for an accident he met with 26 years ago. While the surgeon was busy constructing a blood canal through his leg, I was quietly turning the pages of a day old Deccan Herald education supplement sitting outside the operation theater. Several thoughts over the state of Indian education paraded through my mind and the flow broke every time the doors of the theater opened, only to bring anyone but my brother out. Out of the several breaks I had that day, I clearly remember three.
An old man in his eighties was rejecting all offers for help. Fear and doubt gripped his heart and pain danced all over his face. He abused everyone. It was probably sheer coincidence, but no members of his family were around to help him ease out. The condition of this man represented everything old age stood for: fear, hatred, neglect, and denial. It was not anything like Siddhartha’s moment, but when one looks at old age it is not easy to brush away the feeling that one’s own journey is not in the opposite direction. I was only hoping that as the day comes when I get close to my destination, I should not be ashamed of the journey I made.
Time is just a perception. When you wait for something, it seems like an eternity. The grains of sand seem too big to make it through the small pores. The clock stops ticking and the world is in a perennial state of suspension, while you are the only one moving restlessly. Frustration eats on you and the door opens only to add to your disappointment. A lady in her late thirties made her way out. Her parents have been waiting as long as me. All my disappointment disappeared, as her mother lovingly stroked her head and called her “My Baby”. I had never come across a thirty seven year old baby before that, but love has the power to make anything happen.
Stay in a hospital for a day and you will see more pain than you can handle. Your heart will sink into a valley of depression and you might start feeling that the only truth about this world is sorrow. One needs great courage to reason otherwise and see the world from a different perspective. Slowly, the passageway was filling in with people. They looked more expectant than anxious. The door opened and there was no customary bed and a patient accompanied with a nurse. This time around the nurse carried in her hand a basket and a beautiful baby was glowing inside like a pot of gold. In a flash, my world of pain turned upside down. It is not for nothing that we surround babies. They carry a fountain of joy into this world and we surround so that we could drink from them. This fountain was born on Friday, the 5th of June, 2009. I suddenly realized that it was the world environment day and my heart sunk again.
This little baby gave me joy, but I am going to leave her a burning earth. Green may be a color she will have to do away with. Best things in this world are for free, but I have exploited them beyond use. No costly gifts would mean a thing to the new generation, if we cannot offer them clean air, water and earth. One day this baby will ask of me such questions that I might end up being ashamed of my whole journey and hence I pledged.
I pledged that I will do all that is in my capacity to gift every child that was born on the 5th of June 2009, clean air, abundant water and green earth. I need more people to pack this gift. Will you join me?
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Education: Enquiry Vs Utility
The utilitarian angle to education has been stretched too far enough. Our society is imbibing an idea in all its vulgarity that education is meant to prepare students for industry. Unfortunately, students are treated as commodities and educational institutions have donned the role of suppliers. Blame it on the commercialization of education, but the problem lies beyond that. The problem lies in our very understanding of what is education.
What is education? A casual browse through the history of education will suggest that education was not born, but slowly built. Education is an answer to man’s quest. As a matter of fact, it is the collection of answers to various questions that haunted mankind throughout human evolution. One has to just go through the first few pages of David Eugene Smith’s ‘History of Mathematics’ to understand the growth of a subject and the inherent need for it. The subject itself was an attempt by early civilizations to comprehend the whole, the infiniteness that surrounded them. Every subsequent generation adds a further drop about its own understanding of the universe to the existing reservoir and it keeps filling. The journey goes on and the quest never ends.
The worth of a generation should be gauged by what it added to that reservoir. To put it bluntly, what is our contribution to education? The answer is “Competition”. A couple of months ago, Swami Vivekananda Thought Center, an NGO that is working towards reforms in primary education organized a painting workshop at a school in Bangalore. The very first question from students shocked us - “What is the prize?” This illustrates the idea that our entire education system is enveloped in a muddy reward and punishment model and anything that has no material incentive is not received enthusiastically by children.
The children are not to blame, however. We are in an age where success is measured by the amount of money, power, or fame someone possesses and hence we teach our children that the ultimate goal of life is to succeed. We emphasize on that point by conducting time bound examinations and awarding ranks. It is easy to argue that examinations are necessary to gauge knowledge, but the question is whether our method of imparting knowledge is fool proof at all. Our educationists assume that the existing pedagogy suits children of all sensibilities. But that is far from the truth.
One of the reasons a child fails to acquire knowledge in classroom teaching is because the method of teaching does not resonate with the natural inclination of the child’s mind. Each child is different and hence only those children, who can align themselves to the existing black board approach to teaching, succeed. In short, creativity has made way to adaptability. If you place the students in a hierarchy of ranks, you can clearly see an almost pyramidal structure or a diamond turned upside down. We have more people towards the base than at the top. The model then goes on to replicate itself in our very social structure and leads to all the disparities we see today. If we look further we can understand that the root cause of all social problems lie in education or the absence of it.
The purpose of education is to free the minds of children and not bind them to conformities. Only a free mind can contribute to the reservoir because it knows the art of questioning. Unless competition disappears from education, freedom is impossible because children always end up trying to achieve a predefined goal. When there is no competition and no predefined goals, the mind seeks freedom and that is the beginning of education. As Swami Vivekananda puts it “Education is the manifestation of perfection already in man”. The irony is we don’t even understand what perfection is because we never journeyed in that direction. I reject the idea that the minds of children are like clay and hence can be molded. Please don’t treat lively minds like dead matter. Of course, education has to be useful and cannot be just spent in philosophical debates. But, it is only appropriate to point out that all that is useful is born out of enquiry and not out of methodical training the corporate looks forward to. Training is aimed at learning to use things, not to discover useful things.
Above all, educational institutions are not obliged to obey the demands of the industry. They are only answerable to society at large. Also, the industry’s demand from education is preposterous because industry doesn’t contribute to education in whatever way. If the industry is spending so much on training, they are earning so much more from each resource they train. The end of education is character and not employability.
What is education? A casual browse through the history of education will suggest that education was not born, but slowly built. Education is an answer to man’s quest. As a matter of fact, it is the collection of answers to various questions that haunted mankind throughout human evolution. One has to just go through the first few pages of David Eugene Smith’s ‘History of Mathematics’ to understand the growth of a subject and the inherent need for it. The subject itself was an attempt by early civilizations to comprehend the whole, the infiniteness that surrounded them. Every subsequent generation adds a further drop about its own understanding of the universe to the existing reservoir and it keeps filling. The journey goes on and the quest never ends.
The worth of a generation should be gauged by what it added to that reservoir. To put it bluntly, what is our contribution to education? The answer is “Competition”. A couple of months ago, Swami Vivekananda Thought Center, an NGO that is working towards reforms in primary education organized a painting workshop at a school in Bangalore. The very first question from students shocked us - “What is the prize?” This illustrates the idea that our entire education system is enveloped in a muddy reward and punishment model and anything that has no material incentive is not received enthusiastically by children.
The children are not to blame, however. We are in an age where success is measured by the amount of money, power, or fame someone possesses and hence we teach our children that the ultimate goal of life is to succeed. We emphasize on that point by conducting time bound examinations and awarding ranks. It is easy to argue that examinations are necessary to gauge knowledge, but the question is whether our method of imparting knowledge is fool proof at all. Our educationists assume that the existing pedagogy suits children of all sensibilities. But that is far from the truth.
One of the reasons a child fails to acquire knowledge in classroom teaching is because the method of teaching does not resonate with the natural inclination of the child’s mind. Each child is different and hence only those children, who can align themselves to the existing black board approach to teaching, succeed. In short, creativity has made way to adaptability. If you place the students in a hierarchy of ranks, you can clearly see an almost pyramidal structure or a diamond turned upside down. We have more people towards the base than at the top. The model then goes on to replicate itself in our very social structure and leads to all the disparities we see today. If we look further we can understand that the root cause of all social problems lie in education or the absence of it.
The purpose of education is to free the minds of children and not bind them to conformities. Only a free mind can contribute to the reservoir because it knows the art of questioning. Unless competition disappears from education, freedom is impossible because children always end up trying to achieve a predefined goal. When there is no competition and no predefined goals, the mind seeks freedom and that is the beginning of education. As Swami Vivekananda puts it “Education is the manifestation of perfection already in man”. The irony is we don’t even understand what perfection is because we never journeyed in that direction. I reject the idea that the minds of children are like clay and hence can be molded. Please don’t treat lively minds like dead matter. Of course, education has to be useful and cannot be just spent in philosophical debates. But, it is only appropriate to point out that all that is useful is born out of enquiry and not out of methodical training the corporate looks forward to. Training is aimed at learning to use things, not to discover useful things.
Above all, educational institutions are not obliged to obey the demands of the industry. They are only answerable to society at large. Also, the industry’s demand from education is preposterous because industry doesn’t contribute to education in whatever way. If the industry is spending so much on training, they are earning so much more from each resource they train. The end of education is character and not employability.
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