Education is meant to understand.
To bring in full estimation of you as an individual placed in time and
context, and the implication of it. It is to equip you to wrench your indelible
impression from billions of lives, linking vibrant minds of past with evolving present, and to weigh in on
ideas to weave a vibrant world. Education extends the link of humanity towards possibilities. Education is the vibrant
sense of presence. It is an awareness on what is to be a human, the precious individuality and freedom. A good education grants freedom.
Good education though is rare, and is
impossible in the ecosystem of market driven needs and when valued with certainties
of religion. Education therefore becomes a ritual, and is stuck in the basics of
literacy without any potential or hope. Learning becomes a ritual. The ritual
of feeding and regurgitating, which then is evaluated for merit and use. Literacy is a ritual of learning the rules, prevailing facts and empirical evidences.
Literacy equips us to be educated. When literacy fails to assimilate education is
reduced to ritual. In the process the human is reduced and becomes scheme to
work on the ritual for the systems that benefits. It is weaponized to meet the
aspirations of middle-class insecurities. It creates thriving beggar’s mindset.
Middle class here is not entirely
an economic classification based on income so on. It is a mindset. A mindset
that has overwhelming presence in society hence majoritarian thus deciding
tenor of given society. Lacking deeper understanding or thinking, carried by
exigencies of situation, they are mired in insecurities and battered by
tribulations of life. They desperately seek security and stability. Hence, they amass (many
billionaires and millionaires are beggar minded rich people. They just worked
the system to amass money or power or luxuries but their mind is still middle class, trapped in insatiable middle class needs). They strive as pallbearers of dying inconsequential traditions and degrading culture of sentiments attached to inherited -atavistic residue that they carry to deal with ever changing world. They shape the world in this conservative restricted ways lacking sensibilities to value progress or capacity for nuance. Lacking reflective thinking or self awareness they are incapable to evaluate
meanings or egalitarian options. Ill-equipped for long-term awareness they look
for quick fixes and easy solutions. So, when abstract or existential presents
itself it scares them into the lap of sureties offered by juvenile faiths and nostalgic warmth of inane. Instead of
education equipped steps towards egalitarian self-awareness they seek simplistic
versions to satisfy their primal needs. The human is reduced in the ritual to
maximize for the system. Middle class needs are easily dealt within the matrix of
the self-consuming system. Art, literature and commerce attunes to satisfy and
gain from them. Middle class hence becomes the standard bearers. Thus, the
overwhelming mediocrity in every field that strives on middle class aspirations, from entertainment to literature to technology. The space for excellence
shrinks as middle class expands. They create their own heroes in their own
image, aspirations, and celebrate. Entertainment creates narration that eulogizes their staid ways as virtue, religion adds morals to this morass of prefabricated
world.
They create myths of stability
immune to chaos of life. They thrive in hierarchal systems and ritualistic repetition hence seek surety of authority, if not an all dictating god -and their
agents, then atleast a leader exhibiting sure footed tendencies. The pleased and pleasing are in a loop. Middle class
therefore degrade democracy and egalitarian ideals by encouraging authoritarian tendencies. The reason why J.Krishnamurthi -philosopher educationist, worked
education to remove all forms of authority. He was concerned about Indian tradition
that allowed for ritual, belief and unquestioning devotion. His idea of education
was ‘critical looking’ -much immediate than critical thinking, and a step towards
‘choiceless awareness’ that harbingers inquisitive ways. He valued holistic education
as essential for an “inner renewal that can effect social transformation and
indeed lead to societal change”. Before I continue on this let me add when I was
in my late 20s I took out some time to try to understand the whole idea of
education and search innovative means of pedagogy (I was into bit of teaching so
thought of exploring it in depth). I read few thinkers as also visited few
places across the country which explored these ideas. I did read Montessori,
and found influence in Indian thinkers like Aurobindo (did take few classes at Mirambika in Delhi),
Tagore (visited Shantiniketan in Bengal few times, he was quite influenced by Renaissance
and the Age of Reason as also best of Indian thoughts), Krishnamurthi (spent few days at Rishivally, Andhra) as
also Vivekananda, Osho, Russell (Education and Good Life) and Rousseau. Rousseau’s Emile is quite influential and
foundational in many ways. His concern of education was not to create “magistrate,
nor soldier, nor priest” but “primarily, a man’, or shall we say a human. Tagore
too concerned education with humanism “freedom and creativity are linked in
Tagore’s thought, one conditioning the other. The more people go beyond the
limitations of their animal nature, the closer they come to humanism, freedom
and unity and are then able to develop their creativity”. He valued education
as “clear stream of reason” that “has not lost its way into the dreary desert
sand of dead habits”. It is quite clear that insecurities of middle class have lost
the potential of education and inherent values of humanity into “dreary desert sand
of dead habits”. Valued books are being banned in spaces that once gave hope. Vibrant ideas censored by religion and market. Human being are loosing connection with their reality and are dehumanized into systems.
