modern education's got a nice ring to it...

Long ago in school, Sri Jayendrapuri Swamiji in his address to children distinguished an educated from a literate. It seemed a very obvious distinction to me back then. But now, after 9 years, I see how the lines between the two have blurred. When I say literate here, it is implied that I mean a literate in English.

Education for all is a Right. If parents don’t send their kids to school it’s considered a huge crime. NGO’s along with English graduates go to slums and teach kids English so that they can learn to “survive”. The Government with NGO tie ups have opened evening schools for women where they learn to read and write English. How absurd can we get as a society? Why would a farmer in some village want to learn how to read and write when he comes back home tired at night? Doesn't he want to spend some time with his family; sing and dance? Education is supposed to add value to life and not decide what value is.

After 16-17 years of education in ENGLISH MEDIUM schools, I have realized it was all such a waste of time and energy. At what cost? – My life, my future. The molding is in its finishing stages. The damage has been done. The final touches are pending. How could someone who has no idea of my interests and potential decide what I’m going to STUDY and how I’m going to study! I have no inclination towards Western way of living right now. I don’t care about my success or lack of it in the material world. But if I and my family have to survive, let alone live, I have no choice but to join a fair-paying MNC, sit at the desk for 8-10 hours and do something I don’t like. And to find that job, I’ll have to fit into the boxes that are prescribed, mostly undersized. In the process, many companies will stamp a “reject” on my forehead, I will probably cry for not being worthy in the society and then try really hard, learn some technical skills and join a company where a knife will always hang on my head. I will somehow manage to fool myself and the people around me that I’m good enough in the box like I have fooled throughout my education.

The anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know.

John Holt, How Children Learn 

When a child in the east, according to his traditions, wears only a dhoti is called a half-naked urchin indicating helplessness and poverty. But when a girl in an attempt to imitate the west wears clothes that barely cover any part of her body is considered modern indicating progress and liberalism.

I’m in a society where course credits and certificates are more important than learning and personal appreciation; where children begin their introduction with the graduation degree they hold and the university they go to [me included]; where grandparents are proud to see their grandchildren have a life that they didn't even dream of; where parents are proud that their children secure ranks in schools; where teachers idealize Western methods; where well-groomed minds want to belong to the brigade of gigantic entrepreneurs in the city; where barefoot is considered a sign of poverty; where tar roads are considered a sign of progress.

We have moved from wisdom to knowledge, and now we are moving from knowledge to information – and that information is so partial that we are creating incomplete human beings.

Vandana Shiva, Schooling the World

Well, yes, the damage has been done. How do I change before I suggest that the society should change? Talking back is one weapon most academicians propose. But I don’t see why they would want to listen to me talk. So that’s not going to work. Many people return to their roots like I’m attempting to do. By turning back to the customs and traditions of my family that I left after joining college, will I be able to do all things with the same belief that my mother does? My “informed mind” won’t let me take things as they are. The innocence is lost. It’s an obligation to logically explain and conclude things. The metaphysical stance is not easily acceptable.

If you’re raised in Colorado to believe that a mountain is an inert pile of rock waiting to be mined, you’re going to have a very different relationship to that mountain from a kid from southern Peru who believes in the fiber of his being that a mountain is an Apu spirit, a protective deity, that will direct his destiny throughout life. But the interesting observation is not whether that mountain is in fact a spirit or whether it’s just a pile of dirt – the interesting observation is how the education system into what that mountain is creates a different human being with a different relationship to the earth. 

Wade Davis, Schooling the World

Compassion and Love taught at home through religion perhaps can never be the same as taught in a moral science class. Cleanliness and the complexities of energy can never be taught in a formal setting as our "holistic education" classes. How can Lord Vishnu and his divine creation feature in a science textbook? Education only teaches us how to exploit nature while religion and traditional ways of teaching teaches us that we have a symbiotic relationship with nature.

So what has education done? In Wiesel’s words: "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."

What Is Education For? By David Orr is a classic read which gives us solutions for pressing questions.