Moving aimlessly
Sahil Sharifdin Bhat
Our schools worry for literacy, not education. They promote memorization, not the spirit of innovation. They focus on grades and marks, not on knowledge and skills. They impose bundles of restrictions and do not grant the required freedom. They do not produce artists, sportspersons, global leaders and skilled people.
On the contrary, they produce unemployable and handicapped people that are nowhere needed in the practical world outside. It is one of the biggest tragedies of human history that Ph.D holders when fail to obtain jobs on the grounds of their useless education and futile certificates commit suicide whereas the least educated people like Amir Khan, Virat Kohli and their likes are counted among the most successful people of our region.
Does more schooling destroy people more? Are the schools of this country really the slave producing factories? Do schools truly clip the wings of our children and leave them crawling on the soil forever? Do the owners of schools destroy the physical, intellectual, psychological, emotional, ethical and mental health of our children and grant them in return degrees and certificates that have no value in the outside world? We live, indeed, in desperate times and we are required to take desperate measures to save our children from becoming slaves under our gaze.
Parents send their children to schools with great expectations. They reckon that their children are taught ethics, good etiquettes, lovely manners and useful skills. They hope that their children will be made good human beings at schools. When their children misbehave at home, they reflexively ask them if they had not been taught manners at the school. When their children go door to door holding academic certificates in hands to seek jobs, they enquire from them, why they did not get jobs and if their certificates were not valid. Who will make these parents understand that schools, colleges and universities are the factories which transform talent into inability, freedom into slavery and falcons into poultry?
First of all, we must blame the authorities and the ruling class of our nation for our obsolete, outdated and rotten education system. The Britishers left us in 1947 but we are still loyal to the education system that they had enforced here. The British education system which we still stick to was designed to meet the requirements of the industrial age. It was purely meant to produce the factory workers that would be punctual, obedient, less creative, less questioning and regular.
They would be called by numbers and not by names. They would work in shifts and in batches. They would arrive on time, do their lunch in fixed time when the bell is rung and depart on time. They would put on a special uniform, do the assigned work in the given time and have no right to question the authority. They would respect their master and follow his all instructions unconditionally. The master would give rewards annually to the most obedient workers (slaves). To tell you the truth, the system goes on. No political leader seems to have energy enough to change this rotten and decayed system of education. The political leaders build schools with poor infrastructure in their own country for the poor children but dispatch their own beloved children to obtain modern education from the developed countries. They deliberately do it lest the poor people from the weaker and the backward sections of this nation should replace them in the national parliament.
Secondly, the poorly trained teachers contribute to the rottenness and deterioration of the prevalent education system. There are two categories of teachers in this country: private schoolteachers, government schoolteachers. When people fail to attain the goals which they cherish throughout their childhood and youth, they declare themselves tutors or join private schools as teachers.
The majority of private schools ask their teachers to cover the prescribed syllabus in the minimum time possible, help the students cram the important questions which they will vomit on answer sheets in examination halls and resultantly secure maximum distinctions and positions which could be flaunted in the media. Their ulterior mission is to increase the business of their factories by popularising them, widening their catchment areas and luring more and more families to seek admissions for their children in them.
It is true that half a percent students of our private schools make it to colleges and universities or crack competitive exams which check out the power of memorisation of students and not their intelligence, however, the remaining ninety-nine and a half percent students of the same private schools are rendered unemployable and handicapped.
They do not have even any skill to run a tea stall anywhere. In fact, they are unable to solve the basic questions in mathematics, unable to understand the primary concepts in science and unable to read and write anything in English language correctly. I am a teacher by profession and I have encountered students sitting in 11th and 12th standards studying, so to say, medical subjects but unable to read a few lines correctly from their textbooks.
I wonder how come they were pushed to higher classes and with which justification? I am talking about the plight of our much loved private schools, not godforsaken government schools. As per the government teachers, they spend almost all their duty hours in election rallies, polling booths, census survey, polio vaccination drives, Covid19 vaccination drives, family planning campaigns, cooking and distributing midday meals to kids etc .
If they still have some sphere time, they kill it by discussing EPF’s and allowances with their colleagues. Exceptions do exist but how many government teachers send their children to government schools? Why is it so? Do they accept in their heart of hearts that they themselves are not capable to provide quality education to their own children in the government schools they are working in?
Thirdly, the curriculum and the methods of teaching in our schools need to be revised before it gets too late. It is a big joke to keep the people of the twenty-first century ignorant of the twenty-first century and teach them about the eighteenth century instead. It is a mockery to teach the same syllabus to the students of diverse mental levels and disparate passions.
It is like prescribing the same medicine to all the patients in a hospital without knowing their ailments and illnesses. If Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli had not run away from the schools of this nation, they would have been made either unemployable or private schoolteachers. Not all children like to study Science, History or Math’s.
Some have passion for sports, some want to learn singing, painting and music and some are born for mountaineering, military or business. Therefore, the dreams and passions of all types of children need to be addressed.
We need to change the teaching methods also. Why is it that a child is able to speak English language fluently without reading even a single book, whereas, another child is unable to speak even a single sentence correctly in English language after wasting decades in educational institutes?
If our educational institutes and our teaching methods were not faulty, tens and thousands of our children would not commit suicide annually. They would not suffer from depression and frustration. They would not bunk classes regularly. They would not name their schools as jails.
Finally, the students need to decide their careers after discovering their inner abilities not after looking at the people around. It is one thing to desire to become like someone and quite another thing to struggle seriously to achieve one’s goal.
There are thousands of fields but still the student’s bustle outside the gates of medical and engineering colleges knowing that only half a percent or less will get in. They must know that they live in a country where more money is spent on elections than education.
The aim of life is not to study, get a job, get married, produce kids and then let them repeat the same process. The chief aim of life is to understand the life itself. What is the use of that education or that job or that wealth which destroys our health, pushes us into depression, separates us from our kith and kin or forces us to commit suicide?
To conclude, a person with a good memory is not an intelligent person. The computer has the best memory. A person who obeys most is not the best person. No person obeys like a machine does. A person with maximum academic certificates and degrees is not the smartest person. Dhirubhai Ambani, Sachin Tendulkar etc have hardly any valid degree. Therefore, learn what is required, do what is bought and speak what is heard in the outside world today.
Let’s not stop our children from asking questions. Let’s not suppress their freedom, ingenuity and creativity. Let’s not clip their wings. Let’s not send them to slave producing factories called schools. Let’s give them education in the real sense of the word.
(The author lives at Lethapora Pulwama. He is lecturer of English language and literature)
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