KHAKI EDUCATION
Talking of the need for a change in the curricula of business schools in his post ‘Trouble in Paradise’ Ajit Balakrishnan writes: "On the other hand, things like communication ability, interpersonal skills, leadership and, most importantly, “wisdom”, the ability to weave together and make use of different kinds of knowledge, are less easily taught. Paradoxically, these are the very skills that lie at the heart of a leadership role in management."
This was my comment: ‘Nay, these are the very skills that lie at the heart of life. The good news is they can be taught if we begin with a change in the school curriculum. As an educationist, I have always maintained that children who are coerced into submission in schools cannot become leaders overnight as young adults. Knowledge today is easily accessible to all, wisdom is the more complex process that we need to give opportunities for. Discussion, argument, persuasion, refelction, problem-solving, making links and connections, risk-taking, humour etc. do these elements feature in a child's education today? That is point where trouble germinates in paradise. Catch 'em young!’
I am going to do a series of posts on education. Do bring in your valuable inputs at each stage to enrich the discussion.
A Nation of Hoarders
In India we are obsessed with hoarding. We save for our great grandchildren. We do not throw away anything however tattered. We preserve and we hoard .It is said the gold hoarded by women in India if used can light up all our villages for years. We hoard education. Or rather we use it like a commodity, a quantity we can hold.
And how do we hold it? In notebooks in the form of diagrams and notes and homework and classwork. In textbooks bought and physically held and kept for decades after our study is done to feel secure. In schools in India it is mandatory that every child does every task in the exact same way as everybody else. Teachers expect it and they say they do it because parents expect it. Parents say that all other schools are doing it. The safety in numbers, the herd mentality is rampant. The blame game is also rampant.
Then there is also fear of loss of control. Teachers love to control the syllabus. So they make sure the child never uses a single word outside the teacher dictated piece. Parents love to control their children’s learning and education. If it is in the notebook there is control, it can be memorised. Will the child remember it two years from now after he has transferred it onto another paper at the examination and been given a mark? We assume he has it safely locked up. But he hasn’t, has he?
Creation of mediocrity -Innovation versus memory.
Do our children practice thinking and creative imagination? Do they experiment and take risks and enjoy the process without worrying about the product? Do they read with appreciation? Do they design gadgets and devices? Is Music, drama and painting used for knowledge and appreciation in order to foster greater and more informed use of leisure as adults?
We have a problem thinking of education like this. Only khaki clad education is considered “real” education. All that is bright and colourful is relegated to the realms of new age gimmicks that will not work. Never mind that the staid stuff they rote and regurgitate is promptly forgotten in the next week/month/year. So enamoured are we of the comfort of habit in our processes we refuse to see its problems. Some of us have even begun justifying the mediocrity by talking of India shining and how well all our kids do when they go abroad. Never mind the new fangled Indian professional grad is unable to string a few sentences to voice an opinion on a TV show.
We continue like Handy’s boiling frog to heap abuse on young minds unmindful of its imminent death. (Charles Handy, management guru, speaks of the frog sitting in tepid water in a beaker that is being slowly heated on a flame. The frog sits still in the comfort of the warm water. The water heats up and at a certain point the process hastens to a boil. The frog is unable to move out of the beaker and is boiled to death.) Comfort zones are often death beds.
Why are we bent on this lemming like self destruction? The fear factor rules and competition simply worsens the whole situation beyond all redemption. We fear the present and the future… the school and the system… the society and the world… we fear lack of enough resources… of ostracism… of isolation.. of losing out… we fear change and innovation… we fear risk and discomfort… displacement … disapproval… its endless our fears… We behave like the rabbit mesmerized by headlights… we fault by our inaction.
