Education must lend meaning to life

Some time ago, a few high-school students were asked to name their greatest fear. The answers included “being scolded for what I did accidentally”, “being rejected by friends”, “I will fail”, “losing my temper”, and “disappointing my parents”.

Had these things been discussed in class? Silence.

Children need to share their worries and doubts, talk about why they get angry or cannot control themselves. Though every adult knows that an emotionally stable child will be a more focused student, such is the tyranny of expectation that most teachers are too hard-worked and weary to tell their institution managements that a child’s understanding of herself is as important as her grasp of academic subjects.

When universal education based on textbooks was introduced into an oral and traditional culture like ours, it had no room for an attendant mentoring of the development of a student’s personality. No one thought children needed anything other than order, discipline, and “lessons”. The more the student studied, the more distanced she became from her natural environment, community, and native culture. This plan has continued as the entire training and testing are concentrated on the material world between the child’s fifth and 15th years.

The higher order of thinking skills, dare one say spiritual growth, a zone of intimacy impossible to describe but in need of discussion, has faded. Education has become a way of life to pass examinations. Over the past decade or so, as teenage suicide and child-against-child violence began to rise, a question has repeated itself: on the road to academic excellence, did we miss something? We know that we cannot reverse this system, but surely we can modify it with the active support of teachers and other stakeholders who are all concerned about the future of our children.

In a civilised society (and we congratulate ourselves endlessly about our heritage), each generation is expected to make society better and safer for the next one. Hence the tremendous societal role schools have in our present and future. Training in understanding the value of cooperative growth, empathy and managing feelings and differences has to start early in life. Many hours have been spent discussing how personal and social transformation is possible through a well-designed course in social and personal ethics. Hardly anything is said about the training to be given to teachers to make them agents of awakening.

Not all grim

Recently, I watched a video describing millennials and their socio-emotional disabilities. The chilling list of flaws included entitlement, self-obsession, narcissism, low tolerance, and inability to focus on anything for any length of time. Now this might well be true of some of them, but not all. Many youngsters everywhere are responding warmly to outreach messages for help. Any request sent out on behalf of students in distress or appeals for food or donations to animal shelters is almost immediately met with a flood of calls and assurances. Some of the respondents are school-goers. What does that tell us? Someone inspired them. Something other than their textbooks brought out the best in them. A routine counter to the idea that values can be taught is that they can only be imbibed (“We learnt from our parents”). But what if family members are too busy to spend time with children? Whom will children talk to and learn from? A policy to foster the idea and importance of the self in harmony with wider and wider circles can be implemented through schools to influence at least those children who get to attend school and will one day lead their communities and society; they will write and teach, build cities, patent new medicines and technologies; they will enact policies and laws. This is especially important when millions of Indian children below the age of 10 have no hope of an education.

Disadvantaged by illiteracy, they are vulnerable to all the negative forces around them. Doesn’t that leave the rest of us with a duty to overcome our limited knowledge based on traditions and prejudices? The intense competition that contemporary life fosters has already left many youngsters with no inner resources to counter anxiety, fear, and rage.

Some young children are so lonely and edgy they take their own lives when they fail in entrance exams, do not get the kind of clothes they want or feel inadequate in English-language classes. Educating for peace seeks to nurture a moral vision about the role of the self in the family, society, nation, and world. A six-year-old cannot understand the term social justice. A 14-year-old can and must. But the former can understand the idea of sharing and fairness which, in turn, will develop into a grasp of what the latter understands in five seconds. A six-year-old can be told that he must not stone a pup for fun. A 15-year-old understands that leaves, birds, insects, people, and climate are all linked.

If we are to survive on an impoverished planet that cannot manage its food-stocks or famines, its water resources or forests, we must, as quickly as possible, sensitise children to understand that what affects one group in one part of the world will eventually affect everyone everywhere else. We have already learnt how to make children healthier but we have paid less attention to their hearts and minds. Surely the goal of education is to equip people to lead meaningful lives and not just to make a living.

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