Since childhood i was fond of many things and everything i was fond of was restricted in school. Obviously !!. I always wondered why, because school gulped a large part of the day and other part of the day was consumed in school related activity like homework and tuition. We were barely left with few hours to switch off our minds from school and its education. Ostensibly those were the best time of the day. We all knew there was this problem, but no one dared to against the system and be the odd one out, neither did i. It was too big a risk to take practically. The education is a large part of our culture even now and it seems almost mandatory for a person to go through the same boring stuff for 16 years and end up doing something they never liked or something they liked but obviously parallel to their educated mind.
As Sir Ken Robinson says, You go to anywhere around the world the educational hierarchy is the same with Maths and languages at the top followed by humanities and then arts and creativity. WHY?. Creativity should be given the same status as literacy or probably even more. Why cant one spend equal amount of time to dance or paint as one spends on maths and science. One research says every human before the age 10 is capable of learning 12 languages. I truly believe everybody is creative and have a core competency that no other person on earth has. Education should be guiding us towards this competency and creativity but sadly it guides us out of it. Rather we are educated out of it. Education teaches us to get accustomed to this boredom in the name of hard work and perseverance. If i do not find an answer in an exam i look ahead, in education that is called cheating but outside it is called collaboration. Education makes us believe that it is a bad thing to not know the answer and say I DON'T KNOW. Education demotivates us if we do not know but rather creativity and passion is all about 'i don't know, so let me find it, let me improve'.
Creativity is about doing something new and innovative which adds value. Our education to make us more creative and innovative in our thoughts but sadly doesn't. I came across this school in Rajasthan which calls itself alternate education where the education is more personalized, interactive, where one can choose any combination of subjects they want and no grading system thus no discrimination of inferior and superior. Sadly it is called alternate education!. This should rather be the regular one i think. Our system misguides every child in every possible way. I heard a story of a child who was asked for his ambition and he drew a 4000 sq ft house and the teacher gave F grade and told him it was not realistic and asked him to re-do the assignment. He came back with the same one and asked the teacher to keep her grades and he keep his dreams and finally he go his house and met his teacher after years. The teacher finally accepted that she has destroyed a lot of dreams and he was the one who endured. Imagine, Like most of us, if the child had redone his assignment with a realistic dream as the teacher wanted. Paul McCartney and his 2 fellow musicians from the Beatles were in the same music school and got an F and saw themselves drop out from school to be the BEATLES. Imagine if Paul said, lets just go and get some normal job and survive.
What am trying to point out is there is one resistance creativity and innovation, that is Education which eventually molds the matrix of our brain. Our education pushes you out of thinking creatively. It forces you to think in some standard way. That is wrong. Some still prosper but majority don't and that's a very big number and is the important part to be solved.
Perhaps that was the whole motive of the British, they were actually very jealous of our tradition and the enormous progress in all fields without ANY resources. They desperately wanted to take control of everything that is why perhaps they had to wait for more than 150 years here to demolish everything especially the education as they knew it was the root to all progress. They standardized all parts of education and distorted the whole purpose of education. The worst part is we are still not able to change it or do anything about it. We still learn PT and not yoga. Technology still is selling hot and farmers commit suicide. The system is terrible. Please find your way or some one will impose a way on you. Then you are no more a human but a programmed robot.
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