Education & Perspectives

by Ravi Tandon

I am reminded of this great quotation from a great thinker

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

What this poem essentially underlies is very a vital aspect of education. Education is meant to liberate the mind of an individual. It must provide you with the answers to the most basic queries of your day to day lives guiding you with a sense of direction towards the fulfillment of your desires and aims.

My recent experiences seem to suggest otherwise. The disconnect between real life experiences and the primary motivation behind education itself baffles me and sometimes is hard to understand (may be it is just lack of experience & maturity or may be it is just meant to be that way).

We seem to be heading down a path that instills fear, greed and narrow-mindedness. Fear of failing at tasks laid out by others, where metrics are abstractly defined. We have begun a journey we never chose to take, our aims are not to achieve but to make others believe that we have achieved, where deceit and false promises work out really well in keeping with what is expected and not what is correct. The definitions of correct have become even more fuzzy. Over the period of time, I feel may be the ultimate aim of everyone around is to excel at material living.

Those lessons of morality that education gave us seem to have lost ground. They were good in books, when we memorized them to earn great marks. As soon as we were out, things changed, we changed and it is up to survival, a society that essentially somehow mocks at these lessons. It is hard to understand why we as social beings are adept at adapting to changing situations forgoing our innermost belief systems. A crowd following yet another crowd is what it appears.

Goals that have become so shallow, that you cannot distinguish one man’s desire from the other. Essentially, our society has turned into a tasteless group of mindless runners, pursuing goals we never loved. My deepest fears, is not that people do not experiment more, it is that I as an individual will turn no more different than others. Somewhere, within the social structure we might get caught up in the flow and start moving along, believing that was our destiny.

Where did the education fail,if it ever did? Why has the social structure triumphed over our understanding of our ourselves so easily? Why do we understand yet not realize our true potential? They say, to help others we must learn to help ourselves. How can individuals who cannot stay with their faith, move on and influence those around. The perspectives that education had to shape, might start shaping education in itself and that is one of my deepest fears !!