Internet is a big boon for the generations now and about to come although with some harmful strings attached.
Let’s keep that negative aspect aside for a while. But factually, it is really helping many who remained abandoned from the learning opportunities. Especially the rural or suburban pockets have been deprived of education and related opportunities of late. In spite of being akin to fruitful abilities, they remain deprived of education. This is thanks to the tyrannical government policies and the growing urban migratory mindset.
Recently I had a chance to listen to ma’am Vidhi Jain. The platform was Josh Talks. The examples that she narrated were startling and equally horrendous. She terms the schooling that we go through as the ‘factory schooling’.
She narrated this one incident of conducting an art and craft workshop which consisted of about thirty pupils. Twenty-six out of them were so called school-going folks and remaining four were from nearby kachchi-bastis (hutments). The students were asked for drawing a sketch, picturing their own imagination. The thing that she said about the sketches drawn by those students are both relatable and startling. Those twenty-six school going folks all drew with more or less difference a home, hills in the background and a Sun peeping out through the hills. The other four students on other hand, drew the simple yet mesmerizing things that they observed around them.
Astonishingly as it seems in her talk, she said, she had unschooled her daughter from this conventional school and has been learning in the open environment of Shikshantar.
This shows the gradual killing of creativity for these school going students. This is relatable and equally terrible when I heard it. The Macaulay kind of schooling and higher education has been showing its ugly colours of late. The hierarchical system of education that exists especially in technical education has been showing some disastrous consequences. The so-called prestigious institutions like IITs have seen with rising dropouts and suicide cases which is deplorable.
Some students get timely advice and counseling while others don’t get access. This results in chronic cases of depression and regressive behavior.
The clout of professors in centrally funded engineering institutions is as good as class I government officers (neither servants nor teachers!). They are simultaneously given permissions to consult on various enterprise projects with some conflict of interest agreement and earn a handsome sum at hand. To add to that, once a student is admitted into a so called prestigious institution, it becomes equally prestigious issue for parents.
There is one more phenomenon that we turn a deaf ear to. In the developed countries or first world countries scope for choosing a career widens as we go up the ladder with age or education per se. Also the most important aspect is the age restrictions for pursuing education. For instance an Indian education system allocates about 35000 hours for a renowned course that we all know and the same can be completed in 10000 hours in developed countries thanks to no age restrictions for pursuing education. And that my dear readers are the engineering course!
In contrast to the first world countries in India as we move ahead in our education our career choices narrow down. Very safely there are only three professions of so called prestige—Medical, Engineering and Law to some extent. And the worst part is number of engineers working in core engineering field is 30%-40% and those who hopefully prefer to stay in India.
One more thing that I want to say, one who has successfully earned some position has done a damn commendable job. There are obvious reasons for flying out of the country, unequal opportunities and unhealthy competition for instance.
On a lighter note those of my readers in school, ten or fifteen years from now you could end up being an engineer. Whatever may you end up being in profession, keep doing what you love to simultaneously. ‘One for the kitchen and one for the soul’ is what they say.
That is the open secret to be what we want to be!!
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