Rethinking Education by Iti Roychowdhury Amity University Gwalior

The killing of 132 school children in Peshawar on Dec 16, 2014, at point blank range shook the sensibilities of the entire civilized world. That innocent children were made to sit with heads bowed, waiting to be shot, is a horror that refuses to go away. This was no collateral damage .It was  deliberate massacre. But  Peshawar does not stand alone in its infamy. News of killings of children has been on the rise in the recent past- shootouts in schools in US, killing of 186 children held as  hostages in Russia and others. And it is not happening only in far off distant lands. We have our own Make in India tales of horror – tales of negligence, callous indifference, disregards for the weak- children dying of poisoning in Mid Day Meal in Bihar, incidents of roof collapse of schools in UP and UK, rape of minor girls across the country and numerous similar stories.  This is alarming and in gross violation of the code of warfare and code of society, that forbids killing  of women and children.

That it should come to this! Religion, politics, economics – there are myriad reasons with one truth- man killing the young and weak. And this when all Mammals are biologically programmed to protect and nurture their young .We as a nation seriously need a social audit. What has gone wrong in the raising of our children that they have matured into such monsters?

One of the paradigm shifts has been in the system of education. We have completely done away with the tradition of Liberal Arts. The focus of learning has shifted from inculcating a  spirit of enquiry to skills development. The student, the teacher and the parents , each looks at a lesson and learning only from the perspective of its utility in procuring a good job-via a good college, good campus , good salary . The humanizing effect of poetry: reduced to learning by rote. Fascination for the natural world: reduced to learning of answers to expected questions in the competitive exams. Study of basic sciences leading to a thrill of discovery: reduced to mastering technology to satiate the consumer. The new age Mantra is:  Don’t sit and marvel at the glory of Daffodils in bloom in the poem. Read it, pick up the vocabulary, learn the language and get on with the earnest business of earning a living. Don’t learn of Plato or Socrates. That will beget you no job. Don’t waste time on Lands and People. You are not migrating to a remote country in the middle of deepest Africa, practice Math instead.
Christian Kopf says, “A society without trained workers will not get its work done. A society without educated citizens will collapse in times of crises, and will wither away in times of ease and prosperity.” It is important to strike the right balance. A child who starts preparation for IIT admission in Class VI may get a sound technical training, but his education would be skewed. When will we wake up? Insensitivity, cruelty, selfishness and outright animal violence are already taking root. Unless some remedial steps are taken as priority one, we may have own Peshawar tomorrow.