The Temple of Education

Welcome, I bring to you a new chapter that looks at one other thing from the world with a new perspective. Some might conclude this as being too pessimistic. I am fully aware of the fact that this could go wrong and there are more chances to that than being taken positively. But there is a slight chance of this bringing a change and I am going to take my chances. Hope I get support. So let’s begin. It’s morning and you have gone for a walk, buses full of humans dressed in one uniform with faces that look tired and upset from the fact they are being taken against their will to a place they don’t want to go. But they are going just because they believe that going to that place would bring some good. Yes, they could be the people from the forces or the Military. But Today we’ll be talking of someone else. We are going to talk about that phase of the human life that everybody goes through(Some are not so lucky) Yes, I am going to talk about the schools and the education system today( honestly, I thought the title of the article would give it away). Whenever somebody starts talking about the schools there are usually two tracks that the talk would take. First, the old Why schools are great and the temple of education talk and the other the one criticising the education system for its working. I am not sure as to what direction my talk would go so, I’ll let you be the judges. Coming from India, where a great deal of emphasis is given to proper schooling and the need to get admitted to a good school is an even bigger challenge. Any middle-class family wants the best school even for a child of Nursery, there can’t be a better business market than this where there is no standard of how the prices are going to be set. School fees are set by owners as per their whims. To which parents have to agree blindfolded by the promise that their child would someday speak English and be an educated person. To add to these monetary costs, the recent trend of Pre-school has emerged, the idea of which is not understood by me till date. This is just the case of Primary Schools where the biggest question for the parents is not whether their child will get the nurturing he/she needs but the biggest challenge is will their child get admission. If you are not getting what I am talking about I suggest you should go and watch “HINDI MEDIUM”. Just to get the idea of what I am talking about. The ordeal ends here neither for the parents and nor for the child. Soon as he/she passes this hurdle of learning alphabets and basics he/she is burdened with yet another challenge. An age where he/she should be introduced with newer experiences he/she is made to go through the old and repetitive routine with only about 2-3 hours playtime in a week, the concept which I never understood. Things could have been rectified if after this stage she was allowed to choose and explore the infinitely many possibilities of this tiny world but NO, You do as everyone is doing. No Painting classes. No dance classes. No Football coaching. Yes but you should know that boiling point of water is 100 celsius and the fact that how long did Mughals Rule India. Stuff which honestly I haven’t used after my school was over. Okay, point taken that the child of that age is too small to choose and make her decisions wisely. But did you give him that opportunity? What if you let him take that chance. What if you had allowed him to take those music lessons or the book on travelling he wanted or the fact that he wanted to practise more on that Sunday but had to go because he had Homework for Monday. When things are done in such a mainstream way the outcomes are known and there are no surprises to that. So the same happens here and either you end up a medical student, an Engineer or Arts or Commerce. The journey gets more interesting from here but that is a topic for some other day.(Let me know if you want my thoughts on that too) No, I am not saying students should stop going to the school or there should be no schools.No. I too went to a school and learnt a lot of things there which no one could have ever taught me. What I really want is that the schools should now bring about a much-needed change. They should accept that their methodologies are not working out and they should make reforms. Atleast try to bring one. And not all things in the school are bad. There are a lot of memories I have from my school and most of them are the ones I cherish the most. The Last bench fun, The school canteen, games lecture, the tiffin boxes, those silly games we used to play, the school bus, everything. I now even miss that uniform which I hated every single day. But being real these are just the perks of a lot of young people spending time together. This is not what the school is supposed to do this all is just a by-product. The Education System Needs a change.period. P.S. - I have been in touch with many young students and one common pattern that I observed is students are capable of much more than what they do as part of the School curriculum. The main learning from these experiences are "Exposure is what makes or breaks a Child. Give him the best exposure of all there is and he will choose what's best. Trust them, they know better." I hope I conveyed what I wanted to. Hope you liked it. Please leave a comment. Thanks. Stay tuned.