Monologues Of An (Educated?) Engineer — The Indian Education System

I would like to preface this by saying that I’m part of the problem. So are you. So are all of us. The irony is that we’re all blind, looking for light.

I see many people, online and otherwise, bicker about what it means to be educated, and they’re often not without good reason. Because, as it turns out, a lot of us aren’t actually educated. You’re asking me — really?

Look at what’s happening around the world right now:

• Do educated people fight about things that are seemingly simple when seen from another perspective, while not willing to do so?
• Do educated people need to be told to be careful, to be told to stay indoors until things become manageable, to be told not to go out unless necessary when there’s a pandemic around?
• Do people need to be told not to treat another human differently, based on their color, age, race, or anything else?

If they do know all this and yet after being told they still refuse to change, what do you do? What’s the issue? Where’s the source for all this…rebelliousness? But even rebelliousness is usually for a good cause. What do you call this behavior?

Alright, let’s rewind and try answering some stuff that we can. And I’d like to talk about education, at least, here in India. And the picture it paints in the minds of all those that are made to undergo it.

But first — What is education? I’m not even going to look that up and try to give you an accurate definition; that defeats the purpose of whatever I’m going to say for the rest of this article. What comes to my mind when I hear the word education is this: enriching the minds of the children and helping them in becoming whatever they want through the process of understanding, explaining, and motivating. Helping them become better individuals, which makes them as well as all around them proud. Giving them the knowledge that they know will help them in whatever they do. Teaching children to embrace the way they are and not get hung up on irrelevant details. Passing on all these important points from an early stage so that as they grow older, they know exactly how to be.

And if you observe what’s common among all the people who are looked upon as being an inspiration to us, you’ll notice that they’ve also believed in something similar. Here’s the problem: The people who we look up to, are limited. We don’t (in most cases) look up to our classmates, teachers, or even those around us. Because they don’t believe in the same thing. Many don’t. It’s too few who do and that’s why it’s too few that we look up to. And it’s why too few can ever become real inspirations in today’s world.

Why’s that? Let’s try to dig a little further.

• Did the concept of education that we are supposed to believe in, somehow get lost in translation when it was passed on to millions of people around the country, and eventually the world?
• Was it too much to hope for that everyone envisions the same thing and becomes who they want?
• Is it the mindsets that the education system imparts on people, that drive them towards competition with others rather than themselves?
• Is it just the ultra-fast paced nature of a system that always looks for improvement in a domain and nothing else?
• Is it the pressure from family as well as from the environment that students face every day, that forces them to do what they don’t like or find inspiring?
• Is it the fact that pursuing your dreams almost feels like you’re going against a system that has been “progressing” for the past decade?

I know I’ve raised more questions than answers, but the key is to introspect.

I think it’s all of those things. We live in a world dominated by rote learning. Most of the education we receive isn’t something we would find interesting or would actually be using in our lives. And the competition generated from such learning is equally pointless. There’s a thin line between friendly competition and blind rage to beat the others, and I feel that line is being crossed further each day.

It shouldn’t be about that. Beating someone shouldn’t be your goal, because the thing is, you can never reach the top that way. Whatever satisfaction you achieve when you beat others is just momentary happiness that isn’t going to last. The key to reaching the top is to beat yourself, and the harder it is to beat yourself, to up the ante, the closer you are to becoming the person you want to be. I feel more people should get that.

And doing something because others are doing or because it’s in the limelight isn’t going to work either. I feel we’re constantly being influenced by everything around us that we’re losing ourselves to become a collective representation of our surroundings.

I don’t know where this will lead to but it’s nowhere good. I really don’t want to believe that the power of influence of others’ actions is stronger than the power of influence of our own thoughts and feelings, but I think it’s one of the results of being in an adrenaline-rushed world full of people constantly being told to stand out in an over-populated domain.

I want to conclude by saying that while the education system may be messed up, so are we. And further wrongs don’t make a right. It’s up to us to change our mindsets and look at things from a new perspective. The world is still going to go on, probably in the same way it did for so long, but we don’t have to. Only then can we achieve true education.

Originally published at http://enlightenedentropist.wordpress.com on July 17, 2020.