In the midst of a lecture on Human Resource Management, where the present discussion was hovering over exploitation of un-previledged children, suddenly my eyes caught a sight outside the window. It was a construction site. Some boys aged around 6 were carrying bricks and cement, a girl aged around 5 was looking after a baby, may be her mother was out there earning the days food.
The professor called my name and asked, “Is there something very interesting outside”. I said “No”. The lecture resumed.
I studied in an English medium school. Almost all the kids of my locality studied there. We used to play in the evening. We also had some “tribal” kids along with us in our gang. But they went to a different school. A school, where my parents told had no fees, where you go or you don’t, nobody cares, teachers don’t turn up for most of the classes. I wondered how it all looked.
Education, as defined and dreamt by great men like Rabindra Nath Tagore are finally settling to places such as books and literatures, from where it is taken up only when someone prepares a speech or a write up, as this one. And we claim to be the educated lot of this era.
Yes, we earn in six figures, live in multi-storeyed buildings, work in air-conditioned offices and when we pass through some slum and a child beggar comes across our car’s window pane, we offer him/her a 1 rupee coin and feel as if we are the fully responsible citizen of this country.
I guess this was definitely not the vision our forefathers dreamt. So where we went wrong?
I am a technology guy with skills on foundry and forge and now I am getting a management education. Well, it didn’t happen that easy. I had to toil hard to crack the competitive exams to get through. So why did I chose this? My first answer can be that I wanted a good education. But why that? So I answer a couple more and finally I confess the ultimate one. Money.
It is not the story of a single person. Success or failure is decided by the college we study, the job we do, the salary we get. Education has taught us this, i.e to grow. Grow by all means, and all means, means money, more money!
So have we become money minded? Not at all. We attend spiritual lessons, go to temples, offer alms to the poor. But who made them poor? Actually it is us, the educated responsible citizen.
So what should we do? One solution can be to take away all the wealth from the rich and distribute it to the poor. So why are we not doing that? May be because it may create the same situation with the roles just getting swapped.
Something that is wrong and starts from the beginning, that which inculcates in us the belief that if we can surpass our peers, we are the winner. Yes, it is the prevalent education system. We get educated to defeat and when we get defeated we take more education to defeat someone else.
We learn to understand why earth goes round the sun, how the nuclear reactor works, how to debug a million lines computer program, how to market a product, how to write a balance-sheet, how to increase production in a factory, how to retain employees in an organization and a thousand more things. But is this education?
Is it not the irony of our society that at one side we sit inside the classroom discussing things on child labour and exploitation and at the same time witness it with our eyes outside the class.
Why this basic necessity be devoid from some on grounds of economic unevenness. Moreover why don’t we question the society where we talk of equal rights to all but when it comes to education we have schools which have fees which only some can afford.
Actually we can change it. As we are the one who has made this. Only it had to be accepted and taken up by visionaries. Concepts like Shanti-Niketan needs to fostered, where learning while experiencing and thus growing and finally understanding a totally different domain of education that otherwise we have completely sidelined. Cynics may argue that it has failed but understanding has to be developed that it is us who have to make it a success instead of finding flaws in it.
A lot needs to be discussed and even more needs to be done but when do we start, from where and how? Its not far away from the day when we are able to answer these questions, shedding our self-occupied interests and beliefs. Its not far when we start thinking for the society as a whole rather than for personalized benefits and interests.
