EDUCATION - how much complete???

MANY FACETS OF EDUCATION

                                                                    

Education. Some say it is twelve years of careful note – taking, self study and staring at a black board (which looks more green than black most of the time J). Thanks to educational laws, nowadays we have an appreciable literacy rate. But is just literacy education?

Education is said to have been completed once its purpose is fulfilled.

The purpose of today’s education is mostly the rote learning of a few books and regurgitation by examination. Recent measures by the CBSE and the Education Ministry have led to the fulfillment of the goal of education to certain extent. We can now know and grow (which is something the CBSE logo propagates to the intellectual community).

The real goal of education is to educate to shape a child to become a responsible citizen who can take the mantle of the society when he grows up. Education is actually meant to teach values, too.

The learning of concepts through hands-on learning and not rote learning is just one of the many objectives central to the ideal form of education. It is really overwhelming to see that many schools have taken significant steps in that direction. Many schools are striving to make education a joy- ride by inculcating projects wherever they can.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan provides a classical example of real education. Tagore himself always had a personal distaste for education tailor-made to suit only those bent to serve the British Empire. So when he grew up, he established this gurukula for those who also shared his distaste for conventional education. Education in those days was primarily introduced to induct Indians into British Civil Services, and take services form them.  

From the modern day, His Holiness Shri Satya Sai Baba also presents a wonderful example through his own children. He did not admit his children to conventional school till a few years and gave them free roam across the house. The children used to go near red blazing fire and try to touch it. They then observed themselves how their fingers got singed in the process. Thus, they learnt that RED IS DANGER. Simple.

He (Satya Sai Baba) used to just watch these proceedings EAGLE-EYED from a distance taking care that his children did not cause themselves any real harm.

Thus half of life’s lessons are learnt by them before they enter school. We rarely get to see such examples in real life. Today, if you get the topmost rank the whole class cheers you. They don’t even ask if you wrote on your own or copied from someone (or even didn’t write at all – trust me, I do even have real – life examples). Not that I am saying to stop studying, throw your books out of the window or anything like that.

You might be a walking supercomputer, but still life isn’t algebra. Or sin, cos, tan. The best of life is enjoyed outside the books. You never get brains to handle real-life examples in leather-bound books.

Life presents us with scores of problems. Our job is to wade through its deepest waters because the day will bring the sun. We have to face all problems and solve them. There can never be an end to problems and we have to just keep on moving on, because that is what is life is all about.

Even in a classroom, half the students are physically present, mentally absent. Their mind completes a world tour while the body sits staring at a wall painted black. Their mind goes to America, Australia, Africa, sails in the oceans, dives in Galpagos explores the world till a hard tap wakes it back to the present. The teacher throws our globetrotter out of the class. (sic)

Sometimes one thinks of the golden era. Our parents did not have internet, computer and if you went and asked someone what Google or Wikipedia was, they did reply it maybe a place in a foreign country. But yet, they did study, did get great marks and topped classes in many cases. We should perhaps worship them for going along without Facebook or Youtube. Or Internet in general.