What is education?

And I am not talking of literacy, which is completely different. I am also not talking about the education that gets one a job so that one can earn a living for self and the family.

For me, the primary role of education should be to build sensitive human beings, who should be able to earn a living for themselves and their family members whom they support, with a peaceful co-existence with others in the world. But is it happening? The existing education system has restricted its role to that of helping the individual in finding a job or career, with scant regard to the humanity aspect and the society at large. It has actually divided the world, instead of uniting it.

Education, as per me, should make individuals complete human beings with good physical, mental and emotional health, who respect human dignity and are ready to help others on as needed basis. I will omit spiritual health here, as any mention of spirituality in this society is immediately linked to religions and polarity start taking place as one’s conditioning.

Some international schools have recently recognised this dysfunctional aspect of education and have added subjects related to ethics and so on… in their curriculum. But will it help? It will not, unless we go in the deeper aspects of how a human mind thinks and how it is conditioned by the society, in which it lives. The education system in its present form, instead of making the society better, is actually dividing the society. You can actually see this in the attitude of most of the students from prestigious institutes like IIMs, IITs, AIIMS etc towards the students in the same field from other unknown colleges. The pride of acknowledging oneself superior to others can never make society a better place.  The pride of being a winner is fine. Unfortunately, most of the times, it turns into arrogance.

The family, the society - all love a winner, an achiever. But, what happens to the non achiever and the failures? Do they feel themselves a part of this society? Or is there a deep grudge of not being acknowledged? And where it starts? – Right in the school, where one is rewarded only for achievement. The psyche of the young mind is greatly influenced by these recognition of their activities and it keeps on getting intensified in their mind when they grow up. The achievement takes the front seat.

And who does not cross the fine line of right or wrong– in trying to or becoming an achiever, a winner? And does not the society and the family keep a closed eye or in some case, even justifies the acts of the individuals in pursuit of the so called achievements.  

So, who draws the line of something – being correct or incorrect?

Education system has to realise the fact that all individuals are different and they should not be and cannot be measured with the same yard stick. Since, we do that in majority of the society, the world is becoming violent as the winners and failures have their own conditioning for which they are ready to die and kill. The peace can only prevail, when the difference in individuals is accepted and maybe, even respected by everyone in the society including its leaders, rather than making every individual come out of an assembly line making them ready for a job market and/or follow the same ideology.

The task for the real educationist is not only to provide literacy, and some professional knowledge by which people can earn their living, but to remove the inequality from the mind of the people. Removing physical and social inequality is an unfinished work and let the educationist do not rejoice till that is eradicated. The inequality of superiority and inferiority in the mind is the real culprit of the conflict in the society and till the education system is able to cover it up, all exercises in educating the world will continue to be futile.

I am not an educationist and I have no solution to provide you with. But please note that all of us have a unique role to play and that is the reason why we are different. Trying to mould each child in the same pattern is like expecting the children to come out of an assembly line of a process industry with exactly the same traits.

Education has to get into the mode of encouraging diversity. Then only the people with diverse talents will feel welcome in the society and there won’t be any conflict of acceptance in them. And if we are able to remove the conflict of acceptance from the people’s mind, education would have realised its true potential.

Keep trying!!!!