On Education, or What The Hell Are You Teaching in Schools!
1. Education should make a person better suited to live in the society, irrespective of his vocation, and schools should be the place where that education happens.
2. The learning of anything that does not improve the thought process of the learner towards understanding the nature of his subject is just skill acquisition.
“Education in its general sense is a form of learning in which the knowledge, skills, and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through teaching, training, or research.…Any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational.”
Type ‘education’ in wikipedia and you get the above definition. Now imagine the experiences of your school days and sit back and think about how much of your education did you get from your school and how much from other sources.
The above statement about education implies that education is learning in which the knowledge, skills and habits of people are transferred from one generation to another. It is related to people and is a social event. Social in the sense that it involves the involvement of people around us who participate in our learning. And since apart from knowledge education includes skills and habits too, education has a social purpose in that it helps us to get along with those around us in a better way.
So, you’re living in a society. What kind of education would you like to give to your young ones? It would include reading and writing, manners and discipline, what are the values and morals of our society, the laws of the land, an understanding of how things function, how the world around us functions, and so on. Things which would help our young understand the world around them, and help them to be active contributors to its betterment.
For the above, what is paramount is that education has to have a local perspective before it can take a national or global perspective. This means that the young have to understand the world around them locally, before they are taught about their nation, and then about their world. For how can you assume that education will make an individual capable to contribute to society at a national level without first making his contributions at the local level?
So what are things of local significance? Can they be the traffic rules, or local court procedures, or the procedure of the working of civic bodies, about hygiene and good manners, driving skills, taxes, and things of this everyday sort in the society?
For why are we not taught about things in school which everyone requires, traffic rules for instance? If they were taught to me in primary school, I don’t remember, but nowhere were the traffic rules a part of my course during the years I might have needed them. And why not teach driving in schools? Do the schools assume that the majority of the students would not require it in their life, when in fact a majority of them would already be coming to school on their dad’ scooters and bikes by the time they’re in class 8, and an affluent some would even have their own Pulsars and R15s?
So why not teach us things in school which are imperative for the efficient working of the society. Why not take the class out to a court-room and show them the court proceedings, and finish off through a practical that would include getting a sample affidavit made? Or go to the police station, and make the children file an FIR?
We have physical education as a topic, but why not make first aid a mandatory course in high school for everyone. Surely that would be more helpful in the pupils’ lives than knowing the rules of TT.
What I intend to say is that education is a socially motivated activity. Its purpose is to enable the people to share their knowledge, habits and skills with their young. This is what happened in our Gurukuls and Madarsas. People who attended these schools learnt about things which were relevant to their own society. But we have taken upon ourselves not to further the cause of education that is suited to our needs and taken up the course of Western education, which, at the time when we implemented it, little did we understand, and which took little or no inputs from our own education systems.
No wonder our schools have little influence on how our society behaves. Out of knowledge, habit and skills, the passing on of which was the purpose of education, we are only passing on skills. Skills that can help us find employment.
Ok, I exaggerate in the last sentence, but then again, although it might not be true in its full, its part is absolutely true. The proportion of skill development in our curriculum is far larger than it ought to be.
No wonder that we have educated graduates and post-graduates who are at a loss when it comes to explaining traffic rules or the procedures of their local courts. Why is this happening? It’s because we had adopted an education system from the West which we did not understand much of. The bullshit has kept piling till a good part of it is now submerged within mundane and irrelevant topics.
What we are basically studying when we go to school is skills that will help us to find a career. The hopeful and the obedient accept what is served them. But the outrageous and the impatient find the school curriculum out of relevance to life. No wonder that it aches and moans to study.
Like school or college drop-outs like Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Robert Persig or Curt Kobain, who might have dropped out because they were ahead of the knowledge that their schools could offer them in their leaning, if a large section of the working class starts to drop-out of school, it certainly means that the school holds little of relevance for what it requires for his life. It is not that they are averse to education all the time. It is also because they find it irrelevant. Their dropping-out is certainly a blatant point that the school curriculum is way out of the way to be of significance to them.
Now why do I say that schools provide skills, and not education? Education implies that the educated person would be more refined and better suited to the development of the society. It would be his skills through which he would contribute economically, his habits through which he would contribute to its culture and his knowledge through which he would contribute to its processes and betterment.
Knowledge and learning in education might contribute to either better engineering - roads, buildings, cars, dams or cellphones, better medical care - by way of better healthcare and diagnosis, food for all – though better cultivation, animal rearing and management of that produce, better laws, better understanding of our past, better aesthetics by way of arts, and so on. But if past knowledge is not used to grow upon and improved, then it is not really knowledge and it slides into the domain of skill. For knowledge means an understanding of the inherent properties of things. Whereas skills mean understanding the causes and effects, and utilizing them for your desired benefit.
For example, as a historian, I don’t want to learn and by-heart events that have happened in history. What good are they to me or the society! But I want to learn what had happened, how it had happened and when it had happened, in order to visualize how my society has progressed and what my current society is. This way I can influence the direction of where my society is headed. Just the knowledge of facts leads to nothing except that it causes rifts between people and makes them want to fight each other. It does not contribute to the well being of either the individual or the society. Similarly, we can talk about science, economics or commerce or whatever.
I as a engineer understand the working of the automobile and its components, but I rarely understand the properties of the materials until I have been told. For example, a gear-box counter shaft requires a certain amount of play in it without which it would break the bearings. But how much should that play be? Ask me and I will refer a service manual and tell you. If I don’t have a service manual - tough luck! But go to any road side mechanic and he will feel the amount of play with his hands and tell you if it were correct or not.
If I had known the answer from the manual, I would have been more accurate in terms of the amount of play required, but the local mechanic has a better understanding of the limits outside which a counter-shaft could break through his experience. Sure, there are engineers at R&D level who might have an understanding of this, but my guess is that they too would refer to the values as told by their German or French or Japanese counterparts instead of figuring it out for themselves.
The local mechanic thus would have less skill than me in terms of how and what happens inside that gearbox, but he would be more educated about the working of the gearbox as a whole. Is it a wonder that local mechanics have a tendency to repair things, whereas authorised service centres manned by diploma holders will generally ask you to replace the sub-assembly? True that there are a lot of novice mechanics who are only good for striking with a sledge-hammer, but I refer to those who are more discernible in spite of no schooling in their profession.
And I guess somewhere there is a deliberate attempt to keep education like this. Our education system keeps delivering people with skills that can be employed to get work done from. It inhibits enterprise and promotes societal chaos. It inhibits research and thought. In at least some way, it leads to mental slavery for the masses.
We require education to be different from skill building. Till high school or somewhere around there, there should be more focus on education that would result in a better society than theoretical science or history or geography.
Don’t teach me how to exploit the nature around me before you teach me how to care for it and nurture it. Teach me traffic rules. Teach me how to lodge a police complaint. Teach me how to drive a vehicle. Teach me first aid. Teach me manners. Teach me about the local festivals. And also teach me about the electrons, and the Pythagoras' theorem and the history of India. But know the priorities and proportions.
Higher education would be for people who want to specialize in a particular field. And it would be great if it could intertwine the practical with the theoretical in that. But schooling till high-school should focus more on the immediate requirements of the society than learning which is immediately forgotten outside the classroom due to its non-usage.[1]
Only then would we have a better cultured society. Instead of the chaos that it is today.
Our Gurukuls and Madarsas might have been doing well to educate the people. But the modern education system which we have adopted is leading to a high rate of drop-out levels in our schools. With a 42.39% dropout rate between classes 1 and 8 in 2009-10[2] in spite of the mid-day meal scheme, there is certainly a doubt about the relevance of our curriculum to the people’s lives.
[2] School Dropout across Indian States and UTs: An Econometric Study, Rupon Basumatary, International Research Journal of Social Sciences
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education#The_role_of_government
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“Education in its general sense is a form of learning in which the knowledge, skills, and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through teaching, training, or research.…Any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational.”
Type ‘education’ in wikipedia and you get the above definition. Now imagine the experiences of your school days and sit back and think about how much of your education did you get from your school and how much from other sources.
The above statement about education implies that education is learning in which the knowledge, skills and habits of people are transferred from one generation to another. It is related to people and is a social event. Social in the sense that it involves the involvement of people around us who participate in our learning. And since apart from knowledge education includes skills and habits too, education has a social purpose in that it helps us to get along with those around us in a better way.
So, you’re living in a society. What kind of education would you like to give to your young ones? It would include reading and writing, manners and discipline, what are the values and morals of our society, the laws of the land, an understanding of how things function, how the world around us functions, and so on. Things which would help our young understand the world around them, and help them to be active contributors to its betterment.
For the above, what is paramount is that education has to have a local perspective before it can take a national or global perspective. This means that the young have to understand the world around them locally, before they are taught about their nation, and then about their world. For how can you assume that education will make an individual capable to contribute to society at a national level without first making his contributions at the local level?
So what are things of local significance? Can they be the traffic rules, or local court procedures, or the procedure of the working of civic bodies, about hygiene and good manners, driving skills, taxes, and things of this everyday sort in the society?
For why are we not taught about things in school which everyone requires, traffic rules for instance? If they were taught to me in primary school, I don’t remember, but nowhere were the traffic rules a part of my course during the years I might have needed them. And why not teach driving in schools? Do the schools assume that the majority of the students would not require it in their life, when in fact a majority of them would already be coming to school on their dad’ scooters and bikes by the time they’re in class 8, and an affluent some would even have their own Pulsars and R15s?
So why not teach us things in school which are imperative for the efficient working of the society. Why not take the class out to a court-room and show them the court proceedings, and finish off through a practical that would include getting a sample affidavit made? Or go to the police station, and make the children file an FIR?
We have physical education as a topic, but why not make first aid a mandatory course in high school for everyone. Surely that would be more helpful in the pupils’ lives than knowing the rules of TT.
What I intend to say is that education is a socially motivated activity. Its purpose is to enable the people to share their knowledge, habits and skills with their young. This is what happened in our Gurukuls and Madarsas. People who attended these schools learnt about things which were relevant to their own society. But we have taken upon ourselves not to further the cause of education that is suited to our needs and taken up the course of Western education, which, at the time when we implemented it, little did we understand, and which took little or no inputs from our own education systems.
No wonder our schools have little influence on how our society behaves. Out of knowledge, habit and skills, the passing on of which was the purpose of education, we are only passing on skills. Skills that can help us find employment.
Ok, I exaggerate in the last sentence, but then again, although it might not be true in its full, its part is absolutely true. The proportion of skill development in our curriculum is far larger than it ought to be.
No wonder that we have educated graduates and post-graduates who are at a loss when it comes to explaining traffic rules or the procedures of their local courts. Why is this happening? It’s because we had adopted an education system from the West which we did not understand much of. The bullshit has kept piling till a good part of it is now submerged within mundane and irrelevant topics.
What we are basically studying when we go to school is skills that will help us to find a career. The hopeful and the obedient accept what is served them. But the outrageous and the impatient find the school curriculum out of relevance to life. No wonder that it aches and moans to study.
Like school or college drop-outs like Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Robert Persig or Curt Kobain, who might have dropped out because they were ahead of the knowledge that their schools could offer them in their leaning, if a large section of the working class starts to drop-out of school, it certainly means that the school holds little of relevance for what it requires for his life. It is not that they are averse to education all the time. It is also because they find it irrelevant. Their dropping-out is certainly a blatant point that the school curriculum is way out of the way to be of significance to them.
Now why do I say that schools provide skills, and not education? Education implies that the educated person would be more refined and better suited to the development of the society. It would be his skills through which he would contribute economically, his habits through which he would contribute to its culture and his knowledge through which he would contribute to its processes and betterment.
Knowledge and learning in education might contribute to either better engineering - roads, buildings, cars, dams or cellphones, better medical care - by way of better healthcare and diagnosis, food for all – though better cultivation, animal rearing and management of that produce, better laws, better understanding of our past, better aesthetics by way of arts, and so on. But if past knowledge is not used to grow upon and improved, then it is not really knowledge and it slides into the domain of skill. For knowledge means an understanding of the inherent properties of things. Whereas skills mean understanding the causes and effects, and utilizing them for your desired benefit.
For example, as a historian, I don’t want to learn and by-heart events that have happened in history. What good are they to me or the society! But I want to learn what had happened, how it had happened and when it had happened, in order to visualize how my society has progressed and what my current society is. This way I can influence the direction of where my society is headed. Just the knowledge of facts leads to nothing except that it causes rifts between people and makes them want to fight each other. It does not contribute to the well being of either the individual or the society. Similarly, we can talk about science, economics or commerce or whatever.
I as a engineer understand the working of the automobile and its components, but I rarely understand the properties of the materials until I have been told. For example, a gear-box counter shaft requires a certain amount of play in it without which it would break the bearings. But how much should that play be? Ask me and I will refer a service manual and tell you. If I don’t have a service manual - tough luck! But go to any road side mechanic and he will feel the amount of play with his hands and tell you if it were correct or not.
If I had known the answer from the manual, I would have been more accurate in terms of the amount of play required, but the local mechanic has a better understanding of the limits outside which a counter-shaft could break through his experience. Sure, there are engineers at R&D level who might have an understanding of this, but my guess is that they too would refer to the values as told by their German or French or Japanese counterparts instead of figuring it out for themselves.
The local mechanic thus would have less skill than me in terms of how and what happens inside that gearbox, but he would be more educated about the working of the gearbox as a whole. Is it a wonder that local mechanics have a tendency to repair things, whereas authorised service centres manned by diploma holders will generally ask you to replace the sub-assembly? True that there are a lot of novice mechanics who are only good for striking with a sledge-hammer, but I refer to those who are more discernible in spite of no schooling in their profession.
And I guess somewhere there is a deliberate attempt to keep education like this. Our education system keeps delivering people with skills that can be employed to get work done from. It inhibits enterprise and promotes societal chaos. It inhibits research and thought. In at least some way, it leads to mental slavery for the masses.
We require education to be different from skill building. Till high school or somewhere around there, there should be more focus on education that would result in a better society than theoretical science or history or geography.
Don’t teach me how to exploit the nature around me before you teach me how to care for it and nurture it. Teach me traffic rules. Teach me how to lodge a police complaint. Teach me how to drive a vehicle. Teach me first aid. Teach me manners. Teach me about the local festivals. And also teach me about the electrons, and the Pythagoras' theorem and the history of India. But know the priorities and proportions.
Higher education would be for people who want to specialize in a particular field. And it would be great if it could intertwine the practical with the theoretical in that. But schooling till high-school should focus more on the immediate requirements of the society than learning which is immediately forgotten outside the classroom due to its non-usage.[1]
Only then would we have a better cultured society. Instead of the chaos that it is today.
Our Gurukuls and Madarsas might have been doing well to educate the people. But the modern education system which we have adopted is leading to a high rate of drop-out levels in our schools. With a 42.39% dropout rate between classes 1 and 8 in 2009-10[2] in spite of the mid-day meal scheme, there is certainly a doubt about the relevance of our curriculum to the people’s lives.
________________________________________________________________________
Post Script: A right to education has been created and recognized by some jurisdictions: Since 1952, Article 2 of the first Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education. It does not however guarantee any particular level of education of any particular quality.[3]
[1] “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten” – B.F.Skinner[2] School Dropout across Indian States and UTs: An Econometric Study, Rupon Basumatary, International Research Journal of Social Sciences
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education#The_role_of_government
Comments
At some point when our population grew so large and there were so many gurukools, they saw that each was different and there was no standard, so they thought that a combination of everything good would be the best form of education. Great. But what they did not think through is that how difficult it would be to make any changes to this standard system and how, in the wrong hands it could lead to the downfall of a great nation.
For me, the saddest part is that children have to wake up early morning, carry bags twice their size from an early age, walk miles or travel in cramped rickshaws, devour that lethal midday meal, slog throughout the day till almost dark and then come home and do the homework in the name of education. With every passing generation, we increase the quantity of shit we feed to these minds. Every saturday is working, freaking IT companies are better. Text books are getting heavier. They start teaching the 12th portions in 11th standard through special classes. More special classes. tuitions. And they think these minds are gonna be brighter because of all this. Imagine the engineer who has been through all that and at the end some researcher publishes that he is not fit for employment. Corruption is not our biggest problem.
All those stuff you want to teach the next generation, parents can arrange for that. You can teach your future children to drive or file a complaint. But only if they have the time after school.
The best thing that can happen is that schools reduce the amount of non sense they teach. Close schools by 2 PM everyday. Then people with real skills can start passing it on to the next generation. Mechanics, musicians, drivers, police officers, athletes, business people, they can all have their own paid training sessions. Ah, the sweet scent of freedom.