Learn A Different Lesson Today

I want to study.
A free world.
About freedom
And dream a happy dream in
A world of my own
I want to learn.

When the world stresses on education, when our nation grapples with the issue of reservation, there are some voices that really dont matter. the quality of education which our literatti are facing with should be of prime concern. well, you say, first why not think of people who are deprieved of education. let them be educated then we shall think of the type of education that they receive. well to my defense i can say, the quantity has its own spokesperson ( and they are doing a pretty good job about it ) now let me campaign for the quality.

The quality of education that we are engulfed in cannot be limited to the amount of information upload that takes place. never confuse quality and amount. amount is learning about the statistics of the BPL people and their lifestyle, the extent to which it affects the nations ecomony and the opinions and synthesis from across the world. Quality will give you the essense to form your own reaction.

When an engineer learns about pipes and cisterns, when a law student learns of the Indian Constituition, when the media student learns of the various genres in film studies how effectively does that education or learning allow them to compare and contrast with the vagaries that life throws at them every instant? mathematics is not about two plus two. it is about how you can save yourself the gulibility of being cheated for change by a shopkeeper. physics is not all about quantum mechanics and sound waves. It is merely just explains why you have to shout to be heard at a far away distance. the very core of all the syllabi of studies was born out of the need to understand why nature ticks and turns in such a fashion. a deeper understanding of what we see and hear at every waking moment is the basis of our textbooks.

Then why are we reduced to mere scores and scores of theories and equations that are required to be produced at the whim of a lecture just for a pat on the back or an awe that you solicit from your classmates. Is it with pride that you can say that AUB equals n(A)+n(B) even before the professor completes the equation on the board or is it better to understand the reason why a visual representation like a Venn Diagram was necessiated to understand basic grouping in humans and objects? the carrot is won but with what honor can you relish the taste?

The whole fault can be pin pointed to various factors but the quintessential factor being the error committed from a teacher to a student. ancient days saw the Indian Gurukul system where the values of life was taught to the students thwough examples and folktales to underline the primary message or the moral. i wonder how many of us actually stop to think of the moral behind all the bed time stories that we have heard or tell to children. perhaps the Indian system of education should take a leaf out of the book written by our own ancestors and incorporate more examples and method based pedagogy into our curriculum.
oh yes the arguments. its an obvious fact that Asians ( i shall not merely point fingers at us) in general benefit more from text based education than method based. when compared to Westerners who are more oriented to learning lessons from life we are surely ahead in terms of IQ and Brilliance. but then what we should do is compare the lifestyle between the two stereotypes - an Indian engineer and an American freewheeler. the Indian engineer ( nowadays) works hard, parties harder but then lives a life that can be encapsuled in a page. Whereas the freewheeler, with no education, no skills whatsoever, merely trudging along the way , moving continuoulsy lives a life that can run into volumes equivalent to the Brittanica Encyclopedia. of course both countries have their share of each other and there have been a lot of changes happening in the life styles but it is merely to illustrate the point.

We cannot do without the arduous school system of teaching but what we should propose is a slight case of lineancy. it never hurts for teh child to remember the best things of their school days as the project work they undertook or the rehabilitation camp they visited rather than the ever increasing number of tuition centres they visited since time immemorial for their 12 th boards. An excuse for a refreshment such as tennis, dance and Art classes are now marketed more fiercely as the largest competitive grounds for children forgetting the main reason why it was introduced out of curriculum for a student. this change can never be possible unless the glory hungry mindset of our parents change. and perhaps all the better more reason to start at the grassroots.