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Education
Education means learning. What is learning? Ingesting what others experienced! Learning what? The repertoire of knowledge learned and saved by the mankind collectively, till date; of course in a selective manner! Learning how? By help through teaching! Learning when? All through one's life!
Learning must not be limited to its formal academic institutes, as it is life itself that makes the biggest university on earth. Every time is the time to learn. Every age is the age to learn as well!
Why learning? Animals don't need it since they are governed by their instincts in their life. But humans have the gray matter too. They are born with their instincts fully developed but with a brain almost empty - at least at the conscious level. The brain needs taking in at a conscious level what our ancestors left for us as our intellectual inheritance, or else it would have to start its journey into human evolution from scratch again. Knowledge of the past saves the need to discover again through personal experiencing what trillions of our ancestors have already done through thousands of years of the human history of growth into civilization. It economizes on our time here on earth so that we may start our intellectual journey into growth and civilization from where our forefathers (mothers also!) left it. We are the torchbearers of the human experience participating in the relay race that the humanity has started running here on earth. So we need standing where our predecessors are going to hand over this torch to us. Hence learning! Humans are born with an instinct of curiosity in them, which animals miss; and this is what the privilege of humanity, over animals, is. Curiosity makes one initiate into learning. That is what the guiding force is!
Teaching only facilitates this guiding force by keeping it on track always. But it can never replace the force itself. It cannot even choose a particular track of its own choice for the force to move on. The force itself chooses its own track! Teaching is simply to provide rails for it not to go off-track, and that's all what its role is - nothing more, nothing less! Now let's check what on earth is the scenario of education going like. Our kids - all of them - are born with a great lot of curiosity in their psyche. But our mothers do their best (worst!) to shun it off in the very early childhood, just in the name of good parenting. The first assault comes when they strictly stop them from playing with their genitals as the kids are only a few months old. They were actually going curious about the parts of their body that provided them with a physical joy when played with. But the culture looks at it with a dirty eye!
That's where the culture goes anti-learning the very first, in a kid's life! Let's have guts to call a spade a spade. Further assaults on curiosity come from the parent's over-concern for the kid's safety as well as for the safety of the household valuables. Kids are stopped from tangling with objects of their choice, and are handed over toys to play with, thus creating an obvious wall between the kids' world and the world of adults around. Another golden opportunity of learning wasted! Still further assaults come from parents expecting from and encouraging kids to compete with their peer group in order to stand first or win a prize or else outshine others in this walk of life or that. Curiosity knows no competition and no hurry to win; and if it ever succumbs to them, it rings its own death knell! Thus is learning murdered at home even before the kid starts going to the school by what we call concerned parenting! What happens when the kid goes to the school? First of all s/he gets her/his peer group over there - s/he welcomes it. Then comes the regimentation. All the kids are supposed as well as made to learn the same syllabus whether it caters to their personal curiosities or not.
Our education system tends to make learning a one-way channel. From the teacher to the student! It is here that education digs its own grave. Real learning can never be a one-way channel. Learning must be an interaction between the two - the teacher and the student. But in our present system students are always at the receiving end.  They never initiate a thing. It's the teacher who does. Hence education gets limited to be rendering of information on the teacher's part and memorizing the same on the student's. Nowhere does the real insight into the knowledge get ingested! Students simply turn into examination-writing machines. They vomit out what they have stuffed inside their minds without really being interested about it. And that's the end of it - the whole process doesn't make them a knowledgeable person at all! This, in nutshell, is the entire education scenario whether in schools, colleges, engineering, medical, or even the business schools as well. At their best these academic and professional institutions churn out the skillful engineering, medical, bureaucratic or business robots who earn as much as they can rather than the insightful human beings who love what they do and go on excelling in that!
Is there something that can be done to improve the lot of education on earth? From the basic nursery level of education to the most advanced educational research and development institutes! Why don't we follow the basic path of learning? I mean the path of learning through curiosity that keeps one learning throughout one's life even after the formal education is over. Not for money, but for joy! Learning, then, becomes its own joy in itself. It no more needs being assessed at the hands of examiners in any kind of examination system at all. What kind of education system will that be like? Never heard before! Every new thing does get heard the first time once, as it introduces itself! I propose replacing schools with clubs of knowledge. Let an entire mini-world be there in these clubs of knowledge and activities with laboratories and workshops concerning every subject and every topic, running their real business from inside the campus only; and let their in charges be the real great men and women of knowledge and insight in their fields who love their work, and enjoy it, and run it as a successful business venture as well!
Such people are not easy to get. But then who says that education is an easy thing to impart? We must search for the best brains in our society and offer them the job of teacher-in charge of the business in the field of their specialization in the laboratory/workshop running inside the school campus only. The better the faculty, the better the club of knowledge; and better goes its goodwill too! The clubs of knowledge being the real good business centers as well as the real good education centers! The students should be left free in those centers to roam around in any and every corner of it without the burden of any syllabus on their shoulders. They will love investigating into the real businesses that are professionally being run from inside the school campus only. Their feet will automatically stop them where they really and curiously belong to - of course, that is what their aptitude is! They will take all the pains on earth to learn about it at its deepest level.
The men and women of insight who are their teachers along with being the in charge of the business concerned, will very much be there to guide them in whatever questions arise in their minds while learning about the whole thing in its totality. If they need a subsidiary knowledge of some other field along in order to learn this one in a better way, they will be guided to go and learn that also. Thus a dynamic syllabus will be there in the making for each and every student individually, tailor-made to serve her/his particular needs only. And curiosity will be the fuel that will make her/his learning an experience of joy that her /his whole learning process is! Where is the scope for any mechanical examination system in such a joyful scheme of affairs that the real education is! Also the clubs of knowledge can be located inside the community living premises only - that will make them both richer than they separately would be. How much petrol reserves of the world will this location clubbing of the two save too! Do you feel things should change in life, on earth? If yes, why sit passive? Let's be in the active vanguard. Let's try to change the world! Even trying is its own fun in itself! Here is The Super Mind Evolution System that claims to change your personal life, so if you feel the system is good too - like I do - it may be a humble beginning in the direction of changing the way we live! Just watch this video to check for yourself:
Have An Insightful Story To Tell About Your Education?
A story lived by you! Your School/College Stories And MemoirsClick on the links below to read more school/college stories/memoirs:
Scene of Education
        
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