“Many men go fishing all their life without knowing it is not fish they are after” said Henry David Thoreau. The words fit well for the youth of today who are on the look-out for jobs with fat salaries, thinking that would ensure them a happy future. But the increasing suicide rates and broken marriages among the IT professionals tell a completely different story.
Too many among us are afraid to be ourselves, so we give up our dreams to follow the crowd. Beginning from a student who gives up his passion for music to get into a software profession to the parents who, knowing that their son is a good cricketer, force him to take up mathematics which never seems to enter his head. It seems like the whole meaning of education has changed over the years. Learning classical music, Bharatanatyam, art and craft are no more considered education.
Education is something that fetches you a fat salary and power. Doing something for the sake of doing it cannot bring us lasting satisfaction. One might go on with it may be for a few months and years but in the long run he or she collapses. The depression and stress one goes through are the ‘gifts’ of such a life. If you consider you are a good writer and like writing, there is nothing better to do than to sit down with a pen and paper and start scribbling. Realising one’s dream is the greatest satisfaction one can ever attain in life. “When you get back to doing those things that lifted your spirit and sent you soaring, you reconnect with that state of happiness that you may have lost,” says Robin Sharma.
Just business
Right from Socrates to modern stalwarts, everyone agrees that education is the only tool that would liberate humanity from the shackles of ignorance, poverty and injustice. But today, our education is binding us rather than liberating. We have commercialised our education system so much that everything in it is done in terms of ‘buying’ and ‘selling.’ The education we get in our schools and colleges sells us into the world of business where we trade our knowledge to secure a convincing future. How far it works is a question that is never raised, lest answered.
Why not make art, music, dance and other things part and parcel of the education system along with Economics, Sociology, Biology and Physics? Imposed education does not serve its purpose; rather, students should be encouraged to learn what they are good at.
India is struggling to fetch a gold medal in the Olympics because our sporting talents are busy with computers and construction around the globe. Those who are into sports are not encouraged to go ahead and realise their dreams. Pressure is yet another gift that our education system brings along with it. Our students are pressured so much that they cannot cope with the failure. A small failure in exams means the end of life for them. It is high time we seriously carve out a clear definition and meaning for our education system. Education is not the mere act of getting familiar with the facts and learning to handle few sophisticated gadgets. It is a tool to realise one’s dreams rather than someone else’s.
In this regard, our educational system needs a drastic change. Parents should realise that pressuring their children to come out with 99 per cent results is different from encouraging them to do better. It is sad that competition has seeped into our education system. Even little children have to go through an entrance test to get admitted to schools. Parents see to it that their children pass the test, at the cost of hampering their fragile minds. We badly need to educate our parents to understand the meaning of ‘true’ education.
“Tare Zameen Par” is one movie that aims at the education of our parents and brings out the problem of our educational system. “The Alchemist” is one of the books that talks of realising one’s dreams. Today, what we need is progressive education rather than profit-oriented education. Media has a great role to play in this regard as its main purpose is to inform.
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