Education sans value is meaningless. Dr Parneet asks a pertinent question about the education system at present. An exclusive for Different Truths.

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” ~ Albert Einstein   

To educate our children and the upcoming generations, we seem to have lost the path of real education. Education, in the contemporary sense, implies a collection of facts and figures, showcasing them in one form or the other, irrespective of their implementation in life and reality. The word success, having an altered connotation now, follows this education with folded hands. Therefore, the twin concepts of education-success no more carry a similar seasoning or understanding as it did almost 100 years ago.

The twenty-first century has witnessed several other concepts and ideologies transforming into technologies, but the sense of education has seen a complete makeover. An educated person is now no more a person of scruples and morals, but one of demeanor and presentation. Degrees now decide the credits for bearing social and national responsibilities and of declaring us, good citizens. Young children are shoved into waters of information they never learn to swim in. Burdening tiny brains with unsolicited and unwanted data leaves them frustrated at an age when they have the potential to be the happiest and the most creative.

Happiness is now measured in their talents of pleasing their teachers and parents. What height of hypocrisy we have reached! Creativity has suffered a greater shock with our contemporary education system. Children are made to sit and create according to the timetable of the school curriculum or the taste of their parents. Creativity is customised according to the availability of resources, time, and trends. If dancing is in vogue, every child is expected to attend dance sessions to compete with others of his age no matter what the child’s interests may be. Paid guidance through the creative lessons further curbs his natural yearning and inclination to create something on his own. Over-indulgence and protectiveness of the guardians frustrates the child instead of making him a natural-born creative artist that we all are.

We are trying to defeat nature in a competition in which we do not even stand eligible. Our concerns are now with the status (individual, social, economic, political, national to name a few) based on notions of material accomplishments thereby defining success in a hypocritical tone. Measures of salary, packages, perks, designation, and power exhibit our education. The essential inherent attributes of humanity seem to have lost their luster amidst the proliferation of facts, degrees, and currencies.

Collection, assimilation, and management of information is the new definition of education. The syllabi do not include ways of living, ways of thinking, ways of feeling happy, ways of spreading happiness. No school teaches how to learn and how to think. Children are handed over-loaded baggage to drag.

Decision making, problem-solving, critical thinking, nurturing, caring, loving is never included in the syllabi, leaving our youth groping in the dark.  Our personalities are shaped by the colours of our books, weight of our notes, the ink of our degrees, refinement of our linguistic exposition, economic status ( not to forget how it catalyses the social status), and the air of superiority we have been successful in creating for ourselves.

With such a murky foundation, where do we see education? With our brains competing with Artificial Intelligence, where are we aspiring to reach?

With our children spending their childhood in burdensome, depressing, and technology-driven environments, what human qualities are we expecting to see in the coming times (leave aside the divine qualities that our grandparents used to unearth while teaching us ancient values)? When we are entangled in the cobwebs of uncertainty and burdens of loads of information, and whom are we educating?

Visuals by Different Truths

Dr Parneet Jaggi

Dr. Parneet Jaggi is Associate Professor of English in Rajasthan, India. She has four collections of poems in English and two research books to her credit. Her historical fiction The Call of the Citadel (2020) is well-acclaimed. Her poems have been anthologised in various journals. Her name appears in the Directory of Writers in America’s famous magazine Poets and Writers. She is Associate Editor of International Journal of Education and English Literature, Montreal, Canada.

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