The Catastrophe called education. 

  I think I must have been lured into entering this vicious system of education, otherwise a man of my knowledge and understanding must have instantaneously recognized the hollowness of this system and rejected it, but human mind as each one of you who are reading this must have experienced at least once in your lifetimes falls short in front of temptations and succumbs to it, and I being a human fell for such a temptation. As far as my memory runs the most basic form of bribe (if something of that kind ever exists) that was presented to me for getting into this ‘Sinking Ship’ was of  a good life, which was very sweetly drafted to me in sweet and inspiring words by none other but my parents . Now am I blaming them for pushing me into this empty and false set up of education? No, absolutely not! I perfectly understand their helplessness, living as social beings in a society made by some fanatics, they were bound to act according to the whims of the social norms, but in doing so I must admit that they unknowingly have helped in degrading my level of free and independent thinking.

    To be specific on what an individual gets in the package that is being offered by today’s educational system, there are some countable things, you can start with the thing they call as percentage, respect that is glued to it and a lot of theoretical dumbness. Now I know these last words which I mentioned must have craved a big hole in the hearts of those teachers of mine who during their lectures enlightened me with the importance of ‘by-hearting’, but then I want to be critical here, and after all these years of tedious schooling and colleging that I have undergone I  haven’t learnt anything much divine or ground breaking, all that I have been able to understand from this learning system is that “life is some kind of challenge and I am bound to face it.” To be honest I agree with the thing that life is a challenge which goes on feeding on our desires, but as for the part of facing it, with what kind of weapons am I to face this challenge? Now this is something which I have been asking around and a question which the educational system for some unknown reasons is constantly avoiding. From my experience, the most common answer that you are bound to receive when you question the validity of such an educational system are, 1) Who do you think you are? How dare you put forth such a question 2) You are pretty naïve  and last but not the least 3) You are mad! . * Note: asking these questions can be injurious to health, you may ask these questions at your own risk.

Now getting on to the serious issues let me talk about my disheartening experience with the educational system, as I had mentioned earlier I was lured into this system, but keeping my positive instinct alive I tried facing most of the drawbacks of the knowledge which was offered to me, although I was never satisfied with it but I accepted it, to be truthful I had to there was no escaping from it , but then my expectations about an ordered and good life, where I could be more of a human and less of  machine, where I could see and understand life within its larger campus, where I could do something creative, something different was diminishing, my ideas which could have been important( as of now I cannot claim it with surety  that they were valid ones as I was never allowed to indulge into them)were  termed as far-fetched ones, the problem as I now decipher was that I was never allowed to understand anything, was not allowed to experience anything, what I was allowed to was just learn, learn and learn without actually putting to use any of those things which I learned. The thing that was happening was I becoming sort of mechanical book reader, just going on reading without actually understanding.

One more thing that I would like to add here is that my learning as a part of my life has failed to show me the essence of true world, its grandeur and hollowness, I was kept in darkness, taught that world is just a competitive place and you will have to compete to survive, I was never taught to show compassion for weak, I was always taught how to dominate them, I was told that the only way to survive in this world is to study, score good marks and get a good job. Yes this might be where life for those people who had the privilege of teaching me ends, but then what about actually living life? I was never allowed to look out of the classroom, to observe, to think about people, their manners, their problems, I would go on to say that I was blinded by the books that were placed covering my eyes from the sides, It was as if I was some sort mule who is not allowed to look sideways and you know as they put it “waste” it’s time but to run the long race of life just by focusing on its goal, the end results. Today when I look back at these days of my life to be precise learning days of my life, I feel that I could have achieved far more things if I were taught the vibrant aspects of life, I would have someone different, a far more better human, who understands his life and is not confused as what to do and what no to. Here at this juncture I recollect a line said to me by some person of my personal acquaintance, “Shakespeare would have never wrote his plays if he had the faintest idea that his plays would be read in closed classrooms instead of being acted out and enjoyed ”. Now this is what actually happens, I being a literature student and an ardent fan of books went in for opting literature as a part of my degree college with having this misconception that I would be taught how literature can or does influence life and how to think of life in terms of the philosophies that the literature provides us with, but what I got there in the classrooms was something different from my expectations, I was forced to memorize the names of critics who instead of adding more essence to literature were busy with their fights about what is right and what is wrong, I was asked to manipulate the quality of my answers by increasing their lines with all the nonsense stuff, as I was judged on the basis of the amount of papers that I was capable of filling, subjectivity of my thoughts went down the drains as I was expected to be something called as objective, it was as if I was learning something fake, something which I found hard to relate myself with. Whereas now when I read books just for the sake of enjoying them and not for attempting any exam, I find that I understand life in better terms, the knowledge in the books are vast, I feel that the need of such an educational system which fails to arouse the general interest, the need of such a teacher who is not able to impart the ability to think and to question, is least required, but then the point is that this problem with education is understood by most people but they like keeping quiet and try  to adapt themselves within the framework of this hollow system. We are capable of such drastic adaptations from single celled being to monkeys to humans to……….