What is education? Is it just limited to acquiring particular set of skills in order to make oneself capable of earning bread and butter? Or should it be more than that?
Hmm...Education???
(I am not trying to write a critique on present education system, I am just trying to conceive an idea of education or should I say the way I see education).
The time of infancy, I think, is the most critical stage of our life, when we are inordinately open-minded and receptive to any sort of information. It is the time when any set of information given to us gets written in indelible link on our memory slate. Thus, the role of our parents and myriad relatives at this juncture, in my opinion, is very important. And, no wonder the terrorists prefer preparing their likes by brainwashing very young (may be children) rather than full-grow mature adults (in their case it might be very difficult or easy, again depends..).
The point which I am trying to make here is that every information, however subtle it may be, if gets implanted into the mind of child during infancy, in future would come to govern his/ her worldview and all his/ her life’s major or minor decisions. Thus, it is my dearest advice to all parents to disseminate as much secular, liberal still deeply religious education as possible and avoid brainwashing the future of this planet with intolerant, fanatic, caste-ridden poisonous one, in order to develop a perfect society, a perfect nation and a perfect planet (Utopian vision!).
During our schooling, the teachers come to play a very important role. In India, in ancient times, there was Gurukul system of education wherein students went to live with their teachers in order to acquire education. The teachers were called Gurus, who did not teach out of selfish ulterior motives of money, fame, etc but out of sheer love, for the upliftment of mankind at large. Then was the time when disciples truly respected their teacher (gurus) not out of fear but deference. In present system, education is a mere commodity which is sold by a vendor (lecturer) to a customer (student) at the highest rate possible. At-least in developed nations the vendor does his job very well, whereas in India with a borrowed and useless system, the vendor just fills his hours.
Even with vendor-customer relationship, the type of education that is taught cannot be considered complete. It is nothing but a machine making education to produce men/ women who will make heaps and mountains of money without any regard for moral and ethical values. What kind of country do we want?
What type of education then? It further gives us a question, why do we require education and what is its purpose?
The purpose of education or for that matter purpose of any action in life can only decided when we have that ultimate goal in our sight, the purpose of this life.
Consider this now, Indian seers of yore said that purpose of this life is to attain Moksha or Nirvana, but then it should be lived self-less and motive-less or in other words purpose-less. And, it leads me to say, what the hell...? They always have me confused with their ambivalent statements, saying things such as He is everything and yet He is nothing. Now what am I supposed to draw from this.
Nonetheless, they devised a social system which they called varnashrama which has now been unfairly and very wrongly termed as caste system and instead of the original one this corrupted and atrocious system is now being followed, irrespective of its divisive and poisonous nature.
What was varnashrama and how it could’ve given us a goal of life? And, how could it have been possible to know the purpose and thence the type of education?
Some of my thoughts on education:-
- It should form a person’s character; impart to him/ her courage and strength of a Lion accompanied with faith and humility to respect your elders and everyone else.
- Give to him/ her technical skills, enough to earn bread and butter for survival and yet a yearning to perform in their fields with absolute excellence.
- Instill in young minds the ability to think properly and independently.
- 99.99% percent of a crammer is far worse than 00.00% percent of an original.
- Can be had anytime, when you are ready.
- Is imagination.
- When a student fails, it is the teacher who does not know what and how to teach. Thus, it should be considered as the failure of teacher.
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