Few days back, a cousin of mine visited me after his 12th Class Pre Board Examination. He was very sad as he performed badly in the exam. He told me that his grades will get affected. I tried to comfort him by telling him that whatever is done is done, & that there is no use of crying over it. But logic doesn’t work when the mind is upset. He kept repeating that his grades will be affected. I still tried to explain him that there are more important things in life than grades. At the end of our hour long interaction, he realized it but went with this thoughtful remark: “I understand what you have said, but I am afraid that I may forget all this when i get back into the rat race.”
One cannot help but sympathize with the students, for being victims of a drug that has been injected into them since birth. We are programmed by our parents into believing that the greatest virtue in life lies in scoring high grades. The parents in turn, have been brainwashed into believing that this is absolutely necessary for achieving success in life.
The difficulties in coping with studies & examinations are compounded by the verbal torture that parents often unleash on the poor performers. Comparisons are inevitable within & outside the family, & the poorly performing child is made acutely conscious of his or her inadequacies, & even begins to believe it when the parents say: “You are good for nothing.” Naturally, everybody cannot succeed in this mad race. The losers outnumber the winners manifold, & so we end up with a fairly large number of “good for nothing” individuals in society, thanks to the neurotic delusions of parents.
The so-called “winners” are not in particularly good shape either. They need to sacrifice much of their childhood & subsequent years in pursuit of something that is important because somebody else said it was. The joy of learning is barely experienced in this stressful exercise. What kind of success is this? The success of delusion?
Today’s education is largely reduced to a means of getting a degree, which is considered necessary for survival, or more accurately, for earning a livelihood. Livelihood depends on our standard of living, & our modern consumerist culture as well as the need to promote social standing ensures that we will always be in need of money to spend on more & more things that we could very well do without. Thus, as a society, we are driven to enhance our livelihood by whichever means we can.
In the end would say that “Today’s education may give us a livelihood, but not necessarily wisdom or character.”
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